The localization debate is stuck between an international system that promised to shift power and a celebration of local responders who aren’t actually equipped by the system. Both assume the humanitarian world divides cleanly into “local” and “international,” and localization means moving resources from one box to the other. I propose a different frame involving hybrid institutions, drawn from four years of leading an organization that fits in neither box. Call it localization 2.0.

Its premise is simple: Localization 1.0 focused heavily on shifting money and recognition to local groups. The next iteration must build durable, accountable, locally rooted institutions that can hold power — not just receive funds. These hybrid institutions fuse local legitimacy with diaspora expertise and engage the international system from a standpoint of independence, not dependency.

What Sudan Taught Us About Hybrid Institutions

When war broke out in April 2023 and much of the international system evacuated, Sudanese local responders — most visibly the Emergency Response Rooms — ran kitchens, clinics, and protection networks in places no convoy could reach, showing that local groups do deliver.

But years inside the response, including working alongside the ERRs, taught me that courage, legitimacy, and operational reach do not automatically become durable institutional capacity.

The ERRs were indispensable during the acute phase, but they were not designed to carry the long-term burdens of workforce management, procurement, safeguarding, asset ownership, and fiduciary accountability.

As the conflict has become protracted, many ERRs have entered formal aid delivery arrangements without the governance systems, professional staffing, legal protections, or reserves of established organizations. This creates the obligations of an NGO without its institutional resilience, on top of volunteer burnout and unstable funding.

ERRs have not failed, but decentralized volunteer networks cannot reasonably serve as a permanent substitute for institutional capacity. A resilient humanitarian ecosystem needs both: community networks capable of rapid, last-mile response, and durable institutions capable of holding staff, systems, assets, and accountability over time.

Read the full article about hybrid institutions and localization by Yasir Yousif Elamin at Devex.