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Save the Children International announced to widespread praise last year that it would stop taking money from UN-run pooled funds, in order to make way for local humanitarian groups. It was a remarkable turn for an organisation that has long been a localisation laggard. In less than three months, however, the NGO seems to have changed its tune.
Save the Children is one of several big agencies set to accept millions in United States government funding from those funds – known as country-based pooled funds, run by the UN’s humanitarian aid coordination arm, OCHA. It’s part of some $2 billion in previously announced US government funding to pass through OCHA – struck as part of a deal that is looking increasingly problematic.
In Kenya, Save the Children is taking $850,000 from OCHA’s pooled fund and a further $10 million in Myanmar, according to UN funding data. It’s also in line to receive some $20 million more, including from funds focused on Mozambique, Nigeria, Sudan, and South Sudan. Most of the funding is part of “fast-track” awards being rapidly pushed through by the US.
Save the Children’s about-face is symbolic of a humanitarian sector that continues to be performative and shies away from hard truths. The gulf between what the sector preaches about localisation and how it practises it is a case in point. OCHA has declared its pooled funds to be a tool to advance locally driven aid, yet the early allocations are nearly entirely targeted to big UN agencies, as well as large international NGOs like Save the Children. None of the US funding goes directly to local actors in Myanmar, and only a miserly 2.1% to the Kenya Red Cross, despite both countries having exceptional local leadership. The US funding to OCHA is triggering immense backsliding on localisation.
We need to be honest with ourselves. The humanitarian sector is in crisis, but reform can’t progress if virtue signalling is prolific.
Pragmatism is no excuse – it has long been the justification for international dominance of the aid sector and for resisting change. Amid a legitimacy crisis, and approaching 10 years since the Grand Bargain reform pledges, the sector and its donors have a choice: Practise what you preach, or lose the chance to change the system for the better.
Let’s be clear: Changes are already being forced on the sector. The US has politicised its OCHA contribution by strategically choosing countries, shunning others, and trying to implement its “global gag rule” across all foreign aid. It could spell the end for localisation as we know it, as the reform movement becomes further marginalised by this corporatised, industrial model: Move fast and break the fragile system.
This heightens the urgency for other donors to break away from this trajectory. They must double down on genuine localisation by shifting power and strengthening locally led systems of sustainable, justice-centred humanitarianism.
Critical choices lie ahead
This isn’t just about a single agency’s U-turn, but what these choices signal for the wider humanitarian movement.
The sector is embracing alternative facts while adopting the role of being the not-so-subtle Trojan Horse for US transactionalism. Rather than pause to consider the implications of receiving problematic US funding through OCHA, international agencies have vacuumed up the resources.
And instead of pursuing solidarity-based and equitable partnerships, localisation is often done out of necessity. This is most evident in insecure contexts with restricted access: Local actors are subcontracted for the purpose of reach, facing acute security risks. Funding looks more localised through such outsourcing, but inequitable systems remain intact.
Save the Children can be singled out for its hypocrisy and public relations machinery, but it’s far from alone. In Myanmar, 54.6% of the $136.1 million allocation is going to UN agencies and the remaining 45.4% to nine international NGOs. Nothing is going directly to local NGOs in Kenya, aside from the 2.1% to the Kenya Red Cross. It’s a similar story with UN pooled funds elsewhere, from Haiti to South Sudan.
Local actors are subcontracted for the purpose of reach, facing acute security risks. Funding looks more localised through such outsourcing, but inequitable systems remain intact.
In practice, a six-month timeline the US has mandated for implementing its grants will be even more damaging for locally led action. Take Myanmar and Sudan, for example: International agencies have minimal access, thus relying on local actors for reach. This means OCHA’s funding will be skewed towards more secure areas that internationals can access, or local actors will be pushed to hastily deliver, posing immense risks. Either trajectory undermines response quality and local leadership, and runs contrary to the stated aims of the US funding to alleviate human suffering.
The likelihood for pooled funds to galvanise locally led action was always slim, as they were no match for international aid agencies jostling for relevance during the great aid recession. UN relief chief Tom Fletcher once declared that OCHA pooled funds should aim for a minimum 70% to local actors, yet it only took a few months for a supposedly principled position to fall flat.
The end of localisation or a dual system?
This chain of events likely spells the end of localisation as we know it. We remain stuck with performative statements without system change or accountability. Past ruptures, such as COVID-19, illustrate how resistant the internationally dominated system is to change: It snapped back to business as usual when the pandemic subsided.
It is encouraging that Norad, the Norwegian development agency, recently announced pilot localisation projects, and that philanthropies are backing mutual aid. But they pale in comparison to the heft of US funding and UN agencies. We also need robust accountability; distrust proliferates when international agencies declare grand localisation intentions that collapse at the first hurdle.
Donors and international aid agencies must step up. It begins with moving beyond virtue signalling. Embrace honest conversations, and be accountable for our commitments to supporting local leadership.
It seems our likely trajectory and perhaps even best hope is for a dual system, akin to industrial versus organic farming. The US will back a more corporate, industrial model. As other donors cut back, the sheer dominance of US funding will allow it to impose its priorities and distort the sector – and at its extremes, cause immense harm.
In contrast, a much smaller, organic industry will continue to solidify, centred on locally led and justice-centred humanitarianism. But for the latter to move beyond a niche requires moving past business as usual.
Locally led action was never an end in itself, but a recognition that it is a prerequisite of more effective and sustainable responses.
Donors and international aid agencies must step up. It begins with moving beyond virtue signalling. Embrace honest conversations, and be accountable for our commitments to supporting local leadership.
If not, we will end up with an increasingly weaponised humanitarian sector – where funding is driven even more by politics than need, and where reform commitments are as fungible as pooled fund local aid targets.
