In this section, we will present the findings concerning three main negotiations identified based on the analysis of the documents, verified and enriched in the interviews. We first discuss how the implication of the localization agenda is circumscribed by unequal partnerships between local and international organizations, and how further ambiguity exists in defining local in those partnerships. Second, we discuss the disparities of local capacities as negotiated within localization, related to local organizations’ adherence to humanitarian principles and their overall capacity amidst the Rohingya response. Third, we discuss how the localization process takes place in an operating environment where both international and local humanitarian actors need to negotiate their humanitarian principles and action amidst restrictive policies and burdensome bureaucracy of Bangladesh. In addition, how the access to, and role of the affected Rohingya people is restricted in this setting is also discussed.
Unequitable partnership: negotiating the roles and definitions of “local”
The Rohingya response is the first major intervention since the humanitarian sector committed to work “as local as possible, as international as necessary” (Barbelet 2018). A series of publications from a local Bangladeshi organization, “COAST trust,” proclaimed that most of the INGOs and UN agencies consider local NGOs in the Rohingya response as mere implementing partners in contrast to seeing them as decision-making partners in their operation in Cox’s Bazar (COAST 2016; COAST 2018a; COAST 2018c; COAST 2020a). As a response, the representatives of the local civil society organization in Cox’s Bazar demanded a more localized response (Barbelet 2019) and equitable partnership grounded on the Principles of Partnership (2007)Footnote 5.
In Bangladesh, the agenda of localization in the Rohingya response was adopted in December 2017, and the Grand Bargain localization workstream mission was raised in September 2018 (Van Brabant et al. 2021). However, even after four years of humanitarian operation since 2017, there is still no functioning space for the humanitarian actors. The gradual reduction of funding enhances the localization by default but not by design (Van Brabant et al. 2021). A study of the first 100 days of the Rohingya response (Shevach et al. 2018) reveals that national organizations received only 4% of funding (Harris and Tuladhar 2019) where the majority of 69% was allocated to the three UN agencies, followed by 20% share to the INGOs, 7% goes to IRRC (Khan 2019). The channeling was far below the commitment of sharing the direct funding in the Grand Bargain and the pledge made at Charter for change (c4c)Footnote 6.
Even if the international NGOs and UN agencies are committed to increasing funding to the local and national NGOs in the humanitarian response, they are not fulfilling their commitments to promoting equitable partnership. For example, in the Grand Bargain workstream mission to Bangladesh, there is no Bangladeshi co-leadership (Van Brabant et al. 2021). In Lough et al. (2021), one of the leaders of the LNGOs decried, “We are an implementing partner, the design is the responsibility of the UN agency or the sector group, and we are the implementation partner. As an implementing partner in an emergency, there is limited opportunity to ensure participation” (Lough et al. 2021:35). Furthermore, although most INGO staff in Cox’s Bazar are Bangladeshi nationals (JRP 2018), an uneven power dynamic is visible in two-tier hiring practices and the different pay scales (Barbelet 2018).
Intriguingly, the Bangladesh government requires an essential engagement between local and international actors, giving more power and legitimacy to the local actors as international actors need to partner with a national actor to gain access to the refugee camps (Barbelet 2018). Accordingly, there is competition among the local civil society organizations to become an implementing partners with the INGOs. Local NGOs want their candidacy to be enlisted in INGOs’ organizational portfolio, which then can seal strong candidateship for other projects. Henceforth, most local NGOs tend to speak about the equitable partnership with the donors in an apprehensive manner, despite their experiences with inequalities to avoid cutting off future funding for their following operating projects. In this view, one of the interviewees describes the situation:
They (INGOs) are talking about the spirit of partnership to promote localization. We do not have any decision-making power. We are mostly relying on foreign funds to implement their project. They have their foreign staffs who are highly paid, whereas we are local, and we know the culture, language, and the context. However, we got a low salary. We cannot raise our voice because we are competing with other local actors, and we are fearful if they deny our next project replacing to another local organization. (participant 6, local NGO, Rohingya response)
In practice, INGOs struggle to find and select suitable local partners, leading to rivalry between different LNGOs, which has been described as “competitive humanitarianism” (Roepstorff 2021; Stirrat 2006). Although a general spirit in localization might be strengthening the power, and influence to the local partners to work instead of the foreign experts in a host country (Sundberg 2019), the donors still need intermediaries to manage multiple partners. The localization mechanism should be based on complementarity and partnership irrespective of the size and power of the local NGOs and not primarily on sub-contracting, risk transfers, and exploitation of local actors. Unfortunately, many INGOs tend to directly implement their projects despite the envisioned complementarity. Thus they perversely sideline local expertise and knowledge.
