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National Actors

NAHAB member carrying out needs assessment during flash floods in Haor floods

As the number of national and local NGOs are increasing and the capacity of National Disaster Management Agencies (NDMAs) are growing, the influence of national actors in disaster and conflict response has become increasingly important.

Within the sector, there is a growing recognition that national NGOs and civil society organisations should lead future humanitarian responses for them to be more relevant, timely and effective.

ALNAP's latest research into national and local NGOs looks at the work they do in disaster and emergency response, from their perspective. What are their priorities and commitments? What motivates and guides their decisions and activities? This project aims to fill the current gap in understanding around what humanitarian action looks like in national NGOs’ own terms.

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National and Local NGOs

Governments in crisis-affected countries

Humanitarian networks

Event

22 Mar

Webinar: How can we better involve national actors in humanitarian coordination?

March 22, 2016

Online

Community Health Volunteers with Ebola prevention kits walking through West Point in Monrovia, Liberia

Blog

19 Feb 2015

Why ‘walking the walk’ on partnering with local organisations is so important

Lizz Harrison

National and Local NGOs

Through interviews with a wide range of organisations across the humanitarian sector – from DRR and WASH, to livelihoods and organisations of self-mobilised affected-people – in two countries with diverse needs and experiences (Colombia and Lebanon), this project produced two in-depth qualitative studies of the national and local NGO landscape.

To ensure this research reflected the perceptions of the NNGOs, ALNAP pioneered the use of Grounded Theory in the humanitarian field. This approach is more exploratory and hypothesis generating, rather than other approaches that test, validate or refute pre-established assumptions or hypotheses.

Local actors in Colombia in humanitarian response

Report / Study

01 May 2016

Learning from exposure: How decades of disaster and armed conflict have shaped Colombian NGOS

Luz Saavedra

ALNAP

Governments in crisis-affected countries

Residents and a police officers walk through a flooded street of Honda, Colombia

The governments of states experiencing humanitarian emergencies, and their partners at a local level, are a fundamental part of international, regional and national response. Yet their vital role and responsibility has long gone unrecognised by the international system. As disasters increase in scale and frequency, and states become more assertive and build their capacity, the role of national governments must be incorporated into thinking about emergency response, and overall performance of the international humanitarian system.

In 2014 ALNAP released Learning from disaster with the Disaster Response Dialogue, which explores how national disaster management authorities and other state actors learn and improve their humanitarian response activities with a view to identifying current practice, challenges that impeded learning and improvement and ways in which collaboration with others has assisted in overcoming these.

From 2013, the Disaster Response Dialogue - a platform bringing together governments and humanitarian organisations involved in international disaster response to improve trust and mutual cooperation - continued the work ALNAP had been doing with National Disaster Management Authorities. It is convened by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and Switzerland through its Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

Meeting/training

01 Jun 2005

Regional Workshop on Lessons Learned and Best Practices in the Response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami

Governement of Indonesia

Humanitarian networks

ALNAP is a humanitarian network, and our experience of the power of collective, coherent action has led us to focus on what are the important 'success factors' that make networks effective. In 2013 ALNAP published A networked response? Exploring national humanitarian networks in Asia, which explores a number of networks across Asia - from the very small and new to the more established with larger memberships. Importantly, it extracts some of the learning from this region into factors that anyone involved with starting, managing or participating in a humanitarian network can use. It covers issues such as smart use of funding; pooling resources; avoiding certain power dynamics; and ensuring the right leadership style.

In 2008, ALNAP, in collaboration with ODI and ICVA, refined an approach to analysing and strengthening humanitarian networks. This then fed into a project to strengthen the capacities of regional networks of actors in the global South. This has involved work with the Asian Disaster Reduction & Response Network (ADRRN) to help develop its new three-year strategy.