The Risk of Staying in Control
When localisation gives the key, but keeps the string
PositiveMinds | Positive Stories | Edition 076
Illustrated by me (A. Coulibaly) with canva.com and Gemini by Google
About three years ago, when I joined my role as Oxfam Global Programs Director, I spent time speaking with peers from other organisations. I wanted to understand how they were thinking about localisation, decolonisation and the future role of international NGOs.
One conversation stayed with me.
It was with a peer from another organisation. The exchange was passionate, thoughtful and honest. We were not disagreeing about the principle of localisation. At least not at first.
Then they said something that has remained in my mind:
“I support localisation, as long as it helps us deliver faster, cheaper, and with less risk to us.”
It was not said with cynicism. It was said almost as common sense.
And I understood it.
International organisations are under pressure. Money is tighter. Donors want more evidence, more speed and more control. Boards want assurance. Finance teams want clean cost recovery. Safeguarding teams want no avoidable harm. Programme teams want quality. Country teams want room to act without carrying risks they cannot control.
So yes, the sentence makes sense.
If localisation helps us deliver faster, cheaper and with less risk, why would we not support it?
But the more I sat with that sentence, the more it troubled me.
Because it keeps the old measure in place. It asks local actors to prove their value by making the current model work better for international organisations. It does not ask whether the model itself needs to change.
It keeps the centre intact. It only asks who can help the centre deliver.
That is where the real question begins.
What if localisation is not meant to make international organisations more efficient?
What if it is meant to make power more honest?
Some risks do not arrive as a crisis. They arrive as a habit. A grant is reviewed. A partner agreement is tightened. A budget line is held back until there is more confidence. A decision is escalated because the organisation cannot afford a mistake.
None of this looks unreasonable. Often, it is the responsible thing to do.
International organisations hold on to money, reputation, quality, safeguarding and donor trust because these things matter. Many of us have learnt, sometimes through hard experience, that weak controls can cause harm. Compliance is not a luxury. Accountability cannot be improvised after the damage is done.
So the instinct to hold on deserves some sympathy.
But every grip has a threshold. At first, holding on protects the work. After a while, it can start to weaken it.
That is one of the harder truths in localisation. Many organisations want local partners to be closer to communities, quicker in response, stronger in adaptation and more visible in delivery. But they are often less ready to move the things that make leadership real: flexible money, decision authority, room to define risk, influence over strategy, and a voice in governance.
Local organisations are trusted with proximity, but not always with power. They are trusted to reach communities, but not always to shape priorities. They are trusted to carry risk, but not always to define it. They are trusted to provide information, but not always to own the analysis.
Responsibility can move without power moving. That is where localisation becomes fragile.
For a time, this can still look like progress.
More local partners appear in proposals. More localisation language appears in strategies. More consultations are held. More people are invited into conversations that used to happen without them.
The bridge is visible.
But the real test is not whether the bridge exists. It is what crosses it.
Does money cross it? Does authority cross it? Does trust cross it? Does the right to challenge cross it? Or does only expectation travel, while power stays where it has always been?
This is not only a sector question. It is also a question we continue to face inside Oxfam.
There are things we are trying to do differently. Oxfam is a signatory to the Pledge for Change, with commitments to equitable partnerships, authentic storytelling, and influencing wider change. We have also been working on the Collaborative and Adaptive Partnering Approach, or CAPAS, which seeks to shift partnership assessment away from one-way scrutiny towards a more open conversation about purpose, power, risk, behaviour and co-creation. Our Local Humanitarian Leadership work has also, in different contexts, sought to start from the leadership of local actors rather than from the convenience of international systems.
But I want to be careful with this.
These are not trophies. They are not proof that we have arrived. They are signs of a learning process. Some parts are stronger than others. Some remain incomplete. Some still carry the same tensions they are trying to address.
CAPAS, for example, still begins inside an international organisation. It still has to work with donor rules, legal liabilities, compliance demands and financial risk. It can help change the conversation, but it cannot, by itself, undo the wider aid system that shaped those rules.
The Pledge for Change can be a useful mirror, but only if we allow partners and local actors to tell us what they actually see in that mirror.
Local Humanitarian Leadership can sound right in principle, but it only matters if local actors can shape decisions before plans become set in stone.
This is why the work must stay honest.
Oxfam’s learning from the Philippines is instructive here. Local actors did not define leadership as being invited into a structure already designed by others. They spoke about voice, trust, community presence, local knowledge and the ability to influence decisions. During the COVID-19 response, community leaders and local organisations were not only delivery channels. They redesigned parts of the response, negotiated with local officials, adapted tools that did not fit, and brought forward what people were actually living.
That matters.
