Abstract
Localisation, as it aims to shift power in the humanitarian system, will involve the increased inclusion of local faith actors, those national and local faith-affiliated groups and organisations that are often first, and last, responders in crises and have been responding in humanitarian contexts for many years, but often in parallel to humanitarian coordination mechanisms. In primary research in South Sudan with local faith actors and international humanitarian actors, this article aims to examine the inroads and barriers to local faith actor involvement in the humanitarian system and the realisation of localisation with local actors such as these. The research is based on an ethnographic study in which researchers were imbedded in a humanitarian project that aimed to help bridge divides between local faith actors and the international humanitarian system. The findings are based on one-on-one and group interviews with 89 participants from a range of international and local, and faith and secular, organisations. Findings indicate that local faith actors are active in responding to crises and want to be linked to the humanitarian system, but they feel distanced from it and pigeonholed as local faith actors. Formalisation through the appropriate registration systems and then training and networking with the humanitarian system helped them build legitimacy and feel confident to participate in humanitarian coordination. International humanitarian actors can help bridge barriers by understanding and connecting with the local faith actors and challenging their own assumptions about who local faith actors are.
Highlights
As research and debate on religion and development have progressed over the last two decades (Bompani 2019), researchers have observed a ‘turn to religion’ among international aid actors
We suggest that capacity sharing exercises, such as Bridging the Gap (BtG), in which Local faith actor (LFA) can learn about humanitarian standards and humanitarian actors can learn from LFAs, are needed for localisation to be sustained and effective in the humanitarian system
LFAs have an invaluable role to play in humanitarian action As with other research showing the involvement of LFAs in humanitarian and development work (Wilkinson et al 2019; Greatrick et al 2018; El Nakib and Ager 2015), the LFAs involved in this project confirmed their ability to work with local communities and their commitment to their communities
Summary
As research and debate on religion and development have progressed over the last two decades (Bompani 2019), researchers have observed a ‘turn to religion’ among international aid actors. Local faith actors (LFAs), who are a diverse cohort (see typology of LFAs below), are less likely to form partnerships with international aid organisations, the more ‘local’ they are, as they are less likely to have co-opted the formal language of the international humanitarian system, including downplaying faith identities (Tomalin 2018) While these points still stand, more recent scholarship adds nuance to this by exploring the ways in which aid has never been truly “secular” (Haustein 2020; Wilkinson 2019), the influence of neo-colonial and Orientalising views of religions from development actors (Khalaf-Elledge 2020), and the influence of faith actors in playing different roles and shaping the boundaries between secular and religious spaces in aid (Tomalin 2020)
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