” When partnerships are described as rooted in in-person relationships, or even friendships built over years of shared work, they are often treated as unprofessional. Formal calls for proposals, legally binding contracts, audits, and controls are assumed to be more objective. Through this lens, language around building relationships can seem informal or suspicious. “
In part one of this blog, we argued that participation, as currently practiced in the humanitarian sector, cannot lead to inclusion. In the sector, participation has become a way to validate decisions already made outside displacement-affected communities and preserve donor control. Despite increased commitments to localisation, research indicates that these efforts have not translated into meaningful engagement for local actors.
What we have witnessed is that participation often takes place after strategic priorities and major decisions regarding the programme focus have already been determined. Displacement-affected communities are normally invited into consultations or co-design processes, but their role is limited to validating decisions or fitting into pre-conceived frameworks rather than determining them.
Rejecting participation as a pathway to inclusion was only the starting point. The harder question we must ask is what must replace it.
“Inclusion is not something communities should be invited into, it must be structurally led by them and the only way to achieve this is through investing in genuine human relationships.”
The current humanitarian system was built to manage donor risk and preserve institutional systems. This helps explain why participation repeatedly fails. It asks displacement-affected communities to align with structures that were never designed to be accountable to them.
Inclusion is not something communities should be invited into, it must be structurally led by them and the only way to achieve this is through investing in genuine human relationships.
How bureaucracy replaced trust
The sector’s preference for systems over relationships has deep roots. Humanitarian governance has inherited a colonial infrastructure built to manage interests from a distance. Colonial governance relied heavily on documentation and surveillance.
When donors insist that every interaction with partners be governed through applications, reports and receipts that are externally validated, that paperwork becomes a prerequisite for trust. Furthermore, this reduces the incentive to invest in building an in-person relationship with a partner as it is more comfortable for donors to rely on paperwork and compliance systems rather than to engage with the intentionality and proximity that genuine relationships require in order for real trust to be built.
It is more comfortable for donors to rely on paperwork and compliance systems than to engage in the intentionality and proximity that genuine relationships require.
Cohere’s recent position paper on trust building and due diligence features interviews from refugee and host community leaders who described diverting scarce time and money into producing reports that satisfy donor expectations, while the actual impact and value of their work could not be captured through paperwork alone.
Sector reviews mention how compliance and due diligence requirements are a major structural barrier, with local partners reporting that risk assessments and reporting obligations create additional bureaucratic burden that distracts from frontline work.
Those fluent in donor language and able to produce polished paperwork are labelled “credible,” while grassroots leaders, often women, youth, elderly, LGBTQI groups operating under the radar for safety reasons, or leaders without formal registration, education, or English language, are sidelined despite their proximity and legitimacy.
The very mechanisms designed to ensure accountability often protect donors and intermediaries more than communities and essentially erode the social bonds that sustain an enabling environment for real trust and accountability within displacement-affected communities.
Why the sector mistrusts relationships
When partnerships are described as rooted in in-person relationships, or even friendships built over years of shared work, they are often treated as unprofessional. Formal calls for proposals, legally binding contracts, audits, and controls are assumed to be more objective. Through this lens, language around building relationships can seem informal or suspicious.
Distance, however, is not neutral. It is easier to impose burdensome reporting requirements when you do not know the people carrying them or what it takes to produce them. It is easier to condone extractive behaviour, including withdrawing funding due to an audit query, when accountability flows only upward.
Relationships, by contrast, create responsibility. When people work alongside one another and understand each other’s context and intentions, trust develops.
What the sector often dismisses as “unprofessional” or “too friendly” may in fact be more accountable. Friendship, understood not as sentiment but as reciprocity and shared responsibility, can create stronger accountability than any checklist.
Relationships as a structural alternative
If trust and accountability are rooted in relationships rather than compliance, then the conditions for inclusion are set long before any formal decisions are made. By the time a partner is deemed compliant and a proposal approved, power has already been shaped by how the donor or institution entered the relationship.
Inclusion begins at the point of entry, in how organisations choose to approach displacement-affected communities in the first place. It should begin with in-person interactions and approaching this with humility. When there is time spent building relationships, trust has the space to form.
Relationships are the foundation of accountability and cannot be treated as informal or secondary. It is within these relationships that leaders can articulate real pain points, challenges, priorities and what success would look like to them.
Cohere, and other organisations, are on an ongoing learning journey to embed these relationship-based principles into their models, creating enabling environments where priority setting and decision-making are led by displacement-affected communities and staff with lived experience of forced displacement.
