Participation is Not the Path to Inclusion

This is the first blog in a series examining the participation and inclusion of displacement-affected communities in the humanitarian sector.

In the humanitarian sector, participation has become a performance. INGOs and other intermediaries use it as proof of accountability and legitimacy to donors, but the way it is structured reveals a system built to preserve control and not properly include displacement-affected communities.

Especially now, when the sector is facing a crisis not only of funding but of relevance, “participation initiatives such as co-design workshops” and “partnerships with local actors” have been mainstreamed into strategies and funding proposals.

This ‘idea’ of participation is being used to demonstrate reduced operational costs and signal proximity to displacement-affected communities so as to remain competitive in an increasingly constrained funding environment.

However, participation, as it is currently practiced works on the assumption that displacement-affected communities must align to donor priorities. That starting point is the problem and it is why the entire concept of participation, as we use it today that needs to be dismantled, not improved, and replaced with a model that is led entirely by displacement-affected communities.

Refugee-led organisations (RLOs) and community-based organisations (CBOs) are often brought into participation spaces after strategic frameworks and budgets are fixed, asked to validate decisions they had no hand in making. 

Sometimes, the RLOs and CBOs may be invited to participate in the decision making of these strategic frameworks through co-design sessions. But, even with the best intentions, participation in this manner still cannot deliver genuine inclusion when the agenda is still expected to be aligned with priorities that are not from the community itself. 

A “shared” or “aligned” vision in this context is still top-down. Why should communities have to align with a donor’s framework at all? This form of participation” still remains extractive, serving institutional validation more than local leadership.

I have been in negotiations with donors that intend to fund displacement-affected communities. As a first step, they engage consultants to help them shape funding priorities through participatory consultations or co-design sessions. These sessions may even have a few representatives from RLOs and CBOs.

However, during those consultations, insights from these leaders are often steered and rewritten to fit Global North jargon and shaped to align with pre-approved frameworks. If (or when) their contributions are acknowledged, it is usually only as a way to validate decisions that were already made.

After these funding priorities are set, intermediaries are then brought in to lead the design of solutions. The use of intermediaries is usually justified by the donor’s lack of ‘capacity’ to work directly with local actors. RLOs and CBOs are again invited to co-design these solutions by the intermediary within that predetermined agenda, with the same consultant present to ensure their input still aligns with the donor’s original framework.

Even if it can be argued that local actors were involved in the process from the beginning, this is not participatory. The reality is that it was a tightly managed choreography designed to preserve power.

Furthermore, participation also comes at a cost, and that cost is almost entirely borne by local actors. Co-design demands unpaid labour, both intellectual and logistical.

Our partners often tell us how they have to cancel days of their work to attend donor workshops that provide no proper preparation materials, limited access to proper infrastructure to participate effectively especially when it is virtual and inadequate compensation. Attending these consultations is still important for them because they need to stay visible and they know it increases their chances of getting the funding.

Most importantly, continued participation like this reinforces the illusion that inclusion can be achieved through effectively facilitated co-design sessions with more experienced consultants or intermediaries, but this could not be further from the truth. 

What we are learning as an organisation is that participation and by extension inclusion cannot be treated as a workshop or series of consultations. It must be through a long-term relationship and a mindset shift with a willingness to be led by displacement-affected communities.

To move beyond this broken model, the sector must unlearn its instinct to co-design and to force RLOs and CBOs to align with donor priorities. That unlearning requires dismantling not just systems but institutional egos and interests. 

The fact is, the humanitarian aid system was designed to prioritise donor interests and not to cater for participation through shared decision-making or learning. It was built to manage donor risk and maintain institutional control. Participation or co-design sessions built on this foundation can only reproduce the same dynamics. 

When INGOs or consultants act as intermediaries inside this system, even with good intentions, they are still structurally positioned as gatekeepers. Participation becomes a checkbox to justify institutional legitimacy, not a pathway to shared decision-making or inclusion. That is why participation cannot be used as a pathway to inclusion.

Research highlights that 71% of local actors believe international organisations do not trust their expertise. Similarly, the OECD has acknowledged that donor compliance systems now act as barriers to meaningful participation.

Participation cannot be “fixed.” Co-design, no matter how well-facilitated or well-intentioned, cannot deliver inclusion if the premise is that communities must share or align with donor defined frameworks. They only make the process of validating those decisions more palatable.

Inclusion will not come from better workshops or more authentic consultations. It will come from rejecting the idea that displacement-affected communities should “participate” in systems designed without them.

The sector must stand back, unlearn, and be led entirely by displacement-affected communities. They do not need to be invited to align to donor priorities, donors need to be led by the realities and priorities defined by those communities.

However, this still raises more questions: if inclusion requires rejecting participation as we know it, then what takes its place? And furthermore, can participation, and by extension inclusion, ever happen within an institution? 

Meaningful participation and inclusion requires a level of flexibility and proximity that most institutional frameworks are not structurally designed to accommodate. Many INGOs and donors are bound by systems (internal and structural) that prioritise compliance.

Even when individuals within these institutions are committed to achieving some form of inclusive practice, the structures themselves often prevent it. As a result, attempts at participation can only be perceived as procedural. Achieving something different will require more than improved ‘participatory or co-design initiatives’ but a different way of working altogether.

– End of Part One –

This first part makes the case that participation as we know it cannot lead to inclusion because the model itself is built to preserve power and serve donor interests. But rejecting participation is only the starting point. In the next piece, we will explore what non-extractive inclusion could look like in practice through approaches rooted in long-term relationships with decision making that is led entirely by displacement-affected communities rather than shaped to fit donor frameworks.