Knowledge & Localisation: National NGOs in Protracted Conflict Settings

As the localisation agenda gains traction within the humanitarian sector, this research turns to one of the most challenging of contexts, protracted conflict, and focusses on those who are increasingly charged with leading the humanitarian response to it within their own borders – National NGOs (NNGOs).

Within this study we explore the many barriers NNGOs face to playing a greater role in humanitarian response. The conceptual framework applied is that of knowledge, through the lens of which we focus on the comparative advantages that equip NNGOs for success, including their intimate knowledge of their own country, its inhabitants, and their lived experiences.

This study asks how we can define, better value and leverage such knowledge, rather than reducing it to information to be used to adapt externally designed programmes and projects to the ‘local context’. It reviews the current standing of such knowledge within the humanitarian sector, whilst also consulting knowledge theory and organisational learning discourse to ask how knowledge of national NGOs and their staff can be appraised and leveraged to serve them well for greater localisation. The research uses a pragmatic, mixed methods approach including an adapted systematic review and a survey of national and international practitioners via online questionnaire.

The results are shared over three chapters, Knowledge and Power, Knowledge and the Organisation and Knowledge and Operations. Findings include an overview of how power dynamics affect the way knowledge of national staff is subordinated in value, how power can enable NNGOs some otherwise absent agency through leverage and how power and language are intertwined and affect humanitarian operations. It also finds that knowledge is deconstructed through current approaches to capacity strengthening, identifies opportunities in mentorship and secondment to allow for multidirectional knowledge sharing, and looks at the possibility of knowledge management for greater organisational knowledge focus. Finally, it deconstructs successes of access, and how these are associated with risk, identity and networks, and also how knowledge could be better understood for humanitarian decision making.