It reminds us that localisation is not only about who delivers aid. It is about who understands the ground well enough to know when the original plan no longer makes sense.
And still, none of this makes the work easy.
The familiar model has deep roots. The old way can still feel safe because the room is known. The rules are known. The people around the table know what each other will ask. Finance asks about cost recovery. Safeguarding asks about exposure. Programme teams ask about quality. Leaders ask what the board will accept.
Everyone is doing their job.
And still, the room may be too far from the work.
Outside that room, the world has changed. Access is harder. Civic space is shrinking. Security conditions are more volatile. International presence is more expensive, more restricted and, in some places, less welcome. Communities are less willing to be spoken for. Local organisations are more organised, more experienced and more alert to the difference between partnership language and real agency.
This does not mean local organisations are always better, safer or more accountable. That would be too neat and not true. Local organisations also face political pressure, resource constraints, personal risk and local power dynamics that can be hard to manage.
But they often hold things that cannot be flown in during a crisis: trust, memory, relationships, local judgment, and the ability to read what is changing before it appears in a formal report.
So the risk question has to change.
For years, the question has often been: what might go wrong if we localise?
That question still matters. But it is no longer enough.
We also have to ask: what is already going wrong because we do not?
The greater risk may not be moving power too quickly. It may be holding power too long.
An international organisation can keep the grant, the brand, the compliance system and the donor relationship, while slowly losing the access and trust needed to deliver well. It can protect, control, and lose relevance. It can manage risk on paper and miss the risks growing in practice. It can improve the tone of partnership while leaving dependency intact.
This is why localisation cannot stop at better partnership practice.
Better practice matters. It can reduce harm, improve relationships and create more honest ways of working. But it is not the same as power moving.
The test is more direct.
Can local organisations influence the work before it is designed? Can they question an international partner without fear of losing funding? Can they receive resources that strengthen their own institution, rather than just deliver someone else’s project? Can they be treated as people who interpret context, not only as people who collect data from it?
These questions are practical. They decide whether an organisation is changing or only sounding different.
They also point to a more uncomfortable question about the future role of international organisations.
The answer is not that they should disappear. That is too simple. There are still roles they can play well: raising funds, supporting coordination, managing complex donor demands, connecting local action to global advocacy, providing technical support, and helping carry risks that should not fall on local organisations alone.
But those roles now have to be earned. They cannot rest on age, size, brand or habit.
The question is becoming simpler and sharper: is the organisation using its power to strengthen local agency, or to protect its place in the chain?
The test of localisation is not the language used when things are easy. It is what changes when money, risk and visibility are at stake.
This is where many commitments become thin.
Localisation is easy to support when it is written as a principle. It is harder when a donor wants speed, when a budget is shrinking, when a compliance concern is raised, when visibility is negotiated, or when a local organisation challenges its international partner's behaviour.
Those moments reveal more than the strategy does.
If power moves only when the conditions are comfortable, then it has not really moved. It has been lent.
And power lent can always be taken back.
This is why that sentence from my peer still matters to me.
“I support localisation, as long as it helps us deliver faster, cheaper, and with less risk to us.”
It sounds reasonable. But it leaves the old measure untouched.
Faster for whom? Cheaper for whom? Less risk for whom?
If localisation only counts when it makes the international organisation more efficient, then the centre remains the judge. Local actors are still being asked to prove their value against someone else’s comfort, someone else’s timelines, someone else’s risk appetite.
That is not power shifting.
That is the old model asking for better terms.
Avoiding localisation may now be the larger organisational risk. Not because every local partnership will work smoothly. Not because international organisations have no useful role. Not because power can be moved without care.
But because the old assumption can no longer stand: that international control is naturally safer, more accountable or more effective.
Sometimes the unsafe place is not outside the familiar room. Sometimes it is the room itself.
Sometimes the bridge is not failing because it was badly built. It is failing because it was never asked to carry real weight.
Sometimes the work is not weakened because too much was released. It is weakened because too much was held for too long.
Perhaps the risk is not that localisation asks us to release control. The risk is that we keep offering the key while holding the string.
References
Vera, C. A., and Brusola-Vera, M. L. (2021). Local Humanitarian Leadership: The View from Local Actors. Oxfam Research Report, May 2021.
Humanitarian Practice Network. Beyond definitional ambiguity: locally led action as baseline, localisation as reform. February 2026.
Inter-Agency Standing Committee. Humanitarian Reset: Frequently Asked Questions. January 2026.
ODI. As local as possible, as international as necessary: understanding capacity and complementarity in humanitarian action. November 2018.
Start Network. Localisation Works: Locally-led humanitarian action in the context of the Reset. February 2026.
