20th ALNAP Meeting (December 2006)
According to the TEC Synthesis report, “the TEC studies identified a number of constraints faced by international organisations, many related to national and local capacities. … Despite these impediments, international organisations have illustrated that local and national ownership of aid programmes can be supported through patient, discerning, context-sensitive approaches.” Yet clearly this is not either easy or consistently done, and there are ways in which performance can be improved. ALNAP has been working on an area that is crucial to this theme for several years already, that is the participation of crisis-affected people in humanitarian response. This is an essential but not sufficient practice that cannot lead humanitarian agencies as far as giving ownership of assistance programmes to local and national communities and structures.
