From the ruins of Beirut to the flooded regions of la Roya, from the villages attacked in the Central African Republic to the high-risk zones of the Sahel, everywhere, citizens, elected representatives, and loosely formed groups of individuals are taking action to help their neighbours and their territories. As was the case last year, in every crisis that has taken place in 2021, we have seen how valuable this local solidarity can be. Many reports have underlined how crucial local action has been in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic1, and how zero-order responders and locally-led responses are often more effective in crisis contexts2. And yet…
And yet, as ‘traditional’ humanitarian actors, we still have difficulty understanding this local solidarity which takes many different forms: there are informal mutual help networks and there are organisations who are familiar with humanitarian standards, there are activist groups and there are apolitical neighbourhood committees… It is not clear exactly what the boundaries of ‘local solidarity’ are, nor is it clear what the sector can do (or wants to do?) to support it. Five years after the commitments of the Grand Bargain, the meagre 4.7% of humanitarian funds directly allocated to local and national actors, well short of the objective of 25%, is there to remind us of the difficulty, if not the failure, of the sector to reform itself3. Perhaps a paradigm shift is necessary? Perhaps the sector needs to be integrated into the ecosystem of local actors rather than the other way around? Perhaps, in order to do this, we need to put an end to a stubborn collective attitude that places international actors at the centre of the response, alongside local organisations who need to be trained to adhere to our standards in order to be legitimate? What new operational approaches can be invented to support local initiatives, sometimes on the margins of the humanitarian ‘system’, without impairing them? How can we combine our classic mechanisms and these local forms of assistance?
These are some of the questions we would like to discuss with you at the 14th edition of the Autumn School on Humanitarian Aid.
We would like to invite you to come and share your thoughts on these issues, and to collectively establish the outlines of a new form of solidarity that gives each of the actors involved their rightful place. Over two days, speakers from different countries will provide an overview of the diverse nature of mutual assistance, and share concrete examples to inform discussions about how to build bridges between the traditional aid system and these recently developed forms of solidarity at its margins.
Organised with the support of French Development Agency, Fondation de France, Région Auvergne-Rhônes-Alpes and Monegasque Cooperation.
- Larissa Fast and Christine Bennett, « From the ground up: It’s about time for local humanitarian action », HPG Report ODI, May 2020.
- Qu’ils s’agissent de conflits, de catastrophes naturelles ou sanitaires, d’accidents technologiques, etc.
- Metcalfe-Hough, V., Fenton, W., Willitts-King, B. and Spencer, A. (2021) The Grand Bargain at five years: an independent review, HPG commissioned report. London : ODI.