NEAR stands in solidarity with 25 non-governmental organisations that have had their legal status revoked by the state of Nicaragua.

We support the statement by the Regional Network for Risk Management (CRGR) and 130 civil society organisations in Central America.

Read the full statement
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Local leadership in Northwest Syria fund and implement their own winter relief campaign.

Local responders loading relief items during the Give Them Warmth campaign.
Picture courtesy of ATAA

For refugees in Northwestern Syria, winter is always a struggle, living in tents in the freezing cold, facing floods and mud in worn and tattered tents.

 In January 2022 there was a particularly strong storm which saw the camps lashed by snow and rain.

 “Many IDPs had their tents destroyed or flooded, and were left in the mud, exposed to the freezing cold with their families and children,” explains Khaled Al-Essa, the founder and CEO of ATAA, a humanitarian organisation working in Syria and Turkey. ATAA means ‘giving’ in Arabic.

Many Syrian NGOs lacked funding to respond, and there was less preparedness than in previous years after donor budget cuts.

Given the urgency of the needs and the likely slow pace of international relief, 15 members of the Syrian NGO Alliance came together to mount a quick and effective response.

“We gathered under the umbrella of the Alliance and pooled our resources, agreed to one response plan, and coordinated with each other to ensure a better response to the people in need,” explains Hisham Dirani, CEO of Violet, a Syrian NGO.

“This was a purely local-led initiative with no international support. We launched a fundraising campaign and were able to raise $15 million entirely from Palestinian organisations and the diaspora.”

This was a “zero support cost” campaign. Each NGO paid its own operational costs so that all funds raised could be entirely channeled directly to people in need.

“The response focused on replacing damaged tents and distributing basic non-food items, heating materials, clothes, and blankets, in addition to distributing food baskets, ready-to-eat meals, and bread,” explains Al-Essa.

 “200 convoys of heaters, food, and non-food items as an act of solidarity by Palestinians  who feel the pain and hardship that Syrians have suffered. This campaign was just one step and part of bigger initiatives to secure shelter for around 3500 families in Syria and replace their frayed tents.”

Dirani points out that local organisations had been raising the issue of adequate shelter in the camps for a decade, but donors had not responded this need.

“There were no intermediaries in this campaign, funds went direct from private donors to implementation. If we had waited for international donors, the response would have come at the end of winter. Instead, we were able to respond on time, effectively and appropriately.”

The question of cultural appropriateness of emergency response is a contentious issue, but one that local NGOs say is easily resolved if donors are committed to listening and learning from local leaders.

“The value of a localised response is that we know how to deliver aid in a way that is culturally appropriate, as people can be quite sensitive. The difference between local and responses from outside the community is like the difference between a speech given by a first language speaker and a speech by a non-native speaker, or like being from a place as opposed to being told about a place.”

  About ATAA for Humanitarian Relief Association

Ataa is a non-profit humanitarian association, licensed and registered in Turkey as a national organisation since 2013. It aims to be a pioneer in relief and development work among Syrian organisations and to provide outstanding social services based on its cultural perspective of civil society as well as humanitarian values,

The organisation provides humanitarian assistance in Syria and Turkey and seeks to develop Syrian society and strengthen its living conditions. Since 2013 ATAA has participated in saving and transforming the lives of over five million Syrians.

By responding to the Syrian crisis, rebuilding lives, and empowering Syrians, the organisation seeks to save lives before they are lost, increasing the Syrian community resilience says Khaled Al-Essa, founder of Ataa.

“From the onset of Syrian Crisis, I knew that funding flows would dry up if the crisis becomes chronic and protracted, while needs would continue to grow. To become self-sustaining we had to think differently and come up with innovative ideas to survive.”

“Ataa is has a unique self sustainability approach. In addition to traditional fundraising, it successfully runs income generating projects that covers its administration and staff costs. This allows us to ensure funds go directly to the community with less spent on administration costs,” Al-Essa adds. “From the beginning of the  crisis, we realised the importance of independence and worked to build a successful business model for the organisation.”

Headquartered in Istanbul, it implements its programs through four offices in Turkey and seven in Syria.

Humanitarian workers from ATAA distribute relief good in the Give Them Warmth campaign.

Picture courtesy of ATAA

About VIOLET

What is the role of youth in locally led humanitarian responses?

For Violet CEO, Hisham Dirani, the answer is simple: the youth should provide a leadership role and rise to the challenges faced by the community from medical care to water and sanitation.

Named after the shy, sweet-smelling flower, Violet represents “the colour of youth that will not fade.”

Since the start of the war in Syria, the influx of displaced people has been huge, with parts of Northwest Syria seeing a 400% increase in its population.

