solidarity and burden sharing. The Development Co-operation Report 2023: Debating the Aid System finds that debates are crystalising around the need for a fundamental rethinking of the international development system…...
Rethinking Accountability to Affected People
As the humanitarian sector searches for ways to bring about system change, shift the power and decolonise its practices, reflections and debates on how to ensure the needs of people…...
Rethinking the constraints to localization of foreign aid
It is not local organizations that lack the capacity to work with USAID. Instead, it is USAID that lacks the capacity in its operating systems and organizational culture to work…...
Why we all need to be systems thinkers
Looking at the news these days, with the wars, famines and aid cuts (and let’s not forget the unprecedented soul-searching taking place about the problems in our development sector), you…...
Why is “locally led development” missing the mark?
INGOs’ current interest in power and equity is welcome and long overdue. Barely a day goes by without a webinar or new report on shifting power, decolonising aid or transforming…...
The High Price of Lowballing Local Organizations
In the push to “localize” humanitarian aid, most funders are ignoring the obvious. What do you do when people who give you something you badly need but insult or injure…...
Transitioning to a locally led model
A locally led humanitarian system that is accountable to people at risk or affected by crisis is also one where communities have agency and voice over humanitarian interventions that respond…...
Financing Peacebuilding and the Triple Nexus: Organizational Structures and Incentives to Improve Coherence
policy recommendations as part of the Good Peacebuilding Financing initiative. While high-level events can be useful for galvanizing political commitment, the translation of those commitments into better financing for peacebuilding…...
How banks’ aversion to risk is hindering peacebuilding and humanitarian work
Bank accounts blocked. Financial transfers suspended so cash has to be carried in hand. Charities forced to change names to sound less “risky”. These are some of the ways some…...
“We have already spent everything we had in our own wallets”: How international aid is failing Ukrainian responders – and what to do about it
“We have already spent everything we had in our own wallets”: How international aid is failing Ukrainian responders – and what to do about it...