Humanitarian Complementarity: Rebalancing Power for a People-Centred System – “As local as possible, as international as necessary” (Think Piece)
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.