Formed in 2014 as a youth group of 50 volunteers, the organisation now has 2000 members. It has expanded to work on health, protection, education as well as ambulance services and rescue teams for those trapped by bombardments.

“The lack of progress on localization is a big concern for us,” says Dirani.

“The amount of money reaching local NGOs is very little, compared to the Grand Bargain commitments.” He adds that while there has been some progress on the pooled fund, it remains far below Grand Bargain targets and adds that money in the fund is being channeled to INGOs instead of Syrian organisations.

One of the biggest challenges faced by the organisations is the lack of risk-sharing with international NGOs and donor agencies. “We work under the threat of being killed in airstrikes or military operations, but they do not want to share that risk with us, they just want to transfer it.  This makes it difficult for us to exercise our duty of care to staff such as paying for medical treatment for the injured.” This is not a hypothetical argument – at least five Violet staff have been killed while performing humanitarian work.

 “We do our best to follow joint ops procedures, to follow humanitarian principles, but who will look after the humanitarian workers?”

While the organisation also faces other risks such a as possible non-renewal of the cross-border resolution, Dirani says being treated as sub-contractors is a recurring frustration when working with INGOs and UN agencies. “We are supposed to be partners. We share our safety and security plan, we report everything, we are in daily communication with them, but they want the risk to be ours alone.”

ATAA and VIOLET are both members of the NEAR network.

The Syrian NGO Alliance works in partnership with NEAR.

MYANMAR: the local responders’ view from the front line

Military vehicles drive into Rangoon during a coup d'état in Yangon, Myanmar on 1 March 2021. Photo by Maung Nyan

It has now been more than a year since the coup in Myanmar and formal access remains the biggest humanitarian challenge, particularly in conflict affected areas. 

While most international agencies paused their operations after the coup, local civil society groups have stepped up to do that work. 

“Right now, 95% of humanitarian operations in Myanmar are carried out by local actors,” explained a speaker at a recent NEAR webinar. A paper recently launched by the Myanmar Local Humanitarian Network, a coalition of civil society groups, was shared at an online “mixer” for NEAR members.  

The paper focused on localisation and the role of intermediaries and was prompted by impatience at the slow pace of change. 

“One of the reasons that we set up this network was to push the formal humanitarian system. 

We don’t sit and wait for the UN, we do it our own way first as this is proven to work, but we do still need help from the aid system”. 

The network was able to share not just the challenges they are facing in their political context, but also their position on localisation as a priority. 

“The day-to-day reality is that local groups are the ones on the front line in the most challenging situations, and we carry all that by ourselves. Right now, we are facing the ‘four cuts strategy’ which means they cut off the internet, phones, food assistance and medical supplies.  We work, of necessity, in informal structures and with local mechanisms and local knowledge, but this isn’t recognised by the humanitarian architecture and the system.” 

The feeling that contributions by local actors are not recognised runs deep. 

“Our capacities are not even recognised as capacities: we have been working with the UN and internationals NGOs for more than a decade but still they are talking about building our capacity. What about the capacities that we have that they don’t, such as language skills, knowledge of the context and long-established relationships?” 

Impatience with attempts to reform the aid system is also close to the surface. 

“Localisation is not new, we have been struggling with this issue for many years, even though our concerns only were formalised and named in 2016 at the Grand Bargain,” said one speaker. “To be honest, I feel a bit tired of the Grand Bargain discussion. It’s been more than 6 years but there are still such big gaps.” 

For local humanitarians on the frontline, engaging the aid system can feel both exhausting and counter-productive: 

“They will push you to join the cluster, to come to the meeting and to give information but while they are still doing that talking, local organisations have already started to respond.  We have our own informal ways of coordinating, which is not accepted by the cluster system. But for them if it’s not in their formal mechanism, they don’t recognise it. The formal system is too slow and heavy so we work with, for example faith-based groups which are very close to the community. We can deploy immediately and also we can use our instincts and be flexible, not bound by their goals.”  

Local responders in Myanmar also say that the power balance in the relationships between international organisations and CSOs are off-kilter, ranging from decision-making down to even the technocratic language used. “As local actors, the technical language used by the humanitarian system is very alienating. The whole aid architecture can be intimidating. We need to look at these unequal power relationships and make them more equitable.” 

However, there are signs that some donors, at least, are starting to talk honestly about asymmetric relationships in the humanitarian system. 

“We notice that some donors are slowly becoming aware of, understanding and recognising the work of local groups. When we talk about localisation we are very clear that funding must go directly to actors on the ground, particularly flexible funding. Decision-making authority must be moved closer to the ground where we are in the best place to make quick decisions.” 

But beyond the difficult present, the network is also looking to the future:  

“Localisation goes beyond the present: it is also about self-determination, about the future of the people, about their agency, their coping mechanisms and the need for rebuilding.” 

