Shifting the power in humanitarian response in Bangladesh
The current international humanitarian system, dominated by large international organisations favours working with large international actors, who frequently ignore local and national actors. There is an imbalanced power relation between the international agencies and local ones, the latter remaining in the periphery of a humanitarian response but also in terms of voice, capacity for decision making and leadership.
The Missed Opportunities report shows that partnerships with national and local organisations help to enhance the relevance, appropriateness, and accountability of humanitarian responses and ensure smoother transitions and better connectedness. In contrast, top-down response ignores local actors and the actual local needs.
Through the Shifting the Power initiative, six international organisations are working to transform the imbalanced humanitarian system by raising the capacity of local actors so they can sit alongside international actors and create a more balanced humanitarian system.
Shifting the Power, is one of the DEPP projects funded by UK aid through the START network. The project is strengthening local and national organisational capacity for decision making and leadership in humanitarian response. It is supporting local organisations to have greater representation, voice and recognition in relevant networks and platforms. It is also working to influence international organisations to promote the role of local and national actors, as we recognise that this approach can help improve the quality and efficiency in a humanitarian response.
The humanitarian context in Bangladesh
In Bangladesh, whilst there is an effective humanitarian collaboration between the government departments such as the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief (DMR), the Department for Disaster Management and the UN, there are major setbacks. The national humanitarian architecture of Bangladesh makes decisions at national level defining the nature of emergency, determining humanitarian needs and designing the response. However, in practice, when an emergency hits, local and national organisations are the first to respond.
Despite their critical role, their local capacity is being undermined, ignored or overwhelmed by international humanitarian actors. In addition, there is no democratic representation and linkage among local actors and existing selected representatives, thus the voices of local humanitarian actors are not heard by the national coordinating body, the Humanitarian Coordination Task Team (HCTT).
Facilitating the big shift
There are a number of platforms in Bangladesh related to disaster risk reduction. For example, the ‘INGO Emergency Sub Committee’ which follows a democratic process decision-making on humanitarian issues. However, there is no humanitarian entity representing local and national actors.
In response to this, and since the start of the Shifting the Power project, there have been forums involving different stakeholders discussing the need to decentralise the humanitarian system and ensure that local organisations have greater participation and leadership.
The project started advocating to the Department of Disaster Management (DDM) in order recognise the role of local actors and create a true humanitarian platform for local organisations.
A platform of local organisations is born
This led to the launch of NAHAB, — the National Alliance of Humanitarian Actors in Bangladesh, in January, 2017 and today, the platform has 45 local and national NGO members. The aim of the platform is to give local and nationals actors a stronger voice and representation in national humanitarian platforms, networks and disaster management structure.
Additionally, the platform will help them to access financial and non-financial resources for humanitarian response. The ultimate goal is for the platform to become an important entity recognised by international humanitarian actors with a key role in the humanitarian response.
After the launch, member organisations elected 11 local and national members to be part of an ‘Ad-hoc Committee’ considering their geographical distribution across Bangladesh. In the next 6 months, the committee is tasked with looking at the governance mechanisms for the platform, selecting the full committee democratically, finalise the membership process and develop a resource mobilization strategy to meet up its own operational costs.
NAHAB’s impact to date
From the start, NAHAB has established itself as a vibrant entity in the national humanitarian architecture of Bangladesh recognised by the government. For instance, the Department of Disaster Management (DDM) issued an official communication to the wider humanitarian stakeholders explaining the purpose of NAHAB as a platform of local civil society organisations. Also, a government through the DDM is sitting together with the committee members to set up the operationalization process of NAHAB.
During the recent flash floods, the DDM and the Disaster Management Ministry started joint coordinated needs assessments comprising multiple INGOs and national organisations. NAHAB itself is taking the lead role in carrying out the assessment in the district of Netrokona. Six of the NAHAB members have previously developed a Joint Needs Assessment resource at the district level, and banking on their capacity completed the coordinated needs assessment. In addition, four of the members of NAHAB are now jointly developing a proposal to mobilise funding for the response.
As for the long-term vision for the platform, it is expected that it will act as a centre of excellence helping to facilitate learning to other local organisations and enhancing opportunities for a more effective and timely humanitarian response.
