Walk the Talk: Moving Forward Localisation in the Philippines thru Multi-Stakeholders Dialogue

Nearly a hundred representatives from local and national CSOs, INGOs, UN agencies, private sectors, and national and local governments virtually gathered in the Philippines via Zoom videoconference last June 10, 2021 for an inter-agency and multi-stakeholder dialogue to identify actions for a road map to localisation. This event was part of the humanitarian and development actors to move forward localisation commitments in the country.

Implementing the localisation commitment at the country-level was observed to have a slow progress ever since the launching of the Grand Bargain in 2016. One of its cores is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian action. With the involvement of local and national CSOs to various consultations which fore fronted the World Humanitarian Summit, donors and aid organizations all over the world aim to lead more advocacy of the Grand Bargain commitments at country-level.

One of the signatories’ initiatives is to map the state of localisation by administering dialogues which targets to raise more awareness of the Grand Bargain localisation commitments as well as documenting the good practices and areas of considerations to further understand country-level progress on the commitments set during the World Humanitarian Summit.

With this, as a global effort, the Philippines undertakes its dedication and responsibility taking bigger leap in promoting and advocating the Grand Bargain localisation commitments. Hence, the conduct of series of virtual dialogues to move forward localisation in the Philippines.

Ecosystems Work for Essential Benefits, Inc. (ECOWEB) is taking the lead in the process and Alliance for Empowering Partnerships (A4EP), as the 63rd signatory of the Grand Bargain has committed to support this meaningful event. In collaboration with UN OCHA, OXFAM Philippines and proactive support from the UN Resident Coordinator, the dialogue was organized to promote and institutionalize the implementation of Grand Bargain commitments on localisation and participation revolution. This is conducted with the support from the Center for Disaster Preparedness (CDP), Philippine Preparedness Partnership (PhilPrep) and Asian Preparedness Partnership (APP).

The virtual dialogues helped build the momentum by exploring synergies and connections with existing humanitarian coordination mechanisms, funders and Philippines INGO networks, private sectors, local and national CSOs, and national authorities – which are also given the spotlight to share and express their community-led programming, emphasis on local standards and feedback, and streamlined activities in facilitating strategic and community-based interventions. This way, developing a country-level action plan and tracking mechanism will be established to look into localisation potentials and hardships and how it can be brought up and reported to the international actors.

As a background, before the multi-stakeholders was held, a methodology was developed for the dialogue process which includes the dissemination of online survey questionnaires that was completed by 63 CSOs and private sectors and 15 INGOs and UN agencies. A community-level focus group discussion integrating the community score card process was also conducted and participated by 236 participants in the six regions from affected population of crisis in the Philippines.

The results of the FGD and survey were presented during the multi-stakeholder dialogue. The participants were then divided into eight groups, each of which focused on a different facet, commonly the Grand Bargain commitments and the steps that needed to be taken, with one group focusing on COVID-19’s impact. They were instructed to develop at least three key actions in each facet and categorize them as collective, strategic, operational, or agency-level.

The dialogue is a call to urge international and national governments to provide the space and resources necessary for local civil society to thrive and make longer-term platforms to collaborate various sectors and stakeholders to improve people’s living conditions, specifically affected communities, and complement development and humanitarian initiatives.

Gustavo Gonzales, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in the Philippines remarked that the localisation agenda is part of a very important transformation of aid architecture. He expressed that the imperative aid of localisation is fundamental in recognizing the capacities at the local to national level. He emphasized that complementation is an important aspect in investing to localisation.

“We are learning a lot and changing because we have been impacted by many crises. Now, we are moving from donor-recipient to more horizontal partnerships. We are transitioning from a silos to more participatory action which is part of the resilience-building. We are moving from vertical and centralized aid to localisation. We are moving from stand-along interventions… to platforms, to coalitions. Localisation agenda is also an agenda of complementarities between those from the grassroots to the rest! We complement each other.” said Gonzales.

It was emphasized during the plenary sharing that most of the local operations are in line with the community-driven development approach and involving the affected population in all process of project development as well as humanitarian processes. It was highlighted that capacity strengthening and development of the community populations are important commitments to make local efforts become sustainable.

Bong Masagca of People’s Disaster Risk Reduction Network (PDRRN) said that international actors should recognize and support on what are being asked from the existing local system, structures, culture and the likes which are also relevant to preparedness, response and recovery. He emphasized that there should be ensuring of accessible, equitable and quality assistance to all in need.

