Peacebuilding

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What knowledge counts? Local humanitarian

knowledge production in protracted conflicts. A
Central African Republic case study

Brigitte Piquard

To cite this article: Brigitte Piquard (2022) What knowledge counts? Local humanitarian
knowledge production in protracted conflicts. A Central African Republic case study,
Peacebuilding, 10:1, 85-100, DOI: 10.1080/21647259.2021.1989902

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/21647259.2021.1989902

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PEACEBUILDING
2022, VOL. 10, NO. 1, 85–100
https://doi.org/10.1080/21647259.2021.1989902

What knowledge counts? Local humanitarian knowledge

production in protracted conflicts. A Central African Republic
case study
Brigitte Piquard
Reader in Humanitarianism and Conflict, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Sound decision-making in protracted conflict isdependent on the Received 6 December 2020
quality and the relevance of the information available and the Accepted 4 October 2021
knowledge produced. Despite the fact that gaps in humanitarian KEYWORDS
knowledge are common