Opinion: As the aid ecosystem faces seismic changes, international groups must recognize that local systems of solidarity already exist — and their right to support these systems must be earned.

“For years, many of us — including at NEAR — worked within the language of localization, stretching it as far as it would go to push for deeper reform. It created openings. It allowed us to question funding, behavior, and power from within.

But listening closely to local leaders over time, it has become clear that this framing can no longer hold the ambition that local leadership now demands. Not because the ambition was wrong, but because the realities local leaders navigate every day have outgrown what localization, in its current widely practised form, was ever designed to contain.

That realization is echoed across insights shared by local and national organizations through NEAR’s recent research capturing global south civil society perspectives — a collective reflection on how aid functions in practice, and where authority continues to sit.”

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