Raising a collective voice in Turkey

This year’s UNGA theme ‘The future we want, the United Nations we need: reaffirming our collective commitment to multilateralism – confronting COVID-19 through effective multilateral action’ is a timely reminder to the entire humanitarian community that we all must work better together in the Covid-19 response and in other disasters.

2020 has started off as yet another challenging year for the humanitarian community.  As civil society in Turkey we have been mobilising localised aid to affected communities and high-risk groups during the pandemic.  Before the pandemic, as local and national NGOs, we provided relief to those affected by the Elazig earthquake in South-eastern Turkey in January, followed by the surge of refugees and migrants to the Western coast of the country in March where we jointly covered the many needs of the displaced populations. We are first responders and have continued to work with partners, both public and private, to deliver urgent goods and services during these challenging times. For us to become more visible and scale up our efforts, we need to be better recognised and supported by the UN system and the greater humanitarian community.

As a handful of Turkish NGOs engaged in humanitarian work, we established an informal group made up of each organisation’s top executives.  With the spill over effect of the Syria crisis and increasing number of refugees in Turkey, we started running larger humanitarian operations aimed at supporting those that were fleeing the violence to find refuge on this side of the border.  Running into the same obstacles as local organisations and implementing partners of international humanitarian actors, we decided to meet informally to discuss some of these challenges and to find solutions.  Being well-acquainted with the global commitments on localisation, we felt strong enough to discuss among ourselves the practical implications of our partnerships, the status of humanitarian financing in Turkey, our capacity to manage our organisations and our operations, and the way we were managing the many risks involved.

With the help of these periodic informal meetings, we developed common positions on risk sharing, overhead policy, severance obligations, and how to cover our government liabilities through project funding.  By developing a common position and sharing this with partners and key humanitarian players, we benefitted from speaking with one, strong collective voice as Turkey based organisations.

An advocacy alert sent by NEAR in June made our group realise that we had much more to say and do on localisation, and that we needed to do this more systematically.  We felt that the many Syrian-led organisations registered in Turkey were also in a position to greatly contribute to making advances on localisation.  We made a call to networks of Syrian-led NGOs in Turkey to join our collective effort.  With those that were willing to join on short notice, we wrote to all the international NGOs, UN agencies, and donors based in the country calling for the Grand Bargain signatories to report Turkey-specific progress on the Grand Bargain commitments. The communication helped initiate a dialogue with each of these humanitarian groups in Turkey. We received responses from some critical partners and have used this opportunity to continue this important conversation.

We are currently 11 Turkish and 3 Syrian-led NGOs.  We are hopeful that we will expand the group and pull in many other Turkey-based NGOs. We know that there is a lot of interest in localisation and in conducting collective advocacy amongst local and national NGOs, both Turkish and refugee-led.  We are now in contact with the Refugee Council of Turkey, which is a network of many refugee-led NGOs and we hope to carry out joint advocacy work in order to strengthen our positions as local NGOs and to push forward the agenda of localisation in Turkey.

NEAR has been very encouraging and has supported us in coming this far. From now on, as Turkey-based NGOs, we are hoping to come together under the NEAR brand so that we can raise a stronger voice and take bolder steps in our collective advocacy work. We know that not only will this make the process for engagement easier in relation to those we are trying to influence, it will also enable us to effectively address issues that we cannot do as individual organisations.

Having a common position and acting collectively can lead to greater impact in influencing policy.  With only a year left of the Grand Bargain, it is important that we make progress not only in the talk on localisation but also in the practice.  With NEAR’s support on country-based advocacy, we are confident that we will be able to influence the UN system in a way that can strengthen existing local capacities in each country for a more effective response and a more resilient recovery. 

We are working towards this in Turkey and are creating our own spaces for dialogue with the multilateral agencies as well as other humanitarian actors. Embracing multilateralism means increasing transparency and openness among humanitarian actors. It also means increasing the effectiveness of aid through greater engagement of local organisations, both in delivery and coordination of aid. Finally, multilateralism is not about polishing a single local organisation, it is about investing in empowering local organisations as a collective. Instead of making rivals out of civil society organisations, the UN needs to create an environment where civil society has strong leaders and thrives by working collectively for the benefit of disaster-affected populations. Only then will there be trust, mutual respect, and better value for humanitarian money.

As Support to Life, we’ve been working since 2005 to safeguard the rights of disaster-affected populations and support living conditions on par with human dignity.  When it comes to responding to natural disasters or conflict, we prioritise assisting the most vulnerable – those who suffer the impacts the most.  Support to Life currently focuses on emergency aid, refugee support, child protection and strengthening civil society.  For more information, please visit supporttolife.org.

