Author(s)
Cécile Le Grix
Podcast
Rethinking power in “aid” and overturning the system, Bibbi Abruzzini, Clarisse Sih, Forus, 2025
At a time when traditional aid channels are becoming stagnant and funding is increasingly scarce, another phenomenon is occurring: global civil society is reclaiming its power, reframing the narrative and challenging aid models. For this podcast, Forus met with Deborah Doane to explore how to transform the donor landscape for greater justice.
Reports
Persevere, adapt, or reinvent oneself in the face of adversity. What capacity for action do international solidarity organisations have in a political and geopolitical context that calls their legitimacy into question? Coordination Sud, OngLAB, 2025
This study examines the positions and approaches of international solidarity organisations (ISOs) in the face of a rapidly changing international context. Based on the testimonies of the ISOs themselves, this study brings together the perspectives of many French organisations, revealing their perceptions, analyses, difficulties and new practices.
https://www.coordinationsud.org/wp-content/uploads/Rapport-final_version-web-1.pdf
International solidarity at risk: Impact of budget cuts on official development assistance, Coordination Sud, 2025
Since 2024, 94% of French NGOs have been affected by funding cuts, leading to a reduction in activities, the discontinuation of certain projects and job losses in France and abroad. This study reveals the consequences of funding cuts on international solidarity organisations.
The Humanitarian Reset Examined: a strategic briefing for NGOs, ICVA, 2025
Developed by ICVA, this resource aims to support NGOs in understanding and engaging with the ongoing IASC Humanitarian Reset, a reform initiative intended to help reshape the humanitarian system.
The fading of the Humanitarian Reset: How donor governments and fair financing models could save reforms, Ralf Südhoff & al., CHA, 2025
This report analyses the progress and obstacles to reform, presents a fair share model for international humanitarian budgets, and argues why donors, the UN and NGOs must change course quickly to take advantage of the new momentum for humanitarian reform and prevent an even more profound crisis in humanitarian aid.
https://www.chaberlin.org/en/publications/the-fading-of-the-humanitarian-reset/
Aid sector in transition: Challenges, ethics and adaptation, Uma Narayanan, Practice paper: Reflections from the Global South, CWSA, 2025
This practice paper draws from the lived experiences of over 450 aid professionals – captured through a sector-wide survey and a six-part webinar series. The initiative created space for national actors, particularly from crisis-affected contexts to voice how these shifts are unfolding on the ground. Many global debates on accountability and aid sector in transition remain inaccessible to frontline practitioners – hindered by time zones, language barriers, limited access, and lack of representation. This paper seeks to bridge that divide, bringing forward the insights, challenges, ethical tensions, and urgent calls to action from aid workers across the Global South
https://alnap.cdn.ngo/media/documents/Practic_Paper_May_25.pdf
From “ego-systems” to “ecosystems”: Renewing humanitarian action, The Advisory Panel on the Future of Humanitarian Action, 2025
The Advisory Panel on the Future of Humanitarian Action brings together leaders and thinkers from across the humanitarian ecosystem to chart a path toward a more legitimate, locally led, and politically grounded system of aid. Its vision paper challenges the status quo of a global humanitarian architecture that has become overly centralised and self-perpetuating, calling instead for a shift from an ‘egosystem’ to an ‘ecosystem’ – one that recognises, supports, and protects the many existing networks of solidarity already responding to crisis.
https://media.odi.org/documents/FHA_Advisory_Panel_vision_paper_Nov_2025_2.pdf
Towards a UN Convention on International Development Cooperation, IBON, 2025
This paper makes the case for a fundamental transformation of international development cooperation (IDC). It argues that Official Development Assistance (ODA) or foreign aid, traditionally framed as benevolent assistance from the Global North to the Global South, must instead be understood in the context of colonialism and ongoing systemic injustice. International development cooperation must be decolonised and reframed as reparations for historical injustices and a collective obligation to global justice and solidarity.
Rethinking Development Funding: A call for decolonization and empowerment, Nana Afadzinu, WACSI, 2025
Development funding is a complex and often contentious issue. Several key questions often emerge: Whose philosophy drives funding? Which development goals are being prioritised? Is funding alone sufficient to address development challenges? Who defines these challenges and who provides the solutions? These questions are vital as they lie at the heart of the issues faced by civil society actors, particularly those from the Global South.
https://wacsi.org/rethinking-development-funding-a-call-for-decolonisation-and-empowerment/
Reckoning and renewal: A future-ready humanitarian system, Suleiman Abdullahi, Damian Lilly, Lydia Poole, 2025
With Grand Bargain 3.0 coming to an end in October 2026 and in view of the rapidly changing humanitarian landscape, the Grand Bargain Ambassadors commissioned this independent Think Piece to inform reflections on the future of the process and its platform. The Think Piece provides a strategic foresight analysis of future humanitarian challenges and humanitarian financing and reform initiatives. It uses a stress testing approach to explore how the humanitarian system might respond to growing pressure and examines whether the architecture is robust enough for what may lie ahead.
What crisis affected communities need from a humanitarian reset: A guide based on two years of conversations with people on the front lines of crisis, Ground Truth Solutions, 2025
What does humanitarian assistance look like in a world with less money, less global solidarity and ever-increasing numbers of people in need? Over two years and across 12 countries, Ground Truth Solutions held more than 34,000 conversations with people experiencing crisis to find out what they want and need humanitarian action to do for them. They offer some clear priorities that should help us navigate this funding crisis.
Futures-Thinking: Futures, Peacebuilding, Participation, Conflict, Decolonial, Gelila Enbaye, GPPI, 2025
Futures-thinking encompasses a range of methods, tools and practices designed to explicitly engage with possible and desired futures. Both external experts and conflict-affected communities use futures-thinking for analytical purposes and to drive societal transformation in conflict contexts. Increasingly, it is being researched for its value in peacebuilding for conflict prevention and resolution. This entry also examines divergent perspectives on decolonization in the futures-thinking literature.
https://gppi.net/assets/Enbaye-29-Jan-2025-Futures-Thinking-PostColH.pdf
Under Pressure: How INGOs are responding to the aid funding crisis and what it reveals about the fragility of localization commitments, NEAR, 2025
This review examines how INGOs have been responding to funding challenges, looking at what they are doing (or failing to do) to support their local and national partners. It highlights both good and bad practices, asking whether INGOs are upholding their localisation commitments or resorting to self-preservation.
Humanitarian Change – the Art of the Possible, IDS, 2025
Now it is widely accepted that assistance should be based on partnership with those affected. International humanitarianism is now tasked with renewing both its ethics and its strategies. Integrating communities into a system that has neglected them calls for more than just introducing new tools or vocabulary. It does not mean only adding another layer to localisation policy or to methods of community engagement. It calls for a new humanitarian architecture that is rooted in the agency of crisis-affected people, open to multiple and diverse traditions of humanitarian practice, and able to provide accountability to all parties. This summary note explores elements of what this re-engineering could look like in practice.
Humanitarian action under pressure: Impact of cuts, scenarios and principles moving forward, Start Network, 2025
In 2025, the humanitarian system is facing major disruption, led by the sudden dismantling of USAID and the suspension of most of its aid, which previously made up 40% of global humanitarian funding. This has triggered further cuts from other donors at a time of rising needs caused by conflict, climate emergencies and widespread violations of International Humanitarian Law. Drawing on ongoing research and the experience of the Start Network, this briefing outlines the impact of funding cuts on crisis-affected communities, examines how humanitarian organisations and the broader system are responding, and explores possible scenarios for the future of aid. It concludes with Start Network’s recommendations for action.
Humanitarian complementarity: Rebalancing Power for a People-Centred System, Think Piece, ICVA, 2025
The global humanitarian system is at a breaking point. Needs are rising, yet funding has collapsed at unprecedented scale. Business as usual is no longer acceptable or viable. A fundamental shift is needed: from competition to collaboration, from international leadership to local leadership with international support, and from project delivery to people-centred outcomes. This paper proposes humanitarian complementarity as the organising framework for a more effective, equitable, and sustainable system. It focuses primarily on NGO inter-complementarity and UN/NGO complementarity, not necessarily looking to establish an overall blueprint for the system. The ideas presented are to provoke discussion, and the preliminary recommendations will be further elaborated in a forthcoming series of ICVA roundtables.
https://www.icvanetwork.org/uploads/2025/10/Complementarity-Paper-02.12.25.pdf
Transformation Futures, CDA, Peace Direct, Search for Common Ground, 2025
In this resource, CDA, Peace Direct, and Search for Common Ground share the various transformative outcomes that we have seen through supporting transition processes over the past eight years of collaborative learning and applied research. Evidence shows that there is no “one right way” but rather multiple pathways that teams, organizations, projects, and partnerships can take to ensure the outcome of a transition is culturally and contextually relevant and does not exacerbate power dynamics at the local level. The hope is that this resource will help expand teams’ imaginations as to what is possible through a transition process and to connect teams to stories, examples, and resources to help them navigate their own process.
https://www.cdacollaborative.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Transformation-Futures-report-v2.pdf
Pages
P.65-69