Localisation Across the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus

Abstract

Whilst the relation between local and global levels has been a long-standing concern of humanitarian, development, and peace efforts, in recent years the term “localisation” has become a major issue in the humanitarian sector whilst peacebuilding scholarship has taken a “local turn.” This article analyses the concept of localisation across the three parts of the triple nexus—humanitarian, development, and peace. It traces the long-standing concern with the local in each of these domains, considering similarities and differences in their engagement with the local and counter-veiling trends towards universalisation, before proceeding to frame four challenges common to localisation across all forms of conflict response: defining the local, valuing local capacity, maintaining political will, and multi-scalar conflict response.

Higher education and sustainable development goal 16 in fragile and conflict-affected contexts

“…SDG16 has been viewed as an opportunity to further merge security and development agendas. Relevant here is the difference in understanding of 'peace' under SDG16, with many humanitarian and peacebuilding practitioners wary of the introduction of securitised approaches to development (Barakat and Milton 2020). As Julia Paulson rightly identifies, SDG16 targets and indicators align more closely with the concept of negative peace than positive peace.…”

“…Cutting across the higher education-SDGs relationship is tension between the SDGs as a global norm with universal applicability and the broad shift in understanding responses to conflict and fragility from the universal towards local alternatives. Calls to emphasise the local over the global come from various directions (Barakat and Milton 2020). Consequently, a global shift is underway from totalising logics towards relational theories, complex systems, and greater willingness to experiment, accept failure, and search for contextualised solutions in fragile and conflict-affected states (Chandler 2016;Coning 2016).…”

Building Africa’s Homegrown Humanitarian Systems: Restoration as an Alternative to Localization

“…Relatedly, there is fear that the withdrawal of international actors would worsen humanitarian needs. Donor policies that prohibit direct funding of homegrown actors are also problematic, just as those who consider localization as a zerosum game in which homegrown gains translate as losses to internationals, which makes the latter hesitant to devolve power down the rungs (Barakat andMilton 2020, 150, Roepstorff 2020). Another is the lack of a mechanism for assessing and holding organizations accountable to their localization commitments (Ncube 2020).…”

“…There is also a lack of clarity about who takes charge of localization. Though localization is approached as a joint project among the UN, INGOs, countries that give aid, and affected countries (Barakat and Milton 2020;El Taraboulsi et al, 2016), a clear leadership is still lacking. Significant progress, in some cases, have been made under state leadership (Baseisei et al, 2019;Robillard et al, 2020).…”

Localising Responses to Conflict and Crisis in Arab–Muslim Contexts

“…These issues are explored in the article by Sultan Barakat and Sansom Milton on localisation across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus. In it they argue that understanding the local across these three elements of the “triple nexus” is important because “the local is a natural place for working beyond silos as crisis affected populations tend not to operate with the same distinctions between sectors that structure the international aid apparatus” (Barakat & Milton, p. 149).…”