CODE-NGO, together with Save Somali Women and Children and Support to Life-Turkey, were invited as panelists at a meeting between members of the Good Humanitarian Donorship (GHD) Initiative and a diverse range of NGOs to discuss donor practices in localization and the Grand Bargain. The International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA) and the Australian mission in Geneva hosted this meeting last 22 March 2018 in Geneva.

The Grand Bargain refers to a package of reforms to humanitarian funding that was launched at the 2015 World Humanitarian Summit. Donors and aid agencies made 51 commitments to make emergency response aid more efficient and effective.

The panelists provided national NGO perspectives on donor practices that either help or constrain local NGOs’ humanitarian-development-peace work. Following the panelists’ perspectives, there was a frank and lively discussion between NGOs and donors that cover nearly all the Grand Bargain workstreams – particularly on supporting national and local actors, the workstreams tied to donor conditions (transparency, multi-year funding, reducing earmarking, reducing duplication/management costs, reporting), and the humanitarian-development nexus.

Among the gaps identified were related to the implementation of the Grand Bargain (moving from rhetoric to reality), accountability (upwards and downwards), access (shrinking humanitarian space), and risk management (“Donors are risking their funds, humanitarian actors are risking their lives.”) NGOs and donors agreed on the importance of replicating this type of donor-partner discussion at the country level. It was further proposed that an event could be held in 6 months to demonstrate how the Grand Bargain is being implemented in full in one chosen country (as a package). The Australian Mission also expressed interest in hosting a follow up dialogue aligned to the 2019 ICVA Annual Conference. (Reference: ICVA Bulletin Highlights from March 2018).

In the case of the Philippine NGO experience, CODE-NGO shared that the following were among the practices that worked in the development sectors that may be applicable for the humanitarian sector as well: debt for development swap; supporting resilience and disaster preparedness work to reduce humanitarian need and embassies pooling their funds to support actions of community-based groups. Among those that don’t work include a highly competitive call for proposal system and rigorous compliance provisions that do not discriminate between large and small NGOs; grants that are not directly accessible to local NGOs but only through INGOs which, in some cases, directly operate at the local level and compete with local NGOs.

Roselle Rasay is the Executive Director of CODE-NGO.