Localisation was supposed to fix humanitarian aid. It has not.
In 2014, and then again since the full-scale invasion in 2022, international donors arrived in Ukraine.
The amount of funding entering the country in 2022 increased from $918 million to $16.1 billion (including $1.8 billion humanitarian aid) and in part, these donors responded to the thousands of local individuals and newly established civil society organisations who mobilised to deliver relief.
Yet, In the years since, the work of these international players has been criticised for operating on principles of inequality, and many organisations have been deeply frustrated by the terms they set.
In other words, Ukraine, following in the footsteps of other ‘developing’ countries, has been subjected to a form of white saviourism, and we are gradually discovering colonial features in the structure and approaches of many donors and intermediary organisations.
In response to this critique, international donors have begun to take action. They have started to promote the concept of ‘localisation’ or ‘locally led humanitarian response’. The problem is that each donor interprets this concept in their own way.
Some donors declare they are transferring power and resources to local actors, involving them in programme design and decision-making. Others sign localisation commitments from which to develop separate action plans such as the Grand Bargain (2016) or Pledge for Change (2022). Yet to find out exactly how a donor has committed to better collaboration, a local organisation must first find and trawl through these agreements —and rarely are they written or communicated in Ukrainian.
This also requires local organisations to adapt to the different approaches of each partner. And even when they are able to so, navigating the terminology and complexity of processes remains arduous in a live military setting. Meanwhile, bureaucracy, specialist consultants, and coordination bodies multiply, despite very few real changes on the ground.
In this context, at best, localisation sees donors initiate research with the involvement of local organisations, and humanitarian aid and development programmes are based on their input. But how is this research itself conducted?
All too often, donors rely on a research method that reproduces exclusion: local voices are filtered through researchers’ interpretations and this distorts original meaning. Typically, researchers do not verify with local organisations whether they have correctly understood ideas or core meanings, and do not take the trouble to genuinely absorb the knowledge of the current community. This leads to a loss of local agency and expertise under the guise of a ‘localisation’ process.
What’s more, local organisations rarely receive feedback on how their information was used and have no opportunity to clarify how a particular statement led to the development of particular programme elements. At worst, this leads to outcomes that may even directly harm a partner community.
At the same time, concrete examples of problematic collaborations with donors or details of difficult negotiations are almost impossible to find as unequal, colonial relationships are also the most likely to hide uncomfortable cases. Agreements often obligate organisations not to disclose any information about their partnership and donors intentionally, or not, often conclude problems that arise are caused by grantee incompetence.
Ida Hordiichuk, a feminist activist of grassroots street feeding initiative ‘Solidarity Kitchen’ in Odesa offers a rare frontline critique of how this humanitarian system is negatively affecting relationships in society and people’s behaviour:
‘People often showed us documents before receiving a portion of food, even though this was completely unnecessary. We reminded them each time that they have a right to food, regardless of whether they have documents or not. Unfortunately, this practice of demanding identification is common among some volunteer organisations that feed people. These rules and requirements, it seems to me, make initiatives more ‘charitable’ rather than grounded in values of justice. And it forces marginalised people to view the aid they receive not as care and mutual aid, but as the result of the capricious mercy of those who have access to resources’.
In addition, it is especially difficult in the humanitarian system to truly hear and understand a landscape when you are not yourself within it. The result is that the voices of those most affected by post-colonial states are often those who will never receive any aid from them. These individuals have neither the time nor the motivation to speak out, or to promote themselves or their organisations to researchers and international donors.
In sum, within philanthropy and the sector more broadly, we must build in opportunities for deeper criticism of systems of power and oppression.
Localisation, as an idea, holds genuine promise. The steps outlined above are the practical conditions through which that promise becomes meaningful—not as gestures toward change, but as the substance of it.
Yosh is an independent consultant working on philanthropy, localisation, and organisational systems in Ukraine.
