Going Local without Localization: Humanitarian Responses to the War in Syria

• In Event: Managing Migrants and Refugees in Times of Crisis

Abstract

The localization agenda of aid agencies has been of growing import in recent years. At the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit, some of the world’s largest humanitarian donors and UN agencies committed to its advancement. The stated intent of the agenda is for intergovernmental and international actors to facilitate local and national leadership during responses to crises. Direct funding to local actors and more inclusive partnerships are often promoted as the means to make this happen. Yet little academic research exists on whether, how, and to what effect localization has been adopted. This paper asks: Are international organizations going local, as per their stated intent? How do they go local in practice? And what are the effects of these intentions and practices on local organizations? To answer these questions, we examine the humanitarian response to the Syrian crisis where the reliance of international organizations on cross-border operations positioned local organizations—especially those in refuge in Turkey—as primary responders and made their leadership during response likely. Findings are drawn from extensive fieldwork conducted by both authors among international and Syrian aid workers in Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan and complemented by review of organizational data and reports. Our analysis suggests that while the conditions of the case should have been conducive to localization, international actors held tight to their own authority. They did delegate relief delivery to Syrian organizations and enabled their growth in rebel-held areas and in refugee host states, but they did not devolve responsibility to Syrian organizations. International actors chose management and control of local and national organizations over localization, except where external constraints made this impossible. We suggest that, in this case, locally led responses were not the products of strategic choice or international actor intention spurred on by commitments to the localization agenda. They followed from unavoidable constraints on international actor access and security. Our findings build on existing scholarship on new humanitarianism and the international refugee regime. They have implications for how we understand and measure increasing local NGO and civil society actor involvement in conflict and post-conflict response, as well as on whether we can interpret this growth as products of a localization agenda. Recent scholarship also suggests that increased reliance on local Syrian actors by international actors left local groups particularly vulnerable to government reprisals and violence. Likewise, numerous refugee-led organizations in neighboring countries are at the whims of mercurial political environments. The extent to which the devolution of risk was or was not coupled with devolved authority is particularly relevant in light of these stakes.

Authors

• Rana B. Khoury, Princeton University

• Emily K.M. Scott, University of Birmingham