Another potential challenge in the partnership approach is the vagueness of the term local. The question of who should be counted as “local” is a source of tension that further complicates the understanding of the concept of localization. The conceptualization of the local is not only a theoretical exercise but has important implications for humanitarian practice (Roepstorff 2020a). Local refers to national-level and community-based actors, but as the term “ultra-local” emerged (Barbelet 2018), the definition of the term ‘local’ became more perplexing and appealed further debates. Similarly, in Cox’s Bazar, Roepstorff (2021) elucidates the nuances between “local” and “real local organizations”; the “very local,” or the “really really local” organizations in the Rohingya response, in reference to the organizations which were small in size with limited capacity and resources and originated in Teknaf or Ukhiya (Roepstorff 2021:9). In Bangladeshi "local" aid discourse broadly refers to international, national, and local agencies that have long been in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has been home to many international NGOs since its independence in 1971, where many national NGOs have engaged in the development sector for over 20 years (Sengupta 2021). Even if many of them lacked experience in refugee response (Barbelet 2019), they are now working with the Rohingya crisis (Patel 2017). For example, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) originated in Bangladesh in 1971 and now operates in more than ten countries. Despite its international presence, BRAC is considered a national Bangladeshi NGO within the humanitarian coordination of the Rohingya context due to its origins and policymaking influence in Bangladesh.
The IASCFootnote 7 Humanitarian Financing Task Team (HFTT) set up the “localization marker working group” in July 2016 after the consultation process and recommendations from the consensus reached by Grand Bargain signatories. In 2018, it agreed to develop and apply a “localization marker” Footnote 8 for measuring direct and indirect funding to local and national actors. The proposed definitions can be characterized to be of two types. First, local and national non-state actors refer to relief organizations with headquarters that operate in their own aid recipient country, including the National societies of Red Cross and Red Crescent, which are not affiliated with an INGO. Second, national and sub-national state actors refer to the state authorities of the affected aid recipient country engaged in relief at the local or national level (e.g., RRRC in Bangladesh). Additionally, other types of organizations emerge in the discussion, for example, internationally affiliated organizations, which are affiliated to an international organization through inter-linked financing, contracting, governance, and decision-making systems. However, this category does not include local and national organizations that are part of networks, confederations, or alliances (OECD 2017; Van Brabant and Patel 2017). For instance, INGOs in Bangladesh can easily re-design their organizational structure and nationalize their country offices by a confederation structure. In this way INGOs legitimize and entitle them to receive direct funding agreed in Grand Bargain. One of the local practitioners explains:
International organizations can easily nationalize in Bangladesh with the confederated structure of their country office if they have 25 Bangladeshi board members in their country offices and are registered as per the guideline of NGO registration by NGOAB. INGOs can easily claim them as national NGOs and become eligible for direct funding committed in the Grand Bargain. However, it is not a good way of promoting localization. (Participant 3, Local actor)
Moreover, southern-based NGOs include those whose headquarters are not in an OECDFootnote 9, and DACFootnote 10 member countries (Van Brabant and Patel 2017) and carry out operations outside the aid recipient country in which they are headquartered and are not affiliated with an international NGO (OECD 2017). In this way, the same organization can be classified as a national organization when carrying out operations within the country of origin. BRAC from Bangladesh could be an example of a southern-based organization, but it acts as a national agency when it responds in Bangladesh. Conversely, when it works in other foreign countries, it can be categorized as a regional or international organization (Van Brabant and Patel 2017. Additionally, as Bangladesh has prevented the acknowledgment of refugee-led response, Rohingyas are not considered local actors in this context (Wake and Bryant 2018), and neither have the recognition as humanitarian citizenship (Slim 2021a). Nevertheless many Rohingya-led organizations, youths, and social advocacy groups working in the camps have limited space to work as local actors. Notwithstanding being the main affected population in the crisis, Rohingyas neither have any representation in the sector meetings nor have they been consulted by the humanitarian service providers (CPJ and X-BORDER 2021).
