Thanks to a global movement advocating for refugee leadership, the idea that people with first-hand experience of forced displacement should be able to meaningfully participate in the process of making decisions about the policies that affect their lives has garnered significant attention and support in recent years.
Despite this, however, refugee leaders and researchers are unequivocal: Progress towards meaningful refugee participation has been nominal at best; and many organisations believe they’re supporting meaningful participation when, in fact, they are not.
The UN’s Global Compact on Refugees calls on states and other stakeholders to consult and engage purposefully with refugees when developing responses to displacement crises; many actors – including governments, UN agencies, and international NGOs – have signed a pledge by the Global Refugee-Led Network committing them to include refugees in decision-making processes; and the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, has formed a task force on meaningful refugee participation.
“While you were busy getting your first professional years of experience, I was busy surviving”.
But far too often, well-established organisations: build advisory bodies that don’t confer power to refugees; hire people who have experienced forced displacement on a one-off basis into high-profile positions without undertaking broader inclusion and equity efforts; report progress on meaningful participation without actually partnering with refugee-led organisations; or only issue refugee-led organisations small amounts of funding for specific projects rather than the un-earmarked financial support these groups say they need.
Having spoken with numerous colleagues working in the humanitarian and development sectors, we don’t believe that these shortcomings are always the product of organisational cynicism or opposition to meaningful refugee participation. Many people working in the humanitarian and development sectors genuinely want to embrace purposeful change, but they lack the practical know-how and institutional backing to do so effectively.
So how do we move towards a system that has the know-how and the will to actually enable meaningful participation and not just make tokenistic nods in that direction?
Embracing real change
Supporting valid refugee participation can sometimes be as straightforward as giving unrestricted funding to refugee-led organisations or removing exclusionary criteria, such as years of experience or degree requirements, from a job posting.
As someone who had been forcibly displaced once told one of us: “While you were busy getting your first professional years of experience, I was busy surviving”.
These are some easy, initial steps that organisations and donors can take right away. But supporting meaningful refugee participation more systemically requires making profound and far-reaching shifts in how the humanitarian sector currently operates. That begins with humanitarians interrogating the colonial nature of their own initiatives and deciding to move away from global aid agendas so that localised, refugee-led approaches can be centred in responses to displacement.
Organisations in the sector have evolved into complex entities more focused on resources and branding than on delivering effective solutions. This approach is, at best, ineffective and, at worst, neocolonial.
Doing this inherently threatens the current prominence and control that well-established humanitarian actors enjoy in the system. As Deborah Doane notes in her book The INGO Problem: Power, Privilege, and Renewal, organisations in the sector have evolved into complex entities more focused on resources and branding than on delivering effective solutions. This approach is, at best, ineffective and, at worst, neocolonial.
Let’s name the elephant in the room: Many with a vested interest in the current system will contest this assertion because acknowledging and addressing it requires a redistribution of power and resources. Major institutions will need to relinquish much of the entrenched power they hold, turn down millions (maybe billions) in funding, deprioritise their own perspectives on programmatic priorities, and eventually downsize their oversized teams and organisational structures.
How to decentre
Although we think decentring will spell major institutional transformation within humanitarianism, we don’t believe it requires that all international humanitarians lose their jobs or that all international NGOs shut down. That would be counterproductive to the absolute need for international solidarity and justice in a field that is inherently global. The process of decentring requires careful nuance, or people will surely suffer.
For individuals wishing to decentre themselves, we acknowledge they may experience personal fragility and instability. But it is possible to reconcile this set of complex feelings – and ensure ongoing employment – by reorienting the way we work toward allyship and societal contribution.
For many individual humanitarians, reorienting toward allyship will necessitate a role change. For example, those who focus on donor compliance within monitoring and evaluation may be a good fit to become fundraising partners for local or refugee-led organisations. But the truth is that some individuals may not be able to see a way to reorient their positions toward allyship and may choose to leave their current workplaces.
Though undoubtedly scary, this doesn’t have to introduce serious job insecurity. Some may explore their ability to be an ally in their domestic context as a member of a host community supporting resettled refugees, which is also part of the response to forced displacement.
It’s important to embrace some creativity – the skills born of an international humanitarian career are also relevant to one’s local or national government, socially minded businesses, and a variety of other nonprofit fields.
For institutions, the process of decentring is more complex. The UN system and major international NGOs are employers of hundreds of thousands of people, and many are providing life-saving frontline humanitarian aid in crises. But how do we know where the provision of this aid has crossed into gatekeeping and power hoarding?
It’s the million dollar question that organisations need to answer – and right now – because the current practices of well-established humanitarianism are preventing investment in some of the most impactful and solutions-oriented, community-led work happening all around the world.
To answer this question, it is critical for organisations to engage in equity learning journeys, which equity expert Samara Hakim defines as integrated learning programmes that support institutions to make sense of their positioning and power in the world. This should include investigating what allyship looks like in an international context.
This learning is the first step in breaking down dynamics that block underrepresented groups from participation, influence, and leadership. To get started, we recommend building buy-in for the journey through internal conversations and then soliciting help from an outside expert to conduct an organisational audit that can lead to the development of goals and strategies for change.
The management of structural change is complex and sticky, but it is also possible if organisational leadership team members share a common understanding about why it’s crucial.
Internal champions outside the leadership team also have an important role to play in enabling institutional change. As an ally, if you see that your organisation: is the lead applicant for a grant without a local co-applicant; has developed a strategic plan rooted in organisational growth rather than community impact; has built an intervention without community co-design; or has hired people with forced displacement backgrounds mainly in gig employment roles, then your first role is to stand up and demand change.
We acknowledge that this process of pushing for equitable change can feel threatening to those who currently hold power, but it is not a zero-sum game. From our engagements with refugee leaders all over the world, there is a hunger for international organisations to support – rather than lead – fundraising, advocacy, and diplomacy efforts. These supportive roles can surely grow.
Editor’s note: The arguments in this article are informed by a workshop series called Building Organizational Pathways Towards Meaningful Participation and Refugee Leadership and a corresponding report that the authors led and published for the NGO Cohere earlier this year.
