This blog by Emmanuel Louis and the Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility (CSRF) sets out to explore how localisation is understood in South Sudan. It highlights common misconceptions, and articulates a conflict-sensitive approach that places local leadership, community trust, and equitable partnerships at the centre of aid. The blog provides a set of conflict sensitivity considerations for further promoting localisation in South Sudan.

Introduction

Since the landmark World Humanitarian Summit in 2016, the Localisation Agenda[1] has been positioned as a cornerstone of humanitarian reform. Its ambitions are straightforward: to make aid more locally led, faster, accountable, and attuned to the realities of affected communities. [2] Yet in South Sudan, a country navigating overlapping layers of conflict, political fragility, and humanitarian need, the implementation of localisation has become a complex and, at times, contested conversation.

The term “localisation” carries diverse meanings, and its practical application varies across international agencies, national NGOs (NNGOs), government bodies, private sector actors, and communities themselves. While there is broad agreement that aid should be locally led, interpretations diverge, and this has led to a patchwork understanding that risks diluting its potential to strengthen local capacity and enhance conflict-sensitive programming.

Understanding the Localisation Discourse in South Sudan

Whereas the aims of what is now known as the Localisation Agenda have been around for more than 20 years, localisation discourse gained renewed traction and political attention in the wake of the Grand Bargain commitments during the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016, advocating a shift in power, resources, and decision-making closer to affected communities. Its central principle is that those closest to crises — local NGOs, national NGOs, community-based organisations, and national and local government — often best understand needs, deliver timely assistance, and sustain outcomes. In the initial Grand Bargain, the primarily relevant principle focused on ‘funding and support to local and national responders’ (Workstream 2). Under this framework, localisation was principally understood as the effort to provide more funding (with a global benchmark at 25%) to local and national responders “as directly as possible” and hence focused on financial, administrative and technical aspects of empowering locally led action. As the discussions and implementation evolved, signatories also understood Workstream 6 (‘participation revolution’) to be an essential part of localising aid, and hence sought more transformative change in relation to shifting the power, taking more seriously narratives of much-needed decolonisation.

In South Sudan, the operational environment complicates this ideal. Prolonged conflict, political volatility, and a highly fragmented aid landscape have created a multiplicity of actors, each interpreting and applying the concept of localisation differently. Consequently, the discourse is not just about funding or programming; it is about relationships, legitimacy, and the dynamics of power. This conversation also transcends the humanitarian community, and is just as relevant to development and peacebuilding efforts.

Divergent Interpretations: What Localisation Means to Different Actors

The variety of perspectives on localisation reflects the multiplicity of interests, mandates, and operational realities among humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding actors. Importantly, these differences should not be read as misunderstandings or shortcomings, but as part of an evolving conversation where each actor seeks to reconcile global commitments with local realities. Below is a rough and non-exhaustive typology of understandings and approaches to localisation, which does not seek to distract from the diversity within and across different sectors in terms of how both how they understand and how they enact the changes sought by the Localisation Agenda.

Financial, administrative & procedural Inclusion

Most donors to foreign aid (especially Western governments funding UN- and INGO-led responses) in South Sudan are signatories to the Grand Bargain, and hence have, at an overall policy level, politically committed to its two relevant principles. Whereas political missions may carry forward and genuinely believe in the political commitment, embassies and cooperation offices have found it challenging to follow through on implementing this change (even while many have translated it into their own, more concrete policies) without the international intermediaries that the agenda seeks to increasingly avoid. Amid far-reaching aid funding cuts, localisation has also been subject to new attention under the light of cost efficiency.

For many INGOs, localisation involves incorporating local partners into the full project cycle — planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and coordination. This approach emphasises effectiveness, cost- efficiency, and adherence to donor expectations. INGOs often seek to benchmark best practices while navigating funding pressures, operational overheads, and reporting requirements.

From this perspective, localisation is seen as a practical necessity: engaging local actors helps reach communities faster, enhances accountability, and reduces the costs of service delivery. However, when viewed narrowly, this interpretation risks focusing more on procedural inclusion than genuine power sharing, a nuance that is particularly important in conflict-affected contexts.

Expanding reach, improving accountability, strengthening capacities

Other actors, including many UN agencies, frequently conceptualise localisation in terms of expanding reach, effectiveness, and accountability. Localisation, from this lens, means enabling local actors to play a greater role in the delivery of aid, directing resources to where they are most needed, and fostering direct relationships between communities, service providers, and lead agencies.

