Paper details
| Paper authors | Danielle Demers |
| In panel on | Ethical Exits and Future Trajectories: Reimagining Closure, Localisation and Humanitarian Practice |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
Many protracted humanitarian crises have seen a spread in the establishment of not only local NGOs, but also local private sector companies that provide technical and contextual expertise via services like third party monitoring, research, and capacity building. The prevalence of these companies, which predominantly act as sub-contractors to INGOs, UN agencies and private stabilization actors, is typically framed as an indicator of positive progress towards local capacity building, local ownership of programming, and institutional accountability to affected populations.
This paper investigates the core practices and assumptions that undergird the relationships between international humanitarian actors and local providers of knowledge-based services. Using the Syria humanitarian response as a case study, its findings are drawn from interviews with staff from Syrian service providers and international contracting organizations, as well as from analyses of INGO contracting policies and protocols. Preliminary findings suggest that in the Syria response, rather than contributing to localization objectives, international organizations have played a key role in fragilizing the nascent knowledge production sector. This fragilization has a range of implications for the longer-term project of localizing the Syria response, as it creates structures of inequality that persist beyond the timeframe of contracts themselves.
