Localization: Views from Haiti
Date of Publication
1-1-2023 12:00 AM
Security Theme
Political Stability
Keywords
Localization, insecurity, urban violence, humanitarian system governance, political stability
Description
In 2021, the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) commissioned the Feinstein International Center, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University to undertake a series of “landscape papers” to explore certain key issues in the humanitarian research space. One of the issues identified as a priority by BHA was the “localization of humanitarian assistance.” Localization is a loosely defined agenda meant to correct for historic and systematic exclusion and marginalization of actors from crisis-affected countries, often referred to as “local actors,” in the structures of international humanitarian response. The agenda was somewhat formalized through the Grand Bargain commitments that came out of the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit. These emphasized increasing funding to local humanitarian actors, more-equitable partnerships between local and international actors, more-integrated coordination efforts, and increased capacity building for local actors. However, many issues related to the localization of humanitarian assistance, including who is a local humanitarian actor and what reforms are seen as necessary to achieve localization, are inherently context specific. Therefore, in shaping the broader landscape study, the study team decided to include four case studies that would deliver “deep dives” into four countries to provide context-specific insights into key aspects of the localization discourse. Each study worked with researchers who were from or deeply connected to the countries being studied and engaged with a broad range of stakeholders in those countries. The case study countries were Uganda, South Sudan, Haiti, and Honduras.
Localization: Views from Haiti
In 2021, the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) commissioned the Feinstein International Center, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University to undertake a series of “landscape papers” to explore certain key issues in the humanitarian research space. One of the issues identified as a priority by BHA was the “localization of humanitarian assistance.” Localization is a loosely defined agenda meant to correct for historic and systematic exclusion and marginalization of actors from crisis-affected countries, often referred to as “local actors,” in the structures of international humanitarian response. The agenda was somewhat formalized through the Grand Bargain commitments that came out of the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit. These emphasized increasing funding to local humanitarian actors, more-equitable partnerships between local and international actors, more-integrated coordination efforts, and increased capacity building for local actors. However, many issues related to the localization of humanitarian assistance, including who is a local humanitarian actor and what reforms are seen as necessary to achieve localization, are inherently context specific. Therefore, in shaping the broader landscape study, the study team decided to include four case studies that would deliver “deep dives” into four countries to provide context-specific insights into key aspects of the localization discourse. Each study worked with researchers who were from or deeply connected to the countries being studied and engaged with a broad range of stakeholders in those countries. The case study countries were Uganda, South Sudan, Haiti, and Honduras.
