Six and a half years ago, 30 international
governments and organizations gathered in Istanbul with an ambitious goal to
revolutionize the humanitarian and development industries. Their negotiations
yielded the Grand Bargain, an agreement among the
largest international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) to allocate 25
percent of their humanitarian funding to small NGOs around the world.
Nonprofits like CARE, Mercy Corps, and the Norwegian Refugee Council all joined, committing to bankroll local NGO budgets by reducing
their own. And local NGOs, for their part, promised to use their knowledge and
networks to improve humanitarian response.
اضافة اعلان
Nowhere was the deal more hotly anticipated than
Jordan, where the mass inflow of Syrians fleeing the war in their own country
compounded existing problems of workforce participation and water scarcity.
Jordan has consistently received over $500 million in
humanitarian aid since 2013; however, the majority of national and local organizations report that scant funding has reached them.
At its inception, the Grand Bargain promised a new
dawn in foreign aid to Jordan. Six and a half years later, however, that
promise has proven empty for small nonprofits that continue running on
shoestring budgets. According to Maysa al-Hajahjah, an employee at the Jordan
Hashemite Fund for Human Development (JOHUD), a Jordanian nonprofit devoted to
providing national development assistance, local NGOs were already
cash-strapped in the context of COVID-19.
The pandemic forced scores of small nonprofits to shutter their
doors during Jordan’s near-total lockdown, while
others burned through cash to redirect their budgets towards emergency aid
programs. Furthermore, larger INGOs disbanded in-person activities and
programming unrelated to the health sector. This disproportionately impacted
local organizations that typically receive funding on a project-by-project
basis. With their funding and programming halted, local organizations
collapsed.
The Grand Bargain promised to alleviate this — then
its signatories reneged on the promises, leaving local organizations in even
greater peril. JOHUD felt the brunt of this snub acutely. “It was as if someone
was invited to a big party,” Hajahjah said. “Then, they got there and
discovered they had to pay for everything by themselves. That’s exactly what’s
happening.”
Consequently, the Grand Bargain has produced little
tangible good for Jordanian aid. There is no detailed reporting on the
percentage of funding that supports local and national organizations; however,
only five national organizations received funding in 2019, according to
the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(OCHA).
Worse, for people living amid humanitarian crises,
the aid system remains opaque, unaccountable, and misaligned with their needs.
And while INGOs tend to pay lip service to localization — the idea of putting
local organizations in charge of their own development and humanitarian
response — these same organizations and the people they serve are failing to
see the results.
“It was as if someone was invited to a big party,” Hajahjah said. “Then, they got there and discovered they had to pay for everything by themselves. That’s exactly what’s happening.”
Through local eyes: CBOs and small NGOsIn Jordan, local organizations encompass several
legally separate groups, the most prominent of which are community-based
organizations (CBOs). Royal NGOs, government NGOs, and civil society
organizations also constitute local efforts. In contrast to INGOs, local
organizations concentrate their efforts on the regional, municipal, and
communal levels. They frequently rely on INGOs or national governments for
financing.
When INGOs enter local communities, they never
operate in a vacuum. CBOs can often accomplish basic goals like providing
shared public spaces or addressing short-to-medium term needs on a case-by-case
basis. Even when communities are disrupted or displaced by war or violence,
local organizations can often marshal resources to rapidly assist individuals, taking
advantage of their programmatic flexibility to handle multiple cases
simultaneously.
This potential to use local organizations led to
the decades-long push in the INGO sector that culminated in the Grand Bargain.
Although the sector began talking about localization decades ago, progress has
been sluggish. In many cases, local organizations are prevented from taking the
reins of development and humanitarian work due to the complex bureaucratic
procedures in their countries.
In Jordan, for example, INGO attention to the
crisis brought a glut of unregulated cash to the national economy, according to
Dr Walid al-Khatib, director of public opinion polls and surveys at the
University of Jordan’s Center for Strategic Studies. Concerns over accounting
for these funds motivated the government to pass laws encouraging tighter
scrutiny of money flows.
Consequently, Khatib said, the Ministries of
Planning and Labor determine both the economic sector and the ability to
solicit international donations for specific local organizations. This stymies
their growth. INGOs, by contrast, have vast resources at their disposal to navigate
bureaucratic and legal processes, not to mention developing and implementing
projects.
