What we are reading

The theme of this edition of Humanitarian Exchange is localisation and local humanitarian action. Five years ago this week, donors, United Nations (UN) agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) committed within the Grand Bargain to increase multi-year investments in the institutional capacities of local and national responders, and to provide at least 25% of humanitarian funding to them as directly as possible. Since then, there is increasing consensus at policy and normative level, underscored by the Covid-19 pandemic, that local leadership should be supported. Localisation has gone from a fringe conversation among policy-makers and aid agencies in 2016 to a formal priority under the Grand Bargain. Wider global movements on anti-racism and decolonisation have also brought new momentum to critical reflections on where power, knowledge and capacity reside in the humanitarian system. Yet progress has been slow and major gaps remain between the rhetoric around humanitarian partnerships, funding and coordination and practices on the ground.

If the world is going to stop deliberate or unintentional misinformation and its insidious effects, we need to radically expand and accelerate our counterattacks, particularly human-centered solutions focused on improving people’s media and information literacy.

In April 2021, more than 1000 delegates from across 80 countries came together at the Humanitarian Leadership Conference to determine where change is needed in the aid sector and what a reshaping of the humanitarian ecosystem might look like. Given their work in emergency contexts, the CEOs of three Teach For All network partners were invited to speak on a panel moderated by Dr. Randa Grob-Zakhary, the CEO of Insights for Education. Throughout the panel discussion, Larisa Hovannisian, CEO of Teach For Armenia; Salyne El Samarany, CEO of Teach For Lebanon; and Clarissa Delgado, CEO of Teach for the Philippines, challenged the efficacy of traditional humanitarian systems and explored how to move from rhetoric to action through systemic change.

In November 2020, Peace Direct, Adeso, the Alliance for Peacebuilding, and Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security held a three-day online consultation with 158 activists, decisionmakers, academics, journalists and practitioners across the globe. Participants and guest contributors exchanged insights and local experiences on the current power dynamics and imbalances that exist within the humanitarian, development and peacebuilding sectors. They discussed how structural racism manifests itself in their work, and how they envision a decolonised system that is truly inclusive and responds to their needs. The consultation received more than 350 detailed comments across nine discussion threads. This report presents the findings and recommendations from that consultation.

Africa is very rich in natural resources and has the youngest population of any continent. If we can make the most of this abundance, we can create shared prosperity on the continent. To do so will require leadership across all levels of our societies. What is leadership?

European School of Governance, position paper #25 by Louis Klein |
Community-based learning ecosystems lie at the very heart of our understanding of the world, of its being and of its transformation. Being immersed in community-based learning ecosystems is a shared experience for all of us. By trusting this as an invitation to a process of inquiry, learning, and understanding, we begin to live out our human potential and realise our humanity. We will witness how a humanising society grows from metamorphic niches in learning communities. And it will change our understanding of learning and understanding, of development and transformation, and the roles of those who want to change the world.

This year one in every 33 people across the world will need humanitarian assistance. That is a rise of 40% from last year, according to the UN. More than half of the countries requiring aid to help deal with the coronavirus pandemic are already in protracted crises, coping with conflict or natural disasters. Even before Covid-19 threw decades of progress on extreme poverty, healthcare and education into… Read More »How Covid could be the ‘long overdue’ shake-up needed by the aid sector

It is high time for international development actors to shift their approach from defining problems and identifying interventions towards developing the agency and leadership of people in developing contexts. Such a change enables affected communities to define their own problems, identify solutions and continuously improve over time.

Most people assume that inequality between the global South and the global North (the United States, Western Europe, Japan, Canada and Australia) has been declining over the past few decades. After all, colonialism is behind us, and surely poorer countries are gradually “catching up” to richer ones. But, oddly enough, exactly the opposite has happened. The per capita income gap between the South and the… Read More »Apartheid in the World Bank and the IMF