Mobilising women's leadership and solutions in response to Covid-19 and climate crises

COVID-19 has placed an unprecedented burden on the health, social and economic systems of Pacific Island Countries, the region is also facing the devastating impact of the climate crisis. Shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Tropical Cyclone Harold further challenged the joint capacity of the Pacific region to respond to the situation. In addition to lockdown and disruption of supply chains, the cyclone brought heavy rains damaging food gardens, homes and infrastructure.

An initial rapid women’s human security assessment across the Shifting the Power (STP) Coalition in March clearly identified the importance of the peace-development-humanitarian nexus approach to COVID-19 and the cyclone. Priorities across the coalition were economic, health and food security, as well as community and personal security. As the Coalition found with the Samoa measles epidemic in 2019 and now with COVID-19, gender inequalities influence access to healthcare, resources, and information, all of which play a role in prevention, early intervention, and treatment. Through the STP Coalition, women leaders were able to adapt their work to support prevention, awareness-raising, and preparedness in the context of COVID-19. As members of the Pacific Humanitarian Protection Cluster, the Coalition ensured that response and recovery measures used gender, age, disability and location disaggregated data in order to protect the most vulnerable and support long-term solutions.

The initiatives coordinated by the STP Coalition are vital in a region where women’s representation in leadership and decision-making roles are extremely low, and where the impacts of climate change are the most severe in the world - Pacific countries make up four of the five countries most at risk of disaster. Despite increased attention to and investment in women’s leadership in decision-making across the region, women are still notably absent from visible leadership roles within mechanisms focused on responding to climate change and resulting disasters. This is reflective of the broader trend across the Pacific region of women’s low levels of representation in decision making and cultural norms that exclude women from public life.

Due to this limited access, women are often invisible in policymaking. Women’s organisations are not considered humanitarian actors, so their expertise is not valued or resourced in times of crisis, and they are frequently excluded or marginalised in humanitarian coordination mechanisms. The situation facing diverse women, including young women and women living with disabilities, makes it harder for them to access decision-making processes. Without their adequate representation in discussions around climate change and disasters, the default approach is techno-centric and ignores the realities for women, which include the burden of unpaid work, the increased prevalence of gender-based violence and food insecurity and the institutionalised marginalisation of women’s voices and leadership. Diverse women’s needs are marginalised through a one-size fits all gender approach that presumes all women have the same experiences in disasters.

Agnes Titus of the Nazareth Centre for Rehabilitation has influenced the composition of the regional disaster management committee, “we spoke for the need to include women in the design table of this disaster management or disaster recovery…you could hear a pin drop because it was the first time for these men who normally go to these meetings to hear that. We stressed the fact that women’s needs are actually different from men’s needs and so we have to take these things into account when we are preparing for disaster and recovery.”

The challenges of 2020 do not come as a surprise. In 2015, STP Coalition members who are members of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) Pacific Network, worked with UN Women to integrate language on climate change in the Global Study on United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 and supported the innovative – at that time – language of Security Council Resolution 2242 on the impacts of climate change and the global nature of health pandemics on the trajectory of conflict. Now, as expressed in the consultation for the 2020 Peacebuilding Architecture Review on Gender, Climate and Peace in the Pacific, a key priority for women-first responders is to connect all parts of the Triple Nexus through a gender lens. This is evident through GPPAC Pacific and STP Coalition led initiatives including food security programmes, the use of innovative information and communication platforms and mainstream media, as well as the provision of emergency grants tackling the vulnerabilities of out of work women and girls.

The STP Coalition is calling on Pacific Leaders to ensure that the Pacific Humanitarian Pathway (PHP) on COVID-19 (a regional multilateral arrangement) tackles the drivers of gender inequalities in areas such as access to healthcare and economic recovery. They further recommend a multistakeholder process that ensures women’s rights organisations and Networks provide gender oversight to the PHP and national response and recovery measures; increased funding and capacity development to local and national women’s groups and dedicated funding for localised, women-led approaches to protection and livelihood and food security programmes.

The Shifting the Power Coalition was formed in the aftermath of Cyclone Pam (2015) in Vanuatu and Cyclone Winston (2016) in Fiji. It is the only regional alliance focused on strengthening the collective power, influence and leadership of Pacific women in responding to disasters and climate change.  It is designed to strengthen the collective power and influence of diverse women-led local organisations in the humanitarian space. ActionAid Australia, a women’s rights focused humanitarian organisation supports Coalition members to engage in the humanitarian system. Together the Coalition members are also committed to inter-generational learning and leadership development. Together the Coalition is working to build evidence and capabilities, influence policies and practice, and support the leadership of Pacific women in humanitarian decision making at all levels. Together, we are starting a humanitarian revolution.