Empower local communities for fairer global economy, Cafod urges government

Cafod has spoken in support of the government’s plan to shift overseas development aid towards ‘genuine partnership’ with locally-led initiatives, but warned that this alone will be insufficient to create a fair global economy, unless it is combined with action tackling the Global South debt crisis.

At the Global Partnerships Conference on international development, hosted in London by the UK and South African governments, Cafod convened a panel on 20 May with representatives of some of their local partner organisations from Sudan, South Sudan, and Myanmar.

Deputy prime minister David Lammy MP told the conference plenary on 19 May that the “changing international order” requires a “new approach” to overseas development aid.

The government cut aid spending by £1 billion in 2025. Aid to Africa will decline the most, by 56 per cent from 2024/25 to 2028/29, and Cafod has already reported devastating effects for some of the world’s most vulnerable people in countries such as South Sudan and DR Congo. 

At the conference, the government revealed plans to change the way the budget is spent to attempt to improve its impact despite the cuts.

“We are moving from the paternalism of the past to the partnerships of the future and championing the reforms required across the system,” Lammy said. “Making it fairer, more impactful and unblocking the finance needed to turbocharge development and climate action. 

“As an international community, too often we have failed in our primary task: to work in genuine partnership. Not focussed on handouts, but on shared growth. 

“We know that when those most greatly affected shape the solutions, decisions carry greater legitimacy, outcomes endure, and our collective impact is stronger.” 

Cafod presented a policy brief that showed that while humanitarian systems often rely on local presence and local leadership, they still “withhold the conditions required for local power”, which weakens their impact and prevents local communities from being truly empowered.

James Ngun Hre, director of Cafod partner Karuna Myanmar Social Services (KMSS) in Myanmar, explained that while international agencies have the visibility and control the budgets, local actors have to carry the risks.

He encouraged organisations to focus on “accountability” and “credible partnership”, to “move from localisation as a commitment to as practice and increase the impact on the ground”.

Dr Salih A. Majid Adam, director general of Cafod partner SOS Sahel Sudan, warned that a lack of “trust” between local and international organisations has been an obstacle to the humanitarian response to the civil war in Sudan.

To remedy this, he said organisations will need to “respect the local context and local understanding” and engage with “the ideas of local leaders on the ground”.

“Most of the recent response to the Sudan crisis has been carried out by local NGOs, and more planning and funding directly to them will make the response more effective,” he concluded.

The policy brief explained that in Sudan and South Sudan, working with church structures such as bishops and parish councils, chiefs and other local authority representatives, and women’s groups helps enable access for humanitarian workers.

“In South Sudan, the identity of Cafod’s faith-based local partners and the role they were perceived to play as mediators was more effective in enabling access than formal bureaucratic approval processes,” the document said.

Rurik Marsden, deputy director for humanitarian policy and partnerships at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), said on Cafod’s panel, “In many contexts, we’re relying on local partners to do the last mile of delivery, but we’re not benefiting from the insights and knowledge that they could bring.

“They’re trapped in the existing funding structures, so they’re not able to shape decisions in the way they’d like to. Local organisations often have much more capacity to get through on sensitive issues or to access places in countries like Myanmar which international organisations can’t.

“We need to rethink the balance and take these examples of supporting local organisations from being the exception and make them the norm. We’re very good at talking about this, but less at walking the talk and making it happen on the ground.”

Cafod has been campaigning for new legislation to prevent private lenders from extracting high interest rates from developing countries, trapping them in a vicious circle of debt.  

Maria Finnerty, lead economist at Cafod, said that, as a “financial superpower”, Britain has a “historic opportunity” to help shape a “fairer and more functional” global economy.

She said the conference was a step in the right direction, but that without “addressing issues like the Global South debt crisis, in which UK laws play a central role, we will not see sufficient progress”.

Although the government has not yet made any commitments in this area, foreign secretary Yvette Cooper MP acknowledged “calls for the reforms of the global financial system, including by tackling unsustainable debt” in her address to the conference.

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UK may be ‘complicit’ in Sudan’s suffering, warns Cafod

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