Localisation in Practice: Emerging indicators and practical recommendations

The most significant outcome of the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 was a new focus on shifting funding to those who are the nearest to crisis-affected populations and best placed to respond quickly and appropriately – and stay longest. The Grand Bargain Commitments agreed at the Summit are a landmark attempt at reforming the international humanitarian system.

The Start Network has also made some specific commitments to localisation. The Start Network’s Disasters and Emergencies Preparedness Programme (DEPP) was a multi-stakeholder, three-year programme that has invested in building national capacity for disasters and emergencies preparedness in 11 countries made up of 14 projects overall. This report was commissioned by the DEPP Learning Project to contribute to learning on best practice for localisation, and to move forward the discussions on localisation.

The research had two primary purposes:

• Test, refine, deepen and, where needed, adapt a framework developed in 2017 for the Start Fund and Network, commonly referred to as the ‘Seven Dimensions of Localisation’
• Reflect on whether and how DEPP projects have contributed to ‘localisation’ and provide tips or recommendations for further similar preparedness strengthening work, without duplicating the already extensive reviews and evaluations of the various projects and bearing in mind that the framework did not exist when the projects were designed.