Advancing local leadership in humanitarian action
Humanitarian report
Executive Summary
Building on our 2023 analysis, our new report takes stock of whether donors, UN agencies and international NGOs are truly delivering on their commitments on locally led humanitarian action. The findings show some progress, but also a sobering truth: decision-making power, risk-sharing and access to resources remain concentrated in international hands, with local organisations still treated more as implementers than leaders.
Recommendations
Progress on locally led humanitarian action has been made since 2023, but it remains uneven, fragile and far too slow. Local organisations continue to be treated primarily as implementers rather than leaders, with decision-making power, risk-sharing and access to resources still concentrated in international hands. No donor, UN agency or international NGO comes close to fully meeting its commitments, with the highest score reaching only 77 out of 100. Therefore, there is a substantial need for them to step up their work to facilitate a change in the global humanitarian system to be more just, efficient and effective.
Donors should prioritise multi-year and flexible funding that reaches local organisations as directly as possible, including through locally led pooled funds at the country level that are led by local actors and allocate at least 70% of funding to LNNGOs. Short-term, project-based grants leave local actors operationally constrained,
which is particularly damaging in crisis contexts, where continuity and adaptability are essential.
Donors should incentivise equitable partnerships by requiring intermediary organisations to pass on decision-making power, flexibility and a clear share of funding to their local partners and share risk equitably with their local partners.
Consortia models that rely primarily on subgranting should be avoided in favour of multi-year strategic partnerships that enable flexible, long-term support directly to local organisations. Where donors maintain partnership agreements with intermediary organisations, they should assess the percentage of funding reaching local partners and require intermediaries to demonstrate that flexibility and decision-making authority are passed downstream. In the current context of cuts to humanitarian assistance, donors should engage in honest conversations with intermediary partners to identify opportunities to maximise efficiencies without undermining local leadership. Across all approaches, community-based engagement and meaningful participation in power and decision-making processes must be intentionally built in.
Donors, UN agencies and INGOs should strengthen and rely on their local partners to drive governance
and strategic decision-making, rather than involving local actors only at the implementation stage.
While local and national actors are often “consulted,” they are seldom empowered to define priorities, shape system-wide agendas, or influence resource allocation. National reference groups should promote co-leadership models that empower local actors within Humanitarian Country Teams and Inter-Cluster Coordination Groups. While local NGOs are increasingly present in these structures, their roles are often nominal, lacking real influence over agendas or resource allocation. Embedding local leadership in coordination platforms would shift power dynamics, enhance legitimacy and improve the contextual relevance of humanitarian response. Elevating national reference groups as authoritative decision-making bodies, rather than advisory addons, ensures that representation is substantive and not symbolic and that power is genuinely redistributed.
Donors and international organisations should ensure fair and flexible sharing of indirect cost recovery and provide dedicated funding for organisational development and sustainability of local organisations.
ICR rates should not become a zero-sum exercise when shared across consortia; instead, allocations must reflect the real context and needs of each partner. Overheads should be genuinely flexible and not restricted to projectlinked expenses. Donors should provision for flexible organisational development budget lines in partner budgets, separate from ICR and entirely up to the partner to decide how to utilise beyond capacity strengthening. Donors should also require that ICR is shared downstream and not retained disproportionately by intermediaries and require reporting on this. A system based on minimum guaranteed ICR rates, with the flexibility to allocate higher amounts where justified, can provide both fairness and adaptability.
Risk should be equitably shared between donors, intermediaries, and local partners, rather than transferred downward.
Risk sharing should consist of a partnership approach to understanding risks faced by all partners on any given project or consortium, and provision of funding and technical support and accompaniment to local partners in managing and mitigating risks identified. Donors should explicitly and equitably share risk through co-designed risk management frameworks, pooled contingency or insurance mechanisms, adaptive contracts, and clear duty-of-care obligations that embed minimum standards for staff safety and wellbeing. To rebalance power and accountability, donors and intermediaries should strengthen local decision-making authority, institutionalise systemwide learning on risk and localisation, and apply regular equity audits to ensure partnerships are fair, transparent, and sustainable.
Donors, UN agencies and INGOs should establish feedback and accountability mechanisms and complement quantitative assessments with participatory, locally driven monitoring and feedback mechanisms that allow local partners organisations to assess partnership quality and power dynamics.
INGOs should redefine their roles to address power imbalances by shifting decision-making authority, visibility, and resources to local organisations and by limiting their own involvement to time-bound, demand-driven support when requested.
While mentoring, technical accompaniment, and convening can be valuable, these roles must be jointly defined with national actors and reinforce — not overshadow — local leadership. This requires actively transferring decision-making power, visibility, and resources to local organisations, embedding regular reflection on power dynamics, and ensuring changes are substantive rather than symbolic.
In a shrinking funding environment, priority should be given to strengthening the institutional resilience of local and national organisations through direct funding and leadership opportunities, while INGOs take on lighter, time-bound support roles when requested. Ethical recruitment practices are also essential to avoid draining local capacity and undermining sustainable humanitarian response systems.