These approaches also often encompass strengthening national capacities to lead and manage crisis or development efforts. In practice, this means supporting local actors to navigate operational, financial, and coordination responsibilities, ideally ensuring that assistance is timely, accountable, and contextually informed.

National ownership and decision-making authority

Government-focused perspectives on localisation highlight national ownership and regulatory adherence. Localisation is understood as empowering local and national actors to lead crisis responses rather than relying solely on international organisations. It involves boosting effectiveness, enhancing accountability, and ensuring that local regulations and standards guide programming.

Government actors are particularly concerned with resource allocation and decision-making authority, advocating for a localisation approach that strengthens local capacities while maintaining coordination, oversight, and alignment with national development priorities.

Better access to funding, a transformation of ownership and more respect

For local civil society, localisation often translates into direct access to funding, leadership in programme design, and ownership of the response. This perspective underscores the original intent of localisation: a genuine process to shift power, foster equitable partnerships, and enhance systemic capacities. NNGOs emphasise local knowledge, cultural awareness, and the need for sustainable solutions rooted in community priorities. Localisation here is more than an operational adjustment; it is a transformative principle aimed at rebalancing historical power asymmetries in aid delivery.

Local private sector actors tend to see localisation as recognition of local leadership. They emphasise that local entities are often better placed to understand community needs, priorities, and sensitivities. From this vantage point, investing in local capacity, local supply chains, and culturally appropriate practices is central to achieving efficient, responsive, and sustainable humanitarian interventions.

For local communities themselves, localisation is about respect, inclusion, and investment. It involves recognising local leadership, ensuring local knowledge informs decision-making, and providing support within specific communities or localities. Communities view localisation as an opportunity to participate actively in programming that affects them, promoting equity, dignity, and accountability. Especially in historically marginalised groups of society, a transformation of how aid is delivered that directly affects them bears the potential for their agency to come to full fruition and their rights to be better respected.

The Missing Conflict Lens: Risks and Realities in a Fragile Context

South Sudan’s conflict-affected context demands that localisation be implemented through a conflict-sensitive lens. While all actors broadly support the principle of local leadership, there is a risk that without careful contextualisation, localisation can inadvertently reinforce existing inequalities, elite capture, or social tensions.

For example, selecting local partners based on visibility, donor familiarity, or political alignment may exclude legitimate community actors and deepen local grievances. Similarly, emphasising operational efficiency over social legitimacy can weaken trust, reduce the perceived neutrality of aid, and inadvertently contribute to local tensions.

The South Sudan Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility (CSRF) has long centred local actors and their agency as an inherent part of conflict sensitivity and highlighted that how ‘localisation’ is approached should always be conflict sensitive.[3]

From our experience, conflict-sensitive localisation requires (1) understanding local power structures, relationships, and potential sources of tension; (2) ensuring that aid delivery does not exacerbate divisions along ethnic, geographic, or political lines; (3) recognising that local actors are not merely service providers but agents of peace, stability, and community cohesion; (4) acknowledging that localisation is not a phenomenon to be implemented, and much rather a deeper process that requires changes to systems, behaviours and institutions.

Locally led action in South Sudan is not simply a matter of funding allocations or procedural compliance. It is a dynamic negotiation of power, trust, and legitimacy. Achieving conflict-sensitive localisation requires an approach that is both principled and adaptive, recognising the complexity of local realities.

Key considerations

• • Genuine local decision-making power: Localisation should enable meaningful leadership of diverse local and national actors, not just an incremental change to which project design or implementation issues a local partner has a say in. Moreover, it should include smaller, community-based organisations and historically marginalised groups.
  • Transparent Partnerships: All relationships between international and local actors should be framed around mutual accountability, shared objectives, and equitable decision-making. This includes investing into resilient relationships of trust and shared understanding.
  • Capacity Investment: Localisation must go beyond short-term project support to build institutional and operational resilience, enabling local actors to lead effectively in both crisis and development contexts. Equally important, the capacity of international organisations needs to be built by South Sudanese actors, e.g. in terms of understanding the context, and local or pre-existing technical implementation approaches.
  • Contextual Analysis: Programming decisions should be grounded in rigorous context and conflict analysis, ensuring aid interventions are sensitive to local power dynamics and do not inadvertently exacerbate tensions. Fostering contextual understanding should always build on and be responsive to analysis from local actors.

