In 2016, leaders at the World Humanitarian Summit committed to make humanitarian action as “local as possible, as international as necessary.” This policy commitment, known as localization, aspires to radically transform conventional models of humanitarian and development assistance where donors and international actors hold a great deal of power and influence in shaping humanitarian and development programming. Localization centers communities and seeks to shift decision-making power and resources to the local actors who implement, provide and are affected by humanitarian and development assistance. Localization is essential to providing timely and relevant assistance, working more effectively across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, and building resilient communities. When localization is gender-sensitive, it has the potential to upend discriminatory gender norms and transform societal structures and power relations that perpetuate inequalities and vulnerabilities.

The United States, the largest humanitarian donor by volume, the United Nations, and major nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have made significant commitments to changing their practices and processes to enable localization. While localization is fundamentally a bottom-up approach to rethinking humanitarian action, the top-down reforms of major international actors have the potential to transform the political economy, practices, and architecture of international humanitarian and development assistance.

Our roundtable guests sit in the rooms where these decisions are made and bring diverse perspectives from their experiences working for government agencies, NGOs and the private sector to our discussions of localization. Drawing on their extensive careers in global health, development, humanitarian assistance, and women’s and children’s rights, this high-level roundtable considers the promises, progress and setbacks to localization.

Moderator

Panelists