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The shift towards localisation is both necessary and overdue. For decades, donors, international NGOs, and intermediaries have controlled funding and decision-making in ways that have often excluded those closest to the crisis.
Rigid systems, compliance-heavy processes, and risk-averse funding models have reinforced this imbalance.
These barriers must continue to be challenged. But as localisation evolves, another challenge is also emerging within the ecosystem. What can be described as the “Calimero complex”.
The Calimero complex refers to a mindset where being small or under-resourced is framed primarily through injustice: “We are disadvantaged, others are blocking us.” While this often reflects real structural barriers, it can also become a fixed narrative that limits reflection, and reinforces external blame.
In practice, it can appear in different ways. It shows up when success is defined mainly as becoming large, institutionalised, and similar to international NGOs (INGOs) – with more staff, higher salaries, bigger offices, vehicles, and expansion into multiple settlements in the case of Refugee-led Organisations (RLOs).
It is also expressed through persistent calls for increased funding framed as the primary solution to organisational weakness. I have heard many local actors say things like: “We need more money to grow, to scale, to operate like larger international organisations.”
Don’t get me wrong: These aspirations are not inherently wrong. Organisations need resources, fair compensation, and the ability to grow. But the deeper question is: to what extent and towards what purpose?
When growth becomes the dominant measure of success, and funding the primary lens of progress, there is a risk that attention shifts away from the original purpose of localisation: ensuring that those most affected by crisis, such as forced displacement, are meaningfully included in the decisions that shape their lives.
In some cases, organisational expansion can create distance from communities and reproduce the same hierarchies that localisation seeks to dismantle, weakening the trust-based relationships through which inclusion is actually built.
At Cohere, we believe in growth and scaling, but not as an end in itself. We care about scaling because it can deepen inclusion, extend reach, and strengthen the ability of proximate actors to influence systems. However, scaling only matters when it remains anchored in trust-based relationships. Without that anchor, growth risks becoming institutional self-expansion rather than community empowerment.
Flexible funding, increasingly promoted in localisation, is essential because it allows local actors to stay close and responsive to communities in fluid contexts. This is often framed as strengthening “accountability”.
But “accountability” can imply that power remains elsewhere, and that organisations simply justify their decisions. This still allows distance. Our deeper principle is inclusion through shared agency. That is more likely to emerge from trust-based human relationships, built on proximity, listening, and joint decision-making, where power is shared rather than monitored.
Patterns that deserve reflection emerge when inclusion is not fully centred in practice:
- Organisational growth is prioritised over proximity to communities
- Funding becomes the primary measure of progress
- Communities are engaged after decisions are made rather than within them
- Scale is assumed to equal legitimacy
- External constraints overshadow reflection on practice and relationships
These patterns are not unique to local actors. Donors and INGOs must continue to confront their own legacy systems of gatekeeping, risk aversion, and exclusion. Intermediaries must also remain alert not to reproduce new hierarchies under the language of localisation.
Being small is not failure. In many cases, it reflects proximity, trust, and responsiveness. The challenge is not simply to become larger organisations, but to remain close to the most marginalised while engaging constructively with systems that control resources.
The localisation agenda is now entering a more mature phase. The question is no longer whether power should shift – it should – but how that power is exercised once it does. Victimhood may attract sympathy, but responsibility builds legitimacy.
For localisation to succeed, the focus may need to move beyond “accountability” alone, towards relationships that enable genuine inclusion. Only then will power transfer become not just a redistribution of resources, but a transformation in how power is understood and used.
These reflections are shaped by many humble but insightful conversations – both online and in person – with grassroots leaders in refugee settings such as Rwamwanja, Kyangwali, Nakivale, Kyaka (Uganda), Tongogara (Zimbabwe), and parts of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where I am actively engaging grassroot leaders in my work at Cohere.
They are shared as potential learnings for both local and non-local actors on how we can collectively shape the future of localisation.
