Paper details

Paper authors	Femke Mulder
In panel on	After the 'revolution' - where next for participation and accountability in humanitarian action?
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

This paper explores the phenomenon of externally driven local aid. This form of aid is managed and co-designed by local aid workers, but instigated, monitored and funded by national or global actors, such as large NGOs or governments. The paper focuses on local humanitarian aid that is participatory and community based. It analyses the neoliberal and statist rationales external drivers have for supporting this approach; how these rationales are translated into project models; as well as local stakeholders’ efforts to co-design and implement it. The paper finds that external drivers’ rationales result in local aid workers being subjected to contradictory demands. These demands arise from the tension between the requirement to ‘empower communities through participation’ (by granting them autonomy) and the requirement to deliver a project on time, in an accountable manner, and in line with sectoral standards (by maintaining control). This paper uses a paradox perspective as a theoretical lens to explore how local aid workers navigate these conflicting demands. It finds that project imagery plays a central role in this process. This imagery is tailored to fit the contradictory project model and establish legitimacy for the role of local aid workers and that of the external drivers on whom they depend. The paper concludes that this imagery effectively supports local efforts to manage global partnerships and projects, at the cost of decentering local knowledge from local aid and validating (unhelpful) existing aid hierarchies. This paper is based on a qualitative case study of a community based, participatory, gender, drought and nutrition project (2016-2020) in Ethiopia.

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