Reclaiming the Core Principles: Three Pillars of Conflict-Sensitive Localisation

Drawing on the various interpretations of localisation, three pillars emerge as essential for South Sudan:

1. Contextual Legitimacy

Locally-led action should be built on actors with authentic legitimacy within their communities. This involves assessing not only technical capacity but also social credibility, representation, and inclusivity. Recognising legitimacy reduces risks of elite capture and ensures programming reflects community priorities.

2. Equitable Partnerships

Local actors truly taking the lead on how aid is delivered requires partnerships founded on trust, transparency, and shared responsibility. These partnerships must avoid tokenistic inclusion and instead create spaces where local actors can do more than merely influence decision-making, resource allocation, and strategic direction.

3. Institutional and Social Resilience

Localisation is sustainable only when local institutions are strengthened holistically. Investments should enhance operational systems, staff competencies, leadership capacities, and governance structures – just as the process of capacity strengthening should always be seen as a two-way street, with international actors furthering their learning as well. Social resilience, including mechanisms for community participation and feedback, is equally vital to prevent aid from inadvertently reinforcing vulnerabilities.

Bridging the Divide: From Misconceptions to Shared Understanding

Misconceptions about localisation are not failures but reflections of complexity and differing priorities. They emerge from divergent experiences, operational constraints, and varying organisational mandates. Recognising this allows the international aid community to shift the conversation from criticism to constructive engagement.

Practical strategies to bridge understanding include:

• • Facilitating multi-stakeholder dialogues where INGOs, UN agencies, NNGOs, government, and communities share perspectives and co-create solutions.
  • Clarifying the intentions behind localisation, emphasising that it is about empowerment, accountability, and context-driven programming rather than a mere administrative or compliance exercise.
  • Encouraging joint planning and risk-sharing to balance efficiency with legitimacy and sustainability.

By framing localisation as a sector-wide conversation, actors can collectively reconcile differing expectations, align strategies, and promote a conflict-sensitive operational culture. When approached thoughtfully, localisation offers more than operational efficiency; it presents an opportunity to rebuild trust, legitimacy, and social cohesion in South Sudan. It enables local actors to lead in ways that are accountable, contextually appropriate, and sensitive to conflict dynamics.

Conflict-sensitive localisation is not only about who delivers aid, but also about how decisions are made, whose voices are heard, and how aid affects local relationships. Done well, it strengthens communities, enhances resilience, and fosters sustainable humanitarian, development and peacebuilding outcomes.

Actionable Recommendations for the Aid Community

1. Integrate conflict analysis into all localisation strategies to ensure that funding, partnerships, and programmatic decisions reflect local legitimacy and sensitivities.
2. Redefine partnership models around shared learning, mutual accountability, and equitable risk management rather than transactional arrangements.
3. Invest in long-term institutional capacity of local and national NGOs, moving beyond short-term project support to build operational and leadership resilience.
4. Support local leadership in coordination structures, enabling national actors to set agendas, lead initiatives, and represent community priorities.
5. Foster inclusive dialogue across INGOs, UN agencies, government, and local communities to harmonise understanding and expectations of localisation, avoiding conflicting interpretations.
6. Ensure transparency and accountability mechanisms are in place for resource allocation, project monitoring, and feedback from beneficiaries and local partners.
7. Promote culturally appropriate and contextually sensitive interventions, recognising local knowledge, traditions, and community structures as central to effective aid delivery.

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[1] The term localisation is used in this blog in line with the terminology employed in the Grand Bargain and subsequent discourse – however, it is important to note that several criticisms have been raised towards both the term and the concept of localisation as outlined in the Grand Bargain workstreams. Other terms, such as locally-led partnerships/approaches/action, seek to place a stronger emphasis on the importance of local decision-making power, as opposed to understandings that focus on technical or financial aspects of local project implementation that continue to entrench power relations.

[2] https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/grand-bargain/grand-bargain-shared-commitment-better-serve-people-need-2016.

[3] For instance, in this briefing paper: https://csrf-southsudan.org/repository/localisation-and-conflict-sensitivity-lessons-on-good-practice-from-south-sudan/.