By Justina Kaluinaite, Dr. Moses Isooba and Zia ur Rehman, Forus 

Opinion: The OECD meeting in Paris and UK Global Partnerships Conference show localisation is still rhetoric. Real reform requires donors to relinquish control over money, risk, and decisions. 

Last week’s OECD Future of Development Co-operation meeting in Paris, followed closely by the UK’s Global Partnerships Conference, delivered a familiar message: development must become more locally led, more equitable, and more “partnership-based.” Discussions centred on improving coordination, mobilising blended finance, and strengthening “mutual accountability.”  

But these adjustments do not answer the more uncomfortable institutional question: what happens when local actors are no longer just implementers of strategies designed elsewhere, but originators of those strategies with control over resources? In fact, beneath the consensus language, locally led development is still being designed inside systems that are structurally built to prevent it. 

That contradiction to this day is still operational. And it explains why, despite a decade of localisation commitments the centre of gravity in development finance is yet to shift. 

Consider how funding still flows. Even in so-called locally led programmes, the majority of resources pass through multiple layers of intermediaries before reaching national or community-based organisations like the ones we represent. Each layer introduces compliance requirements, reporting obligations, and risk controls that are designed to satisfy donor audit systems, but that often are not compatible with local operational realities.  

The UK’s Global Partnerships Conference reflected this tension clearly. While ministers and agency heads reiterated commitments to partnership reform, the financing models underpinning UK aid remain heavily dependent on centrally designed procurement systems and competitive contracting frameworks. Against this background, 82 INGO leaders have issued a statement calling on the UK government to step up its ambitions for an inclusive international development agenda rooted in genuine, equitable partnerships, alongside environmental and accountability standards.    

These structures place significant burdens on local organisations, which are expected to absorb currency volatility, political instability, and reputational risk while having limited influence over programme design or financial arrangements. 

One critical condition is often treated as secondary: civic space. Localisation cannot succeed if civil society is criminalised, stigmatised, underfunded, digitally attacked or excluded from decision-making. Local organisations cannot hold institutions accountable if they are denied the freedom to organise, speak, access information, mobilise resources and participate safely in public life. 

True localisation directly challenges the governance logic of the aid system itself by shifting power over resources, risk, and accountability toward local actors and the civic space they operate in: who controls resources, who defines risk, and who is accountable to whom. 

What would redesigning the development framework require?  

First, protect and expand public finance where it is irreplaceable — especially for humanitarian response, rights, gender justice, civic space and local civil society resilience. 

Second, make locally led development measurable. Track how much funding reaches local actors directly and indirectly. Assess not only the quantity of funding, but its quality: flexibility, predictability, accessibility, overheads, core support and decision-making power. 

Third, move from risk transfer to risk sharing. Simplify due diligence, reduce duplicative reporting and build trust-based accountability systems that are rigorous because they are grounded in reality. 

Fourth, recognise civic space and an enabling environment for civil society as a core condition for effective development cooperation. No partnership can be called equitable if local actors are restricted, silenced or punished for speaking truth to power. 

Fifth, invest in civil society ecosystems not only as implementers, but as democratic infrastructure for accountability, solidarity and locally grounded change. At the UK Global Partnership Conference, development partners must reconsider how they fund civil society. If we genuinely want resilient organisations, then institutional strengthening, core funding, and flexible financing must become central components of partnership frameworks. Donors should be reminded of the core principles coined by aid sector reformer Arbie Baguios: "fund courageously and trust generously”. 

And finally, connect aid reform to structural justice. Development cooperation cannot be separated from debt, tax, trade, climate finance, digital governance and policy coherence.  

These demands are already embedded in long-standing commitments to partnerships based on mutual respect and accountability, including the Busan Partnership Agreement and the localisation commitments of the Grand Bargain. Yet they are urgent as even the conditions that were meant to sustain them are weakening in practice. 

International development cooperation today rests on three increasingly strained pillars. First, Official Development Assistance (ODA), which is being significantly reduced in many donor countries. Second, a growing share of development finance is channelled through multilateral and bilateral development banks, where decision-making processes often remain distant from civil society organisations and affected communities. Third, development cooperation delivered directly through civil society actors, which is increasingly under pressure and, in many contexts, under attack. 

The message from civil society is do not just rebrand but rewrite the rules of partnership. 

Move from control to trust. 
Move from risk transfer to risk sharing. 
Move from consultation to co-decision. 
Move from short-term projects to long-term civic resilience. 
Move from promises to practice. 

The old model is coming to an end. If existing structures of power, money and privilege are simply carried forward, the future will look far too much like the past. But if this moment is used to build cooperation rooted in dignity, rights, solidarity, civic space and local leadership, something more just can emerge. 

That is why we will continue to engage: to help transform a system that is under strain and in need of change. 

The future of development cooperation will be rights-based, accountable and shaped with communities — or it will fail to earn legitimacy.