'Building Forward Better by Strengthening Local Resilience' with CSPPS & Dutch MFA

The concept of ‘Local Resilience’ has gained importance in recent years, as an essential step to address power asymmetryand to achieve transformative change. In this session, practitioners and policymakers will share successes and challenges,and explore next steps in a joint effort to operationalize this concept.

How can we truly shift power from the international level to the local level across the triple nexus of humanitarian aid, longer-term development interventions, and peacebuilding efforts? Localization was hailed as a solution for (1) countering the lack of dwindling funds against the increased need for it and (2) a way of achieving the transformative change needed for a balancing of power in an inclusive and peaceful world. Yet, 5 years after the launch of the Grand Bargain, which called for localisation for that exact purpose, nothing much has changed to redress power imbalances and effectuate localization.

This session included panelists Charlotte de Harder (Program Officer, Civil Society Platform for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding), Marriët Schuurman (Director Stability and Humanitarian Aid in the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Fidèle Djebba (Founder of Association Rayons de Soleil and the CSPPS Country Focal Point), Pascal Richard (Expert Adviser on Localisation Local Leadership at the Dutch INGO Cordaid), Sorcha O'Callaghan (Director of the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute), Zorgh Madi (Co-founder of Tamazight Women’s Movement Organization), Niagalé Bagayoko (Chair of the African Security Sector Network (ASSN)) and Rhea Mahanta (Founder & President of The Peacebuilding Project).