About

Aimed at transferability and opportunities for scale-up, this project is grounded in proactive, operational solutions to barriers in funding, human resources, and power in partnership.

A Concern staff member examining a piece of paper with a table printed on it.

The purpose of the Beyond Barriers project is to examine the known, yet persistent barriers related to funding, human resources, and power in partnership in the humanitarian sector for the purpose of providing actionable learning and tools to shift toward a more locally-led response.

With funding support from USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance and implemented by Concern Worldwide, in partnership with a team of local researchers, the study focused its applied research activities across five distinct contexts, examining challenges related to funding, human resources, and the power dynamics that govern partnerships for local actors. Over the course of the project, Beyond Barriers collected an unprecedented body of evidence, including findings from five stakeholder workshops, 293 key informant interviews, and 34 focus groups with more than 300 community members across the five study contexts coupled with more than 800 survey respondents in 60 countries, all of which provide the foundation for the recommendations and operational tools developed through this project.

Since 2016, making humanitarian response more locally-led has been the subject of much international discussion. Despite this and a number of commitments and reforms by actors throughout the sector, progress remains slow. The Beyond Barriers project began in an effort by Concern Worldwide to better understand the cause for delay and provide actionable tools for actors throughout the system to use to push for a locally-led response that moves beyond rhetoric and define operational solutions to overcome the barriers to a more localized humanitarian response. To strengthen this operational focus, the project centers on localization challenges related to funding and human resources, with particular attention on power dynamics within partnerships. There is a clear need to analyze the opportunities and challenges that pertain specifically to these issues from an on-the-ground programming perspective, with a view to document, replicate, and scale up successes, as well as to better understand strategies for overcoming common challenges that are experienced across humanitarian contexts.

The obstacles faced by local and national organizations engaged in humanitarian response are inherently local and contextual but are impacted by broad international policies and systems. To best represent the diversity of these challenges, the project has highlighted five distinct country contexts (Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, NW Syria, and Somalia) that vary by geography, humanitarian crisis, conflict drivers, and current level of locally-led humanitarian response. The selection of contexts for comparative analysis was based on a range of contextual criteria aimed at maximizing the scope and replicability of research findings. The research in this project utilizes both qualitative and quantitative research methods that amplify the voices of local and national actors, condensing lessons learned into practical tools and recommendations for stakeholders at every level of the humanitarian system.

Project Phases

September 2021 - October 2024

Study Contexts & Focus

An infographic showing that humanitarian situation in the DRC and NW Syria is primary driven by conflict, while Bangladesh and Malawi are primarily driven by natural disaster. Somalia is driven by both conflict and natural disaster.

Funding

Funding for Local/National (L/NNGOs) will focus on three categories:

Human Resources

Human Resources will focus on three categories:

Power in Partnership

The question of power in partnership is a key component in achieving the transformative change required to achieve localization. Funding and Human Resources are two of the major structural themes that need to be addressed, however the issue of power and its impact on the relationships between different stakeholders must be at the foundation of the approach if there is to be the shift in mindsets, attitudes and behaviors required. The research project will approach this question from three starting points:

Who's Involved?