Indirect Cost Recovery for Local Partners: One step to more equitable partnerships

 

As part of Humanitarian Network and Partnerships Week Development Initiatives, UNICEF and Oxfam hosted and interactive event to provide a forum for donors, international and national NGOs and UN agencies to come together to share & exchange lessons learnt and practical ideas around how to advance fairer indirect cost funding practices for local and national actors. Ensuring that local and national actors can access overheads or indirect costs has become a key focus for humanitarian reform efforts over the past year. There is widespread agreement that ensuring local actors can recover indirect costs is an important step toward more equitable and more effective humanitarian response. The question now is how this should happen; many international organisations (referring to UN agencies and INGOs) and donors are in the process of reflecting critically on their own practice amid changing industry standards. In 2022, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) published guidance on the provision of overheads to local and national partners, based on research carried out by Development Initiatives (DI) with UNICEF and Oxfam.

The guidance and research are both available on the IASC website: https://interagencystandingcommittee…. A recent donor discussion paper has also been published by DI and UNICEF, which aims to support the reform process by setting out current donor policies and pathways to change. The paper is available to read on DI’s website: https://devinit.org/resources/donor-a… This session contributed to widening the engagement on the issue of indirect cost provision to local and national actors, socialising the progress and opportunities for change that have been highlighted, and facilitated further thinking on how donors and international actors can make effective policy change on this topic.

The sessions was moderated by Amy Croome, Oxfam (Humanitarian Policy Advisor – Local Humanitarian Leadership and Aid Reform) And we were joined by the following panelists: Fran Girling-Morris, Development Initiatives (Senior Policy and Engagement Advisor) Kirstine Primdal Sutton, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark (Chief Advisor and Head of Partnership Team) Howard Mollett, CAFOD (Head of Humanitarian Policy) Luc Chauvin, UNICEF (Chief, Inter Agency and Humanitarian Partnerships) Hamza Alghabra, Basmeh and Zeitooneh Organization (Learning and Networking Coordinator) Michael Solis, Trócaire (Global Director, Partnership & Localisation) Arjen Joose, Dutch Relief Alliance (Chair) Father Andrii Seneiko, Cairtas Lyviv Yaryna Kolodiy, Translator