In conclusion, the review of the reports and interviews revealed that Bangladeshi CSOs, who are self-evidently part of the "local" category, have experienced inequalities in their partnerships with international actors but at the same time, are being forced to compete against each other for entering in such partnerships. However, the overall category of “local” is contested, and there is constant negotiation over who is included as a “legitimate local.” Moreover, while continuous negotiations are underway on shaping the notion of “local” in humanitarian space, which directly affects the means of actualizing localization, the most significant challenge is the exclusion of the affected population, Rohingya, from the space of humanitarian action.
Discussing the local capacity: a unique asset or in need of capacity building
In the localization agenda, local capacity is considered one of the main assets in enhancing the complementarity and partnership. Therefore, one of the essential capacities of LNGOs is to consider their “local knowledge,” which should be prioritized in designing the Rohingya response. Concurrently, the capacity of LNGOs is constantly portrayed as in need of capacity building in order to realize their role in partnerships. Practically, rather than providing capacity building for LNGOs, INGOs tend to poach their best staff to work for them (Barbelet 2019; COAST 2018b). In the Rohingya response, many local staff with local knowledge shifted from local NGOs to international ones for better salaries and opportunities, further blurring the lines between local and international (Barbelet 2018). Regardless of considering the local offices of INGOs with the majority of local staff as “local capacity” (Wall and Hedlund 2016), the short-term hiring processes, however, undermine the capacity of local NGOs by preventing them from building on past project outcomes or maintaining trained staff in their ongoing programs (Wake and Bryant 2018).
Another aspect of capacity, stemming from a slightly different understanding, is the ability to adhere to certain general humanitarian norms and values such as independence and do no harm, principles such as core humanitarian standards, and approaches such as right-based and people-centered approaches should be grounded on comprising protection of space in the Rohingya response (Barbelet 2018). However, most local organizations are not purely humanitarian, adhering to the core humanitarian principles (Labbé and Daudin 2015; Roepstorff 2020b; Schenkenberg 2016; Wall and Hedlund 2016). In general, local and national actors find the application of several of the principles challenging, and it has been argued that there is no situation where humanitarian action is entirely principled (Hilhorst and Schmiemann 2002; Schenkenberg 2016). For the local actors, engaging with the religious, economic, and political affiliations regarding the root causes of conflict is natural. Likewise, Bangladeshi LNGOs are often highly politicized as many are under the patronage of different political parties and ministries. Thus, many local actors cannot segregate their activities from partisan politics, advocacy, or expressions of solidarity. In this regard, Cox’s Bazar can be perceived as a politically and socially conservative district and a hardworking area for CSOs seeking to promote progressive social rights (ADSP 2020).
In Bangladesh, a response from local faith-based organizations (Muslim charity groups) was significant at the beginning phase of the refugee exodus (Lewis 2019). However, later, Bangladeshi government suspended several faith-based NGOs and Muslim charity activities (Ansar and Khaled 2021; Lewis 2019), claiming they pose threats to state security considering the radicalization of Islamic terrorist groups in the camps. In the opposite view, Patel (2017) observed that,
Most national civil society organizations consider themselves more than just service deliverers as of the governance dynamics in their country. A connection to a political party is not an automatic indicator that the agency will not be willing or able to adhere to humanitarian principles. Political connections may be used to protect the integrity of the relief operation (Patel 2017:24).