Non-extractive inclusion is achieved through the slow, everyday work of building trust through in-person relationships, developing shared responsibility, and most importantly creating an enabling environment for those most affected to lead.
In part one of this blog, we argued that participation, as currently practiced in the humanitarian sector, cannot lead to inclusion. In the sector, participation has become a way to validate decisions already made outside displacement-affected communities and preserve donor control. Despite increased commitments to localisation, research indicates that these efforts have not translated into meaningful engagement for local actors.
What we have witnessed is that participation often takes place after strategic priorities and major decisions regarding the programme focus have already been determined. Displacement-affected communities are normally invited into consultations or co-design processes, but their role is limited to validating decisions or fitting into pre-conceived frameworks rather than determining them.
Rejecting participation as a pathway to inclusion was only the starting point. The harder question we must ask is what must replace it.
The current humanitarian system was built to manage donor risk and preserve institutional systems. This helps explain why participation repeatedly fails. It asks displacement-affected communities to align with structures that were never designed to be accountable to them.
Inclusion is not something communities should be invited into, it must be structurally led by them and the only way to achieve this is through investing in genuine human relationships.
How bureaucracy replaced trust
The sector’s preference for systems over relationships has deep roots. Humanitarian governance has inherited a colonial infrastructure built to manage interests from a distance. Colonial governance relied heavily on documentation and surveillance.
When donors insist that every interaction with partners be governed through applications, reports and receipts that are externally validated, that paperwork becomes a prerequisite for trust. Furthermore, this reduces the incentive to invest in building an in-person relationship with a partner as it is more comfortable for donors to rely on paperwork and compliance systems rather than to engage with the intentionality and proximity that genuine relationships require in order for real trust to be built.
It is more comfortable for donors to rely on paperwork and compliance systems than to engage in the intentionality and proximity that genuine relationships require.
Cohere’s recent position paper on trust building and due diligence features interviews from refugee and host community leaders who described diverting scarce time and money into producing reports that satisfy donor expectations, while the actual impact and value of their work could not be captured through paperwork alone.
Sector reviews mention how compliance and due diligence requirements are a major structural barrier, with local partners reporting that risk assessments and reporting obligations create additional bureaucratic burden that distracts from frontline work.
Those fluent in donor language and able to produce polished paperwork are labelled “credible,” while grassroots leaders, often women, youth, elderly, LGBTQI groups operating under the radar for safety reasons, or leaders without formal registration, education, or English language, are sidelined despite their proximity and legitimacy.
The very mechanisms designed to ensure accountability often protect donors and intermediaries more than communities and essentially erode the social bonds that sustain an enabling environment for real trust and accountability within displacement-affected communities.
Why the sector mistrusts relationships
When partnerships are described as rooted in in-person relationships, or even friendships built over years of shared work, they are often treated as unprofessional. Formal calls for proposals, legally binding contracts, audits, and controls are assumed to be more objective. Through this lens, language around building relationships can seem informal or suspicious.
Distance, however, is not neutral. It is easier to impose burdensome reporting requirements when you do not know the people carrying them or what it takes to produce them. It is easier to condone extractive behaviour, including withdrawing funding due to an audit query, when accountability flows only upward.
Relationships, by contrast, create responsibility. When people work alongside one another and understand each other’s context and intentions, trust develops.
What the sector often dismisses as “unprofessional” or “too friendly” may in fact be more accountable. Friendship, understood not as sentiment but as reciprocity and shared responsibility, can create stronger accountability than any checklist.
Relationships as a structural alternative
If trust and accountability are rooted in relationships rather than compliance, then the conditions for inclusion are set long before any formal decisions are made. By the time a partner is deemed compliant and a proposal approved, power has already been shaped by how the donor or institution entered the relationship.
Inclusion begins at the point of entry, in how organisations choose to approach displacement-affected communities in the first place. It should begin with in-person interactions and approaching this with humility. When there is time spent building relationships, trust has the space to form.
Relationships are the foundation of accountability and cannot be treated as informal or secondary. It is within these relationships that leaders can articulate real pain points, challenges, priorities and what success would look like to them.
Cohere, and other organisations, are on an ongoing learning journey to embed these relationship-based principles into their models, creating enabling environments where priority setting and decision-making are led by displacement-affected communities and staff with lived experience of forced displacement.
Non-extractive inclusion is achieved through the slow, everyday work of building trust through in-person relationships, developing shared responsibility, and most importantly creating an enabling environment for those most affected to lead.
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