Responding to a response: Lessons in localisation from Ukraine, Geneva HNPW, 6 May 2024

Humanitarian response to the Ukraine crisis in Eastern Europe proved once again that local actors are not only the first to react and the last to leave, but also best placed to respond to the needs of their communities.

Registration: https://bit.ly/hnpw-2

As local organisations, civil society, businesses, and the private sector had to rapidly mobilise their resources to support humanitarian response, the need to turn localisation from theory into practice became more crucial than ever.

With the crisis still ongoing, we need to look back and learn from the freshest experience – in order to provide better support to local
humanitarian actors, who continue to work on the ground despite burnout, limited capacities, and other challenges.

Much thinking has already been done on this topic by Ukrainian civil society. We will start our session with a brief presentation of the Alliance of Ukrainian CSO’s draft Strategy for ensuring local leadership in responding to humantarian crises and setting the foundation for recovery processes in Ukraine.

This will be followed by a quickfire round of « Key Achievements » from our panellists, before moving into smaller groups to share experiences and look at lessons learnt in more depth, as we ask ourselves « How can we do this better going forward? ».