The upshot is a tension at the local level between
service provision and expanding impact. Although local organizations are more
capable of providing services like distributing food and protecting survivors
of violence, they rarely have robust legal, accounting, and marketing
departments. In Jordan and abroad, this lack of administrative capacity makes
collaborating with wealthy international donors difficult. Language barriers
complicate matters further.
Localization can only truly occur when the development industry makes active efforts to honor its pledges in the Grand Bargain.
COVID-19, INGO boom, and local bustThe relationships between INGOs, local
organizations, and the Grand Bargain changed drastically during the COVID-19
pandemic. Prior to 2020, INGOs made modest progress toward localization through
programs like building shelters and
offering vocational trainings. But during COVID-19, many governments around the
world panicked, issuing regulations on mobility. The resulting lockdowns forced
many local organizations to halt their planned programming and forgo their
funding.
Jordan is a case in point: the state’s defense orders restricted
movement for all but essential workers — a category that often excluded local
NGO workers. Hamstrung and consigned to their homes, local NGOs were often
forced to watch as their governments allowed INGOs to distribute goods, support
the health sector, and secure coveted grant funding from the public and private
sector.
Though local organizations contributed to the
COVID-19 response within their communities, from the Collateral Repair Project
to the Jordan River Foundation, the lack of coordination between CBOs,
independent local organizations, and their governments represents a missed
opportunity. With intimate knowledge of their own communities, these
organizations had the potential to improve the emergency response.
The future of localizationAs the pandemic recedes from public consciousness,
the humanitarian and development industry is refocusing on localization. USAID Administrator Samantha Power has announced a push towards
localization, arguing that local development “supports local
institutions in the most effective manner and nurtures sustainability [and]
prioritizes the perspectives and preferences of those we hope to serve.”
USAID’s initiative does not yet include the Middle East. However, localization
can only truly occur when the development industry makes active efforts to
honor its pledges in the Grand Bargain.
Most importantly, local organizations are calling
for an end to the model of project-by-project funding, which makes it
impossible for them to make sustainable business plans or long-term hires. In contrast
to this practice, the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) in Jordan is pursuing a
unique model of localization with Aydoun, a local nonprofit outside of the
country’s second-largest city, Irbid. DRC provides Aydoun with administrative
support and financing for several of their hires. Through the partnership,
Aydoun is building up its own administrative capacities while expanding its
services to include mental health counseling. This model supports local
organizations with capacity building where it is needed, while getting out of
their way on service delivery.
“When we receive general funding, it allows us to
implement projects that we know are suitable for our community,” said
Nebal Khasawna, Aydoun’s president. “We need funding for a longer period of time
to actually make an impact.”
“When we receive general funding, it allows us to implement projects that we know are suitable for our community... We need funding for a longer period of time to actually make an impact.”
Last July, the Interagency Standing Committee — the
organization responsible for the Grand Bargain — unveiled a plan for Grand Bargain 2.0, which acknowledged that the original
Grand Bargain’s potential “has not been realized.” Among its antidotes is an
explicit focus on efficiency and effectiveness for affected populations. Further,
the Grand Bargain 2.0 included some structural changes in the
committee to improve signatory collaboration.
It is too early to tellwhether the new arrangement
indicates fresh political will for localization or merely a repackaging of
hollow aspirations. Yet as communities in Jordan and beyond continue grappling
with humanitarian crises, local organizations cautiously hope that the renewed
effort will deliver more than empty promises.
“The best way for local organizations and
international organizations to collaborate is through communication,” said
Khasawna from her office on the outskirts of Irbid. “We know the needs of our
community better than anyone else.”
Gabriel Davis is a 2022-23 Fulbright researcher in
Jordan and a Non-Resident Fellow at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and
Policy. He focuses on refugees and NGO issues in the Levant.
Zoe H. Robbin is a
2022-23 Fulbright research fellow in Jordan focused on climate change,
migration, and human rights. She is a Senior Fellow with Humanity in Action and
a member of Foreign Policy for America (FP4A)’s NextGen working group on the
Middle East.
The Middle East Institute (MEI) is an independent,
non-partisan, non-for-profit, educational organization. It does not engage in
advocacy and its scholars’ opinions are their own. MEI welcomes financial
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