CAFOD: 'More humanitarian aid must go to local partners'

CAFOD, the Catholic overseas aid agency in England and Wales, will be at the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul next week [23 and 24 May]. Governments, UN agencies, and nearly all the big international aid bodies will be represented, but CAFOD wants to speak up for the unsung NGOs in the countries where most humanitarian aid money is spent.

"In any natural disaster or emergency, it is these local partners who are first on the scene," said Anne Street, CAFOD's Head of Humanitarian Policy. "Their members understand the local culture better than anyone else, and they will carry on when the foreign experts and the television cameras have departed."

"The recent Ebola crisis in West Africa is an excellent example of the effectiveness of working through local NGOs. If Ebola has largely been contained, though not completely eradicated, much of the credit is due to the timely action of local workers and volunteers. Yet the amount of funding currently channelled directly to local partners by international humanitarian bodies is astonishingly small: just 0.2 per cent," she said.

CAFOD supports Charter4Change, which calls for the proportion of aid money going to local bodies to be increased dramatically. The target is 20 per cent by 2018.

Kenyan NGO Adeso has endorsed the Charter4Change. Adeso Director, Degan Ali, said: "Local NGOs are taking the risks, are the first responders, are the innovators. But we are persistently sidelined - in Nepal, in Philippines and in a grotesque way in Haiti. Without money, without funding, we are so constricted. We are told persistently that the main issue is risk aversion, accountability, corruption. But you can't do risk management without funding."

International aid organisations can feel pressure to do everything themselves, so that they can gain publicity, do more and grow even bigger. CAFOD argues that they should put money and effort into training local partners, helping them to reorganise and develop their capacity to manage on their own.

"Once that is achieved, local NGOs must be allowed to work without having to answer constantly to a variety of foreign donors, all of whom have their own reporting standards and accounting requirements," Anne Street added. "Proposals to accomplish this will be put before the Istanbul summit."