Localisation

Why Localisation in the Education Cluster?

The central position of local and national actors (LNAs) in humanitarian action has become more evident over the years and was reflected in the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit and the subsequent Grand Bargain agreements between global donors, LNAs and aid providers, who agreed to make humanitarian action as local as possible, as international as necessary.  The two cluster lead agencies (CLAs) of the Global Education Cluster, UNICEF and Save the Children, both signed up to the Grand Bargain commitments. The localisation agenda takes its strength from the evidence that participation of local actors in the design and delivery of humanitarian assistance increases efficiency, reduces costs of service delivery, and makes the whole process more accountable to the affected people.

Local and national actors usually have cultural and contextual knowledge that international actors may not have, and civil society actors can have greater acceptance by local communities with more access to affected populations than their international counterparts. Furthermore, local actors are almost always the first responders to a crisis and are continuously present in the affected areas long after international actors are gone. Therefore, building the institutional and technical capabilities of local actors will have high returns on investment and help closing the humanitarian financing gap, as humanitarian crises become increasingly protracted and recurrent globally.
 

GEC's Work on Localisation 

The Global Education Cluster (GEC) recognises that LNAs, including local and national NGOs (L/NNGOs) and local authorities, make up the majority (52%) of the membership of education clusters and working groups at the national and sub-national level in humanitarian contexts. They play a pivotal role in emergency education (EiE) response for the affected communities. For this reason, high engagement of LNAs in education clusters and their strategic advisory groups (SAGs) is essential if humanitarian action is to be more community-led and sustainable. Clusters have a central position in advancing localisation, given their existing membership of LNAs, but this must be done in a tailored way that varies based on the needs of the context. Therefore, the GEC has mainstreamed localisation practices into its work across the humanitarian programme cycle (HPC) to support education cluster coordinators in-country to progress localisation in their EiE response. This GEC webpage provides an overview of the GEC localisation support on offer and gives access to useful resources, recommended actions and training opportunities. The GEC is ready to advise education clusters in any of these processes upon request by contacting the GEC Helpdesk for more information via this email address.
 

A Conceptual Framework for Localisation in Coordination:

The following conceptual framework was developed by Child Protection Area of Responsibility (CP AoR) and the Global Education Cluster to highlight five key dimensions of localisation in coordination and possible recommended actions.

National education clusters are strongly encouraged to include, consult, and listen to national actors and local communities at all stages of the Humanitarian Programme Cycle, which is coordinated by the clusters. For example, LNAs should be included not only at the data collection stage of the Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO), but also at the analysis, interpretation and finalisation of the HNO. More details, with suggestions on how to make progress in each of these five dimensions can be found here.
 

Education Cluster Membership

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which supports collaboration between humanitarian clusters, runs a survey annually called the Cluster Coordination Performance Monitoring (CCPM) which aims to collect data on the performance of all humanitarian clusters. During this, clusters report back the number and type of cluster members. Looking at the 2023 CCPM data for Education Clusters, across all countries, the pie chart to the right shows the membership percentage of different types of actors. LNAs make up 52% of Education Clusters members at the country level, with 50% of these being L/NNGOs and 2% being local and national authorities. This level of local and national actor membership is consistent across Education Clusters for the past 4 years, with a slight membership increase from 48% in 2020 to 52% in 2023.
 

Local Leadership in the Education Cluster

At the country level Education Clusters are encouraged to include local and national organisations within their SAGs, with 100% of national SAGs including LNAs. This approach is mirrored at the global level where the GEC has a SAG that collectively works to advice and support the delivery of the GEC vision and strategy. Within the GEC SAG, there are several national organisations that provide the voice of local responders, provide valuable contextual analysis and support the roll-out of GEC initiatives at the country level. LNAs have been included in the GEC SAG since 2020. Additionally, several education cluster’s at the country level have established their own localisation task teams or collaborate with OCHA led groups. Education cluster members are encouraged to join and actively engage with these localisation task teams in the local context where they exist to advance local leadership.

As part of the ongoing efforts to build on the global goods that the localisation community is publishing, the GEC has produced and contributed to reports and papers to outline best practices for localisation in coordination and support advocacy efforts for more local leadership. The GEC supported the creation of a global localisation working group under the Global Cluster Coordination Group (GCCG) which collaborates on collective localisation advocacy and inter-cluster best practice sharing.

GEC: How to establish local leadership in Education Cluster Coordination (English) Strengthening Leadership of Local and National Actors in Humanitarian Coordination: Practical Case Studies- Global Cluster Coordinator Group Localisation WG (English, French & Spanish)

Humanitarian Reset Report: Local and National Actors Speak Out on the Future of the Humanitarian System- (English, French, Spanish, Arabic & Ukrainian)
 

Mainstreaming Localisation into Cluster Processes: HNO, HRP & Strategy

Given the annual nature of the Humanitarian Programme Cycle (HPC) there is a need to support education clusters to mainstream localisation into their HNOs, HRPs, HNRPs and Strategies. The following documents and webinars provide practical suggestions based on evidence on how you can do this in your context:

HNO & HRP Localisation Checklist (English)
HNO & HRP Localisation Checklist (French)
HNO & HRP Localisation Checklist (Spanish) 
Localisation Webinar: How to Mainstream Localisation into the HNO & HRP Processes (June 2022 - English)& Presentation in English, French & Spanish
Cluster Strategies: Checklist for Mainstreaming Localisation (English)
 

Accessible Humanitarian Coordination Guidance

Recognising the importance of increasing the engagement of local and national organisations in humanitarian coordination, the Global Education Cluster and Translators without Borders developed a quick guide for local and national actors to use to understand the humanitarian cluster approach and how they can be actively involved. The guide is available in 10 languages and accessible here: Arabic, Spanish, Bengali, Congolese Swahili, Kenyan Swahili, Kurdish - Sorani, French, Lingala, Portuguese, English 
 

Global Education Cluster Localisation Community of Practice

The Global Education Cluster has been running a Localisation Community of Practice Group since 2022 which has been a space where localisation practitioners and interested others come together to learn and share about localisation in humanitarian coordination. This group is open to anyone interested and willing to contribute, please click here to join the GEC Localisation Community of Practice Group

Future localisation events will be advertised through this group and examples of webinar recordings by the GEC LCoP and the GCCG LWG can be found below:

Localisation: Best Practice and Lessons Learned from Localisation in South Sudan (October 2022 - English 1hr 31mins)
Localisation: Best Practice and Lessons Learned from Localisation in Yemen (March 2023 - English 1hr 25mins)
GCCG Localisation Working Group LAC Webinar (November 2024- 1hr 28mins)
Localisation: Promoting Localisation through Humanitarian Coordination Mechanisms in the MENA Region (July 2023 - English 1hr 25mins)- Arabic & English PowerPoint
GCCG Localisation Working Group Francophone Webinar PowerPoint (Nov 2023)
 

Education Cluster Country Localisation Case Studies and Reports: 

The GEC wants to promote and share best practices and case studies of localisation work that has been progressed by education country clusters. These aim to inspire and support other country clusters promote localisation.

• South Sudan Education Cluster Local Co-Coordinator Case Study Report (English, French & Spanish 2024) & Video

• Northeast Syria Education Cluster Localisation Case Study (English 2022)

• Somalia Education Cluster Localisation Review (English 2018)

• Yemen Education Cluster Localisation Case Study (English 2023)

If you have an example or case study you would want to share, please use this template and save it in this folder and email the GEC Helpdesk to let us know.