It is challenging to consider the extent to which local and national actors adhere to humanitarian principles since the role of local actors is unobserved and, therefore, less accountable for the principles than the international actors that explicitly build their agendas on them (Fast and Sutton 2018). Furthermore, when the humanitarian space is understood as an arena where humanitarian action takes place in the “everyday realities” (Hilhorst and Jansen 2010; Lewis 2019), the humanitarian action is not predetermined primarily by humanitarian principles. Instead, it derives from how the service delivery conditions in crises are shaped in everyday practice (Sezgin and Dijkzeul 2015). Therefore, one can argue that principled humanitarian action in its traditional sense succumbs to the localization agenda if the local capacity and contextualized knowledge are prioritized.
In this regard, Wake and Bryant (2019) found few respondents from INGOs and UN agencies who criticized LNGOs’ resistance to assimilating into the formal humanitarian system for not adhering to its normative values and expectations (Wake and Bryant 2018). On the contrary, some argue that neutral humanitarianism is not ethically desirable as legally, morally, or ethically as one can take sides for good reasons and still be humanitarian (Slim 2021b). At the same time, it is noteworthy that the international community involved in the Rohingya response, whether UNHCR or IOM, never took a strong and principled stance to protect the Rohingya rights regardless of their status as “refugees” or as “forcibly displaced” people (Van Brabant et al. 2021). International NGOs and UN agencies acknowledged limitations in their capacity regarding mastery of local languages, being geographically proximate enough, and understanding the local communities, which guided them to rely on the capacity of local actors to build the entry points during emergencies (Wake and Bryant 2018). Thereby the capacity of local NGOs increased due to the complementarity and partnership with INGOs. However, one of the respondents in the interview postulates that
NGO Platform is a body of over 130 INGOs working in the humanitarian Rohingya response. Any organization for its membership needs to be onerous to the forum’s ethical values and obligations and follow the principles in its membership form. (Participant 9, local practitioner)
In this way, local capacity can be enhanced through the complementarity and partnership with the international organizations for dealing with humanitarian action in a principled manner. Even in the Grand Bargain, the partnership has been elucidated to reinforce the local capacities and not replace them. Lough et al. (2021), in this regard, ponder the risk grounded with the direct control of programming in the hostile operating environment with the government in the Rohingya context — as any handover of power to local NGOs would provoke a negative response for the government resulting in further challenges on the already tight humanitarian space (Lough et al. 2021).
Overall, the analysis of the reports and interviews revealed the multiple negotiations and dilemmas concerning the local capacity revolved around three main issues. First, international organizations’ appreciation of knowledge and capacities in local organizations but reluctance to build the capacity in support of complementarity instead attract the knowledgeable staff to be employed by INGOs. Second, there is a continuous negotiation around local organization` (im) possibility to adhere to the traditional humanitarian principles and thus, be firmly integrated with the humanitarian system while rigidly embedded in the country`s political, social, and religious fabric. Here, when defined based on humanitarian principles, the negotiation around the humanitarian space tends to work against the inclusion of local organizations through complementarity and partnerships.
Hostile operating environment: negotiating localization in a shrinking humanitarian space
The third negotiation concerning humanitarian space and localization in Rohingya response that emerged in our analysis was the hostile operating environment imposed by the Bangladeshi government, both towards the Rohingya, humanitarian organizations, and civil society organizations at large. Undeniably, the government`s short-term strategy for Rohingya treatment is focusing on voluntary repatriation, and the government views the crisis with fear and uncertainty as- if the Rohingyas have a better life in the camps, they will never return to Myanmar. Since the only government strategy is repatriation, the humanitarian space is negotiated between the state and the international agencies while the humanitarian citizenship of the affected Rohingya population is ignored.
The exclusion of the Rohingya from negotiations in the humanitarian space is also actively advanced by the government in restricting both the local and international activities with the affected population. The sheer scale and concentration of the crisis in Bangladesh have motivated Bangladeshi authorities to limit both Rohingya rights and the humanitarian space (Lough et al. 2021). A report from the International crisis group (2019) states how the Bangladesh government`s restrictive policies affect the humanitarian response (ICG 2019). Bangladesh`s restrictive policies include- relocating thousands of Rohingyas to the remote fragile island in Bhasan char (ADSP 2020), forbidding cash-based aidFootnote 11, denying the Rohingya refugees legal employment rights (CPJ and X-BORDER 2021), and allowing humanitarian access to the camps only between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. (Hatdash 2021). Furthermore, claiming to enhance state security, Bangladesh built barbed wire fences around the camps (Lough et al. 2021; Sullivan 2021), aiming to control the perimeters of Rohingyas.
The Bangladeshi government also restricts and controls which INGOs are allowed to enter the country (Van Brabant et al. 2021). Additionally, the government has exercised several measures to restrict NGO activities in the camps. For example, in 2019, the parliamentary standing committee on the foreign ministry of Bangladesh banned 41 NGOs from working at Rohingya camps (Sengupta 2021). Besides, the humanitarian actors face direct and indirect threats to NGO operations, delayed project approvals, and increased surveillance and scrutiny of the camp projects and staff (ibid.). The Bangladesh Parliament passed the controversial foreign donations (voluntary activities) regulation act 2016 (Act no. 43)Footnote 12, which regulates the work and activities of foreign-funded NGOs. Eventually, the global civil society alliance (CIVICUS)Footnote 13 alleged that Bangladesh’s new foreign donations law is in breach of international norms and agreements, and it will have serious negative consequences for Bangladeshi civil society and prevent NGOs from undertaking their essential and legitimate work. Furthermore, the draft Volunteer Social Welfare Organizations (Registration and Control) Act 2019 has raised serious concerns about the civic space of NGOs delivering mandates independently. Also, the Digital Security Act 2018 is used against media and Civil Society groups to curtail their freedom of speech and expression (Sarkar 2020). In the Rohingya response, the foreign NGOs seeking to work in Bangladesh must go through the FD6 and FD7 forms registration process with the NGO Affairs Bureau of Bangladesh (NGOAB)Footnote 14 to be allowed to operate in the camps (Wake and Bryant 2018). Any entity using foreign funding must fill out lengthy foreign donation forms, so-called FD6s for involvement with development projects and FD7s for emergency response projects (Sullivan 2018). Moreover, each application is labor-intensive and requires a detailed budget and material information, target beneficiaries, and geographical level, including the Union level budget and activities to be clarified. The approval, nevertheless, takes several weeks and is subject to changes by government authorities. One of the participants stated that:
At the end of March 2021, a massive fire broke out in Kutupalong Balukhali camp in Cox’s Bazar, where many Rohingya died, and around 12000 shelters were destroyed and damaged. Those Rohingyas became homeless immediately, but it took almost four months for the project approval to make a shelter for those homeless people. (Participant 4, local practitioner)
Notably, any project with FD7s cannot be approved for more than six monthsFootnote 15 at a time. Exceptionally, the UN-funded JRP (joint response plan) can be operated for a maximum duration of twelve months. Furthermore, the current directives stipulate that any organization with any FD7 project must submit a separate project proposal for the FD6 project, where 25% to 30% of the total project fund of any FD7-funded project for Rohingya camp is allocated for host communities in Cox Bazar. This aligns with other refugee-hosting countries` policies according to which host communities should be included in humanitarian actions, for instance, in the official government strategy regarding the humanitarian needs of the South Sudanese refugees living in Uganda (Dijkzeul 2021). Nevertheless, upon completion of the project, the project leader must submit the closure report, along with several levels of bureaucratic approvals and permissions, including an FD (Foreign donation) audit, the recommendations from the Upazilla Nirbahi Officer (UNO), and the Deputy Commissioner (DC) offices in Cox’s Bazar, which many project leaders find time-consuming and complex. Localization in such negotiated humanitarian space should not be assessed by benchmarking the overall goal and pledge made in different localization agreements (e.g., Grand Bargain, C4C); instead, nuanced understanding is needed for the space of action.
These negotiations concerning humanitarian space vis-á-vis state authority resonate with the tendency to constrain civic space in Bangladesh and elsewhere (Roepstorff 2020b). The strategies related to registration and detailed control, limits for foreign funding, as well as harassment, echo those used in other countries where, according to CIVICUS (ibid.) monitor, civic space is shrinking. However, there are some particularities over the humanitarian space in the specific case of Rohingya where restrictions are not only geared towards organization but most fiercely towards the affected Rohingya population who are excluded in the negotiation for the humanitarian space.