Localization Beyond Rhetoric: Sharing Capacity, Shifting Power

The comfort zone of capacity building

Much of the localization agenda has gravitated toward capacity building. Local organizations are trained in financial management, compliance, safeguarding and reporting. Assessments identify gaps, action plans follow and workshops multiply. These efforts are often necessary and well-intentioned. But they also reveal a deeper limitation.

The prevailing narrative assumes that local actors are primarily constrained by a lack of skills or systems. In practice, many local and community-based organizations, particularly in conflict-affected settings, demonstrate strong adaptive capacity. They navigate political sensitivities, maintain community trust, and operate in volatile environments with limited resources. What they often lack is not competence, but access: to flexible funding, to strategic decision-making, and to influence over priorities.

In Myanmar, ethnic service providers and local civil society organizations have long delivered services under extreme constraints. Their strengths lie in contextual intelligence, legitimacy and acceptance — capacities that are not always fully reflected in standard assessments frameworks used by international organizations. Yet they are frequently positioned as implementers rather than strategic actors.

When capacity building is detached from power, it risks reinforcing existing hierarchies. Local actors are trained to deliver but not empowered to decide.

Moving toward capacity sharing

A more transformative approach to localization begins with capacity sharing. This reframes partnerships as relationships of mutual exchange rather than one-directional transfers.

Capacity sharing recognizes that different actors bring different strengths. Local organizations bring contextual knowledge, political awareness and social legitimacy. International organizations often hold access to donors, global advocacy platforms and risk mitigation mechanisms. Localization becomes meaningful when these strengths are shared.

In Myanmar, this shift is often driven by necessity. Access constraints, security risks and rapidly changing conditions mean that local partners are frequently best placed to assess feasibility, timing and risk. In several instances, decisions to adapt activities, pause implementation or shift geographic focus have been effectively led by local partners, while international roles focus on facilitation, donor communication and absorbing institutional risk.

Capacity sharing also includes co-creating project ideas and designs with local partners. In Myanmar, planning workshops and iterative design processes enable local actors to shape objectives, approaches and indicators based on lived realities. This strengthens relevance, feasibility and ownership from the outset.

At the same time, co-creation is not without practical challenges. Partners face difficulties related to formal registration, alongside a weak banking system in rural areas that complicates financial transfers and liquidity. Security risks and access constraints sometimes limits participation or requires repeated adaptation. These realities underscore that meaningful localization requires flexibility, patience and a willingness to adjust systems to the context.

Power: The question we avoid

Localization inevitably raises the question of power, and this is where meaningful progress is difficult. Power in aid systems is exercised through funding decisions, priority setting, compliance regimes and representation. It shapes who speaks, who signs and who is ultimately accountable.

Localization fades when local actors are entrusted with implementation risks but denied decision-making authority. It fades when accountability flows upward but remains weak toward communities. And it fades when international organizations retain strategic control while delegating operational responsibility.

In Myanmar’s highly politicized environment, these dynamics are particularly visible. Local partners often carry the greatest operational and reputational risks, yet have limited influence over funding terms, reporting requirements or program indicators. This raises a fundamental question: Is localization about shifting responsibility, or shifting authority?

If the answer stops at responsibility, localization offers efficiency at best. If it extends to authority, it demands structural change.

Following the money

The gap between localization rhetoric and reality is most visible in financing. Despite global commitments, only a small proportion of funding reaches local organizations directly. What does reach them is often short-term, tightly earmarked and governed by compliance systems designed for much larger institutions.

In Myanmar, efforts to expand decision-making space for local partners are frequently constrained by short project cycles, delayed disbursements and rigid budgeting structures. Historically, overhead caps limit investment in staff, systems and organizational resilience. In response, Helvetas has begun sharing overhead costs with local partners to support institutional sustainability, an approach increasingly recognized and demanded by donors.

These experiences point to a broader truth: Localization cannot be sustained without resource flexibility and systemic adjustments in financing models. Shifting resources is not simply about increasing percentages; it requires direct, multi-year funding, fair cost recovery and shared risk frameworks that do not transfer liability downward.

What INGOs and donors must unlearn

Meaningful localization requires unlearning deeply embedded practices.

For international organizations, this includes questioning the assumption that proximity to donors equates to superior judgment. It means sharing ownership of relationships, narratives and strategic choices. Accountability must be understood as a shared responsibility rather than centralized control.

For donors, it requires confronting risk aversion disguised as fiduciary responsibility. Supporting local leadership inevitably involves uncertainty, but so does any effective engagement in complex contexts. Simplified compliance, harmonized reporting and context-appropriate standards are not concessions — they are prerequisites for impact.

Myanmar illustrates both the urgency and the difficulty of this shift. Localization is not optional in such contexts; it is often the only viable pathway. Yet systems remain slow to adapt.

What local leadership actually requires

Local leadership is not achieved through declarations or pilot projects. It is enabled through everyday decisions about authority, resources and trust. Experience from Myanmar suggests that locally led development requires attention to six interrelated dimensions:

• Decision-making at the lowest appropriate level: Local actors should be empowered to make decisions on programming, timing and adaptation. In Myanmar, community-based organizations often have superior access and situational awareness, allowing faster responses to security and contextual changes. Trusting local judgment rather than relying solely on centralized approvals has proven critical to relevance and effectiveness.
• Shared risk and accountability: Local leadership only works when risk is shared, not transferred downward. Local partners frequently operate in high-risk environments, carrying security and reputational exposure. Joint approaches to compliance, risk mitigation and donor engagement help balance responsibility and enable more confident, adaptive decision-making.
• Flexible and sustainable resourcing: Funding must support institutions, not just activities. Flexible budgets, shared overhead and longer-term perspectives allow local partners to invest in staff, systems and coordination. Without such support, organizations remain locked into short-term delivery roles rather than sustained leadership.
• Recognition of contextual and political knowledge as a core capacity: In Myanmar, local actors’ knowledge informs when and how to engage, adapt or pause activities. Treating this expertise as central rather than supplementary strengthens program quality and risk management.
• Long-term, strategic partnerships: Trust and co-ownership grow through relationships that extend beyond single projects. Longer-term engagement enables the learning, honest dialogue and shared problem-solving conditions necessary for local leadership in protracted and complex contexts.
• Co-creation of project ideas and design: Early involvement of local actors enhances relevance and feasibility. In Myanmar, co-design leads to more realistic and context-sensitive programs, while also revealing practical challenges such as registration barriers, weak banking systems and access constraints.

Local leadership is not a single intervention. It is the consistent integration of these dimensions into everyday practice through choices that redistribute authority, recognize diverse forms of capacity, and align resources with local realities.

Localization is a choice

Experience from Myanmar shows that local actors already possess the skills, knowledge and contextual understanding needed to lead, while also benefiting from ongoing support in areas such as systems, compliance and adaptive management. The real opportunity lies in the willingness of those with power to share authority, and of those controlling resources to enable it in practice.

About the Author

Dr. Prabin Manandhar is the Country Director at Helvetas Myanmar and the former Country Director of Helvetas Nepal.