Global partnerships between civil society organisations can unintentionally be characterised by power imbalances. These imbalances are undesirable and need to be addressed.

The tool paper aims to provide inputs and inspiration on how to work with local leadership in the partnerships and proactively engage in ensuring a stronger locally led partnership.

The local leadership agenda is inspired by the humanitarian localisation agenda and the Shift the Power agenda that collectively focuses on restructuring global aid systems and structures.

The agenda promotes more participation and involvement of target groups and local actors, increased funding, and resources to local actors, and to support more equitable and people-led development.

Local leadership is about creating more balanced power relations in humanitarian and international development work and understanding the factors that lead to power balances as well as imbalances.

Read the PDF "Locally Led Partnerships - Five important dimensions when building equitable partnerships"


Read more about Locally-led partnerships

(fra "Local Leadership - Five important dimensions when building equitable partnerships")

Power Awareness Tool, Partos, 2022
A tool for analysing power in partnerships
for development

Dream paper: Shift the Power, Partos, 2022
Insights and recommendation on division of
roles between Northern and Southern CSOs
Transforming Partnerships in
International Cooperation
Peace Direct, 2023
Provide a series of approaches to building and sustaining better partnerships between civil society actors

Participatory M&E, Intrac, 2020
Recommendations on how to perform
participatory monitoring and evaluation
Beneficiary Feedback Mechanisms,
Intrac, 2020
Addresses the importance of feedback and
what makes a good feedback mechanism

See these tools: