This article uses coloniality as an analytical framework to critique the concept of localisation. It argues that localisation is inadequate to respond to the asymmetrical power dynamic that it seeks…...
Rethinking Humanitarian Principles? Consider Community, Context, and Common Sense
In 2022, Ground Truth Solutions and UNICEF launched a project in Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that aimed to ensure the people affected by the overlapping crises…...
Going Local without Localization: Power and Humanitarian Response in the Syrian War
Highlights: • International humanitarians rely on local actors to deliver aid, but they do not localize by shifting authority over response to local actors. • A power framework proposes that…...
From Global Goal to Local Development Policy: How Partnerships as a Policy Idea Changes -Through Policy Translation
PurposeThis article explores how partnerships as a policy idea, embedded in United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 17, changes as it is translated into local development policies. It traces…...
Beyond box-ticking: how conflict sensitivity can shape a more equitable aid system
In the last decade, the international aid system has failed to translate its commitments to “conflict sensitivity” into action. Instead, this article suggests that conflict sensitivity risks becoming a box-ticking…...
International NGOs and the Long Humanitarian Century: Legacy, Legitimacy, and Leading into the Future
The rise of powerful international NGOs (INGOs) is widely recognized as a key development in the international humanitarian landscape over the last century, especially in the last thirty years. The…...
Localization is Self-Determination
This paper gives a personal political perspective on the policy dispute about localization in the humanitarian sector to argue that localization is a realization of the political right to self-determination.…...
Perpetual Peacebuilding: A New Paradigm to Move Beyond the Linearity of Liberal Peacebuilding
This article will introduce the ‘perpetual peacebuilding’ paradigm. Academics and policy-makers have accepted that the linearity of the liberal peace neither reflects, nor should it drive, the tumult of peacebuilding.…...
Making Good On Donors’ Desire to Do Development Differently.
Foreign aid donors are increasingly focused on changing the way their development agencies function. This discourse has focused on desired qualities, including greater knowledge of local contextual realities, appropriate adaptation…...