From the lens of civil society organizations, Atty. Padoman Paporo, an IDP leader from Marawi City who has been proactive in lobbying IDP rights with ECOWEB’s support, compensation and raising rehabilitation concerns of the Islamic City to the government, shared her reflections from the dialogue. She stressed about the importance of stakeholders’ consultation and assemblies and how this positively influenced Bangon Marawi CSO platform to heighten local responses.

“Stakeholders has to meet, assemble among themselves and talk about what we need and what we want to do in case of emergencies. During the Marawi experience, the CSOs strategized to come up with a platform and established hotlines so that people could have participation, especially the internally displaced persons.” said Paporo.

She highlighted about the survivor and community-led response (sclr) which she thinks is the best approach to give doable solutions to duty bearers and ensures engagement, coordination, and convergence in the local level.

Shem Guiamil of the BARMM Ministry of Social Services and Development expressed that there are a lot of enormous need happening in the country. He said that localisation is the way to definitely address the humanitarian needs as it come from time to time.

“We need to work on not just looking at the response side, but we need to anticipate that there are some issues that we will be facing. Resources may not be enough, LGUs and other local communities maybe responding but there are a lot of communities with less capacities that need external help. Everyone should be involved in the process in order for us to address the needs appropriately and reach the most vulnerable communities.” said Guiamil.

Med Villanueva, representative of National Anti-Poverty Commission – Victims of Disaster and Calamities highlighted that localisation means integration of all the kindness from the hearts if the international community, of governance, of us simple Filipinos in need.

“Involving us in the localisation project like this is involving the humanitarian aspect and the real meaning of living and loving as a person. We all have great ideas, but what happens within the next 24 hours, and the 24 hours thereafter calls for a commitment, calls for an action, calls for a nationalism and, more than that a recognition that life has meaning because we are able to stay united in helping one another. Let us go for a home run, let us go for local!” said Villanueva.

Veronica Gabaldon, Executive Director of Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation underscored that it is high time to operationalize and see localisation happening. She said that it should start at the very basic unit of the society and trusting their capacities to building their resilience.

“In the context of the private sector, where we have business continuity as a mechanism to make sure that our operations continue even in the face of disaster, it is important that the community is resilient on their own. To realize this, we have to focus on preparing them, capacitating them and all has been discussed today will come to play.” said Gabaldon.

Lot Felizco, Country Director of OXFAM Philippines iterated that there is so much to be done to make the commitments and principles get translated into actions that will really change practices and behaviors. She challenged the participants to commit on getting involved in advocating localisation and making it into concrete actions for the roadmap to take effect meaningfully. She expressed that moving forward localisation is a challenge that can only be directed towards us at a country level.

“While the global discussion is very important, this will only be meaningful if we are able to practice it at a country level to bring the discussion forward into more concrete and actionable resolutions. We are totally committed to carry on these conversations with you all so that we can drill down and make this roadmap meaningful and something that we can grasp and implement.” said Felizco.

Manja Vidic, Head of UN OCHA Philippines emphasized that localisation is about complementarities and not competition. She added that localisation is about partnership and relationship-building and not replacing one another. She talked about creating safe spaces for dialogues and coordination, and how are these significant in action planning and bringing this out to the international level.

“It goes to emphasize the trust, respect, and humility on all ends to make this happen. Creating safe spaces for open dialogue like this very vibrant one, we are glad that this process brought together and community of like-minded entities which is very important in the action planning. For OCHA, we support that we walk the talk especially when it comes to coordination the humanitarian country team sending support and facilitation to take on these recommendations from the action plan.” said Vidic.

Lastly, Regina Antequisa expressed her gratitude to all stakeholders, sectors and partners who have participated in the series of dialogue and for investing their time and commitment to push forward the localisation in the Philippines through an online dialogue. Amid the challenges and paradigm shift caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, she highlighted that even it was conducted online, everyone pushed through and continued joining the call to advocate, promote and further steadfastly the localisation in the country. As part of the global localisation movement, she recognized all the people affected by crisis’ capacities and trusting them is an empowering step to see that localisation can progress.

“As a local advocate of localisation at the global level, we assure to have more local voices to be heard. I am looking forward, in the Philippines, that we show how localisation can be done. Thank you so much A4EP, UN OCHA and OXFAM for this opportunity and trusting us as a local partner and we look forward for vibrant partnerships and make multi-stakeholders events happen in the coming period.” said Antequisa.

The learning and results from this process will be shared with the Grand Bargain Localisation workstream and the other signatories at the global level. We hope that this procedure would inspire and urge other countries to start their own localization processes. As highlighted by Padoman Paporo, “Nothing about us, without us!”, so let us walk the talk and make localisation move forward and keep going onwards!

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