This edition of the Humanitarian Exchange, ‘Women-led organisations in humanitarian response’ is the first to be co-edited by an Editorial Committee of women-led organisations (WLOs). Focusing on the work of WLOs in humanitarian response, this issue was developed by a six-person editorial team: Claudine Tsongo, Erika Veloza Martinez, Joe Read, Dr Renu Adhikari, Wesal Abdullah and Zarqa Yaftali, supported by the HPN interim coordinator, Kerrie Holloway, and Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) Senior Research Fellow, Megan Daigle.

Historically, women have played pivotal roles in community resilience and recovery during times of crisis. Yet, their leadership has often been overlooked or undervalued in formal humanitarian structures. With recent policy commitments to increase engagement with women-led organisations in their efforts to address humanitarian crises and promote sustainable development, many donors have pledged to prioritise funding for women-led organisations, advancing women’s leadership and supporting women’s participation in peacebuilding and conflict-resolution efforts. In particular, much attention has been paid to ‘building’ the organisational capacity of women-led organisations to effectively respond to humanitarian crises, through technical assistance, training and mentorship programmes. Relatively little focus has been given to capacity exchange between WLOs and international actors, and there is a sobering lack of evidence regarding the impact of internationally led and designed initiatives. Much of the resources invested by donors in the name of WLOs goes to overhead costs of international humanitarian agencies picked by donors, instead of WLOs, to work with them.