On 29 May, the OECD/DAC published a new policy paper in support of locally led development. CISU has contributed to this work and expects the practice paper to set the tone for how international development funds are channelled through the many different mechanisms. The practice paper contains concrete recommendations on how international development actors, such as the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, can put the principles of locally led development into practice.
The OECD/DAC is the international forum for the world’s largest donors of development aid, which coordinates and collaborates to improve global development aid.
It is therefore a crucial voice behind such a strong policy paper, which will have a major impact on how a country like Denmark utilises its development funds. For example, when it comes to support for and through civil society.
For CISU and its member organisations, this is not a new debate, as the key principles of community-led development have already been incorporated into the guidelines for CISU’s various funding schemes. This applies in particular to the Civil Society Fund, but also to the DERF Fund.
CISU supports this joint Call to Action, which has been spearheaded by several international partners. Read more about CISU’s position on each of the individual recommendations from the Call to Action.
CISU also calls on the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to support this Call to Action.
Read more about locally led development
How CISU contributes
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1. Be clear on your intentions and definitions for locally led development. This includes translating commitments into clear policies and strategies, establishing a shared understanding of locally led development across your institution and being explicit about roles, responsibilities, and power dynamics within each partnership.
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CISU has in our recently approved strategy for 2026-2030 elaborated on our intentions with locally led development.
The global challenges affect us all, but the solutions are often found locally.
We believe in the power of being local rooted and globally connected. |
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2. Implement meaningful co-creation of development solutions. This means recognising local actors as co-decision-makers in setting priorities, shaping approaches, and defining success; systematically engaging diverse local actors to embed local knowledge, expertise, and lived experience in policies and programmes; and working with and through existing local networks and processes.
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CISU has developed the funding guidelines and the application formats for applicants to elaborate on these matters. Hence, applications submitted to CISUs funding modalities seeks to foster meaningful co-creation.
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3. Develop equitable partnership approaches. This means setting clear expectations for equitable partnerships across different partnership types and actors, engaging in long‑term partnerships to build trust, capacity, and shared ownership and ensuring intermediaries uphold equitable partnership approaches.
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CISU’s member organisations have grown out of a strong tradition of working in partnership. In our new strategy, we are jointly taking on a proactive development to become a frontrunner in reimagining partnerships.
The various actions we will take in this strategy period will be based around the spirit of this statement of equitable partnership approaches. |
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4. Improve human resource management. This means empowering country-level decision-making, ensuring local perspectives inform headquarters strategies, aligning staffing, incentives, and recruitment with LLD objectives, and prioritising local and regional expertise.
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The funding flows from CISUs funding modalities goes into the partnership between a Danish civil society organisation and civil society organisations in one or several countries. The partners must always form part of the local civil society in the country where the activities will be implemented.
As part of the actions of rolling out CISUs strategy 2026-2030, further actions to strengthen local human resource management will be taken. |
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5. Provide quality financing to local actors. This means providing long-term, predictable and flexible financing, including core and overhead support for local partners, intermediaries and networks; combining national budget support with decentralised or subnational financing where conditions allow; and tailoring financing modalities and requirements to local contexts and capacities to ensure inclusive access.
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CISU has made changes to our main fund, the Civil Society Fund, that moves more partnership into applying a programmatic approach, rather than project by project.
Within the framework of working with public Danish funds, CISU aims to ensure the most flexible terms possible for the grantees.
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6. Redefine roles for international intermediaries. This means setting clear expectations and requirements for intermediaries to support local leadership, redefining intermediary roles over time, shifting towards advisory, facilitation and capacity-support functions, and embedding locally led development commitments in partnership agreements with intermediaries.
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This is a first step in rolling out CISUs new strategy, where we will undertake several conversations of what kind or role Danish civil society organisations can best play in collaboration with their global partners.
This will also refer back to how CISU as an entity best play a supporting role to this wider network of civil society organisations working both in Denmark and globally. |
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7. Simplify due diligence and equitable risk sharing. This means harmonising and aligning due diligence standards to reduce duplication, using passporting for mutual recognition across funders, adopting simple, proportionate reporting requirements, and promoting risk sharing rather than risk transfer.
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Progress in this regard seems like the most difficult aspect to move on, fast. CISU works based on public funding and are obliged by Danish law to install certain procedures. This entails ensuring a minimum set of information and data.
Nonetheless, the strategy period does oblige CISU to challenge the conditions and framework that guide our work, meaning that CISU would request for conversations around this with back donors, such as the EU and the Danish MFA. CISU will also engage in dialogues with local partners in relation to defining concrete actions to more equitable risk sharing. |
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8. Promote locally led monitoring, evaluation and learning. This means engaging with and strengthening partners’ existing Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning systems, ensuring evaluations are culturally appropriate and grounded in local leadership and expertise and including local perspectives into evaluation reporting and adaptive programming.
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CISU does promote this through existing application framework. The above referred to conversation around the role of intermediaries will inform CISU as an entity further on how to best play our part in developing frameworks around this that both support the entire system with knowledge and experience, while maintaining the principle of these frameworks being locally anchored.
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9. Promote and practice transparency and accountability. This means establishing transparent reporting systems to track and publish how much ODA reaches local actors directly and through intermediaries, assessing the quality of funding and partnerships established, and embedding locally led accountability commitments in partnership agreements and performance frameworks. |
CISU operates with a high level of transparency and fair process in our granting procedures.
We proactively work with the Danish MFA to develop the framework for how they tag and track ODA.
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