Localisation without control of the money

For a decade, the humanitarian sector has promised to move power closer to the people responding first. The money tells a different story.

The Grand Bargain set a target for 25 per cent of humanitarian funding to reach local and national actors. ODI Global's latest analysis found that in 2024, just under 10 per cent reached them directly and indirectly. Direct funding was only 3.8 per cent.

That is not a technical shortfall. It is a decision about who is trusted to lead, employ staff, build institutions and decide what matters. Local organisations are often praised for their access, language, relationships and speed. Yet the contract, the money and the final authority frequently remain elsewhere.

A local partner can deliver the programme and still be excluded from designing it. It can carry the risk while an international intermediary controls the budget. It can be visible in the photographs and absent from the decisions. Calling that localisation does not make it so.

International organisations have legitimate roles. They can mobilise finance, negotiate access, support technical work and respond across borders. The question is not whether they should disappear. It is whether they know when to step back, share control and leave stronger institutions behind.

The most useful test is brutally simple: who can say no? Who can change the plan? Who owns the data? Who controls unrestricted money? Who is still standing when the external grant ends? If the answer is always the outside institution, power has not moved.

This matters because dependency can be built by programmes that describe themselves as empowering. A project may deliver outputs, meet donor targets and still leave the local organisation negotiating from the same weak position five years later.

The sector does not need another declaration of support for local leadership. It needs contracts, budgets and governance arrangements that prove it.

Publish what reaches local actors. Show how much is unrestricted. Give local organisations a real place in programme design and accountability. Fund the institution, not only the activity.

Localisation without control of the money is theatre. If your organisation has transferred meaningful power, show us how. If you have experienced the gap between the language and the reality, contribute your evidence.

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