Localising education responses in crises: moving beyond buzzwords to shifting power
This article was originally published here by ODI Global.
Humanitarian aid is intended to support communities affected by conflict and crisis, yet it is widely criticised for keeping decision-making and resources at a distance from the people it is meant to serve. A decade ago, the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit and Grand Bargain agreement committed to making aid “as local as possible, as international as necessary”. While some efforts have been made to put these commitments into practice, deep power asymmetries persist, with ‘localisation’ becoming an increasingly contested term, as its repeated invocation has rarely translated into substantial change.
Looking at aid flows, local actors directly received just 3.6% of all international humanitarian funding in 2024, a small fraction of the 25% global target set in 2016. Looking at Education Cannot Wait (ECW) funding flows, in 2022, 59% of funding was provided to UN agencies, while national NGOs delivering education received less than 1% directly. For the 2023/24 financial year, ECW reported that 29% of its funding was allocated ‘as directly as possible’, although this was still largely via foreign intermediaries and then sub-grants.
Against this backdrop, the long-standing promise of transferring power to local communities and placing them at the centre of humanitarian response seems increasingly unlikely, as aid cuts push many agencies to focus on keeping the lights on in their own organisations rather than shifting resources to local communities.
While this lack of progress may be dispiriting, it should not obscure what the evidence has shown for years: more direct support to communities is a practical way to address some of the aid system’s current problems. Localisation can reduce transaction costs, improve responsiveness to local needs and strengthen local capacities to sustain services after international actors withdraw.
We therefore turn to new evidence to identify where practical progress is still possible. Drawing on a recent synthesis by the Education Research in Conflict and Crisis (ERICC) programme of 28 studies across Bangladesh, Jordan, Lebanon, Myanmar, Nigeria, South Sudan and Syria, we set out four areas where humanitarian actors can make progress in localising education response even amid aid cuts:
1) The humanitarian sector should recognise and engage existing community-led education efforts
Communities and households persistently organise and innovate to sustain learning and education, even while experiencing displacement due to conflict and climate shocks. In Jordan schools and families co-designed low-cost strategies to reduce risks of students dropping-outs, and in Lebanon communities pooled local resources to establish informal learning spaces, provide free transportation and deliver psychosocial support. In Nigeria, communities returning from displaced persons’ camps recruited and paid volunteer teachers to sustain education access. Across contexts, locally-driven non-state systems, including religious systems in Cox’s Bazar, ethnic education systems in Myanmar, and low-cost private provision in Lebanon, play a crucial part in meeting the needs of crisis-affected people. Across these six contexts, grassroots and local collective action on education provision was far more effective than state and humanitarian efforts in terms of speed, flexibility and reach.
If localisation can be redefined from inclusion of local actors in foreign-led humanitarian structures to supporting existing locally-driven efforts, then locally-driven initiatives, however imperfect, can be strengthened rather than undermined or displaced by parallel systems. To do this, humanitarian actors would need to set clear principles of engagement with non-state locally-driven initiatives and integrate them into education sector planning.
2) Donors should prioritise channelling funds via domestically-led funding mechanisms
Across ERICC studies, we observed that humanitarian financing can be fragmented, short-term and competitive, often undermining the efficiency and sustainability of education delivery. This was particularly clear in pastoralist education programming in South Sudan. Disbursement through INGOs based primarily in the country capital resulted in long delays and leakages, disrupted teacher payments, fostered community distrust and interrupted education services. By contrast, locally managed and community embedded educational oversight and delivery for the same programme, even with minimal resources, often proved more efficient, responsive and sustainable. Funding should, wherever possible, be channelled through domestically-led intermediary modalities rather than UN or INGO mechanisms - to build domestic capacity and enable local actors to plan, monitor outcomes and adapt provision within their own communities. There is emerging evidence of this shift already taking place, with the Abot-Kamay Community Solidarity Fund in the Philippines and the Sudanese Development Call Organisation being just two examples.
3) Incentives should be created to prioritise accountability to affected communities, over one-way upward accountability to donors and foreign intermediaries
At present, the incentives structures in the aid sector mean that in protracted crises, the role of local organisations narrows to subcontracted programme delivery, while their functions of representing and being accountable to front-line communities are diminished (Homonchuk et al., forthcoming). A genuine power shift would recognise that local actors do more than deliver projects, and support them in their advocacy roles of holding authorities and external actors accountable to conflict-affected learners. Achieving this shift requires moving beyond a culture of compliance to investing in an ecosystem of mutually accountable actors. It also means building advocacy capabilities and technical skills among civil society organisations so they can take on leadership roles in education response dialogues.
Education in Emergencies (EiE) data systems are one manifestation of this dynamic, as most of the reporting runs upward, feeding data to donors and central authorities. In northeast Nigeria, for example, after educators submit required reporting on attendance and infrastructure, they are rarely able to access even aggregated data and use it for improving education delivery. Here, localisation would require reciprocal flows of data where community-level actors are able to access and use at least some of the data they collect to improve their routine school operations.
4) ‘Equal partnerships’ need to be grounded in mutual respect, solidarity and transparency
At its core, localisation requires relationships based on genuine trust (Akogun et al., forthcoming). Yet in many protracted conflicts, including in Lebanon, education sector dynamics have been characterised by mutual mistrust between government officials, donors, foreign implementing agencies and civil society. These dynamics have at times weakened sector responses by undermining transparency and prompting external actors to push for programmes with unrealistic timelines, capacity requirements and indicators. While it may seem almost self-evident that respect and trust matter, the sector is still at a point where many Global North actors do not acknowledge this is a problem in the first place. Emerging evidence from ERICC suggests that trust-based equal partnerships need more flexibility and time to produce contextually appropriate and effective solutions (Akogun et al., forthcoming) than is currently allowed by the short-termism of humanitarian response.
Achieving localisation needs a change in mindset
Across ERICC research studies, evidence shows that conflict-affected communities mobilise scarce resources to take action and address learning needs that are often unmet by government provision and humanitarian aid. The fact that they are not engaged systematically in aid-supported education efforts seems a huge missed opportunity. Ultimately, any honest effort to ‘localise’ and improve aid effectiveness and impact, first and foremost, requires willingness for the prevailing mindsets and culture of the aid industry to change and for entrenched power to be relinquished.
For the education sector, this reconceptualisation of power and capacity must centre communities and ground local action as the foundation of education system resilience, reorienting aid towards existing locally-led learning initiatives.
This material has been funded with UK International Development from the UK government. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed here are entirely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the ERICC Programme, the authors’ respective organisations, or the UK government’s official policies.
An INEE webinar focused on the key themes and findings from this research was held in December 2025. The webinar recording, presentation, and research brief can be found here.