As a whole, 2023 saw a sharp escalation in humanitarian crises—not only in sheer number but also in severity. Türkiye experienced one of the most devastating catastrophes when, on 6 February, two powerful earthquakes struck the southeastern province of Kahramanmaraş. Natural disasters, exacerbated by climate change, war, and armed conflict have displaced millions of people throughout the world and increasing the demand for global humanitarian relief. This has, in turn, underscored the urgent need to develop more efficient, cost-effective, and accountable aid systems.
Localization means that local actors and affected communities play a more central role and assume greater responsibility in humanitarian responses. The localization of aid efforts has gained importance among members of the international community in recent years. Agreed upon at the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit, the Grand Bargain outlines concrete goals and commitments designed to foster more effective, more locally driven humanitarian responses. These commitments seek to increase accountability, acknowledge local capacities, and strengthen local leadership over time. Despite these lofty goals, however, the transition toward a more effective, comprehensive, and accountable aid system—one that incorporates the localization of humanitarian aid—has progressed more slowly than expected.
Unfortunately, affected communities and local actors have not been meaningfully included in the decision-making processes of international humanitarian and development ecosystems. Important steps still need to be taken to localize humanitarian aid efforts. The Grand Bargain highlights three key actions to be taken:
- Ensure adequate financing for effective local responses.
- Expand support for locally led initiatives.
- Integrate affected communities in decision-making processes dealing with humanitarian work.
The Grand Bargain also advocates for national reference groups to be formed so as to facilitate greater local actor engagement.
The humanitarian system must move away from a centralized, command and control, one-system-fits-all approach to an ecosystem of diverse actors, where frontline responders receive adequate and timely resources. NGOs of the Global South, World Humanitarian Summit, 2016
Given the growing importance of localizing humanitarian aid, Support to Life has, throughout 2023, amplified its localization efforts at global, national, and especially local levels. We built on our existing Strengthening Local Leadership Program, which provides micro-grants and supervisory support to communities affected by forest fires and floods. This program was expanded to include communities affected by earthquakes and allows them to identify their own needs and develop solutions they deem tailored to their personal circumstances. We likewise supported local communities in taking the lead on early recovery, repairs, and resilience-building efforts in Hatay, Kahramanmaraş, Adıyaman, and Malatya—the provinces hardest hit by the Türkiye–Syria earthquakes.
In addition to supporting affected communities in directing their own responses and DDR efforts, our advocacy for increased localization through national-level networks and platforms played a pivotal role in shaping the structure of humanitarian aid in Türkiye in 2023. Established under Support to Life’s leadership in 2016, the Localization Advocacy Group (LAG) and the Refugee Council of Türkiye (known by the Turkish acronym TMK) demonstrated that humanitarian aid can indeed be effectively managed by local actors and launched initiatives advocating for this approach. Then, when UN OCHA opened a logistics center to help coordinate the response to the Türkiye–Syria earthquakes, Support to Life and local NGOs launched the Turkish Local Humanitarian Forum (LHF) to faciliate increase local involvement in the decision-making processes of this body.
The purpose of these networks is to demonstrate that local actors can indeed deliver humanitarian and development responses in Türkiye more effectively and with greater accountability. Operating under the secretariat of LAG and TMK, the National Reference Group (NRG) brings local NGOs, donors, UN agencies, and international NGOs together through dedicated working groups. To date, the NRG has concentrated on developing strategies to improve the quality of partnerships, streamline funding mechanisms, and strengthen the role of local actors in coordinated humanitarian efforts.
Türkiye has become a global leader in localizing humanitarian aid. At the forefront of these efforts, Support to Life has worked to keep this issue on the national agenda, organized key parties, brought Türkiye’s local developments onto the global stage, and advocated for localization on the wider scale. The majority of Support to Life’s localization efforts during 2023 focused on the following four areas:
- Creating grassroots awareness and support mechanisms: We organized various events to raise awareness and increase support for the localization of humanitarian aid in Türkiye.
- Increasing the visibility and potency of local capacity: We carried out capacity-building efforts on the institutional level to ensure that local actors may play a more active role in humanitarian responses. We likewise mapped local NGOs and community-led civil organizations working in the earthquake zone.
- Strengthening local partnerships: We created opportunities to bolster collaboration between local actors, international organizations, donors, and other key stakeholders.
- Access to financial and technical support: We organized venues that brought together local NGOs, donors, and international organizations to improve access to aid grants.
Localization efforts have gained considerable momentum following the devastating earthquakes that shook the entire nation in 2023. These efforts have primarily focused on increasing the visibility of local capacity, transforming how humanitarian work is conducted, and equipping communities with the knowledge and skills required to create their own viable solutions to the challenges they personally face in their everyday lives. As this approach takes deeper root, we have begun to see the first signs of communities affected by disasters collaborating with civil society, local governments, the private sector, and other local entities throughout Türkiye. This has led to the increasingly more meaningful involvement of local actors in post-disaster recovery, risk mitigation, and disaster preparedness. NGOs such as Support to Life committed to core humanitarian principles have played an essential role in this success. Indeed, our commitment to creating a more robust civil society, civil space, and humanitarian aid system only grows stronger as our efforts continue to yield increasingly promising results.
1 Agenda for Humanity: 5 Core Responsibilities, 24 Transformations, https://agendaforhumanity.org
2 ODI Policy Brief, https://cdn.odi.org/media/documents/ODI-Are_we_there_yet-Localisation-policy-brief.pdf
3 The Grand Bargain in 2022: An Independent Review, June 2023, Overseas Development Institute, https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/sites/default/files/migrated/2023-08/HPG_report-Grand_Bargain_2023_master_rev.pdf
4 https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/system/files/2021-07/%28EN%29%20Grand%20Bargain%202.0%20Framework.pdf
5 https://www.icvanetwork.org/uploads/2021/08/Topic-Six-Grand-Bargain-Explained-ICVA-Briefing-Paper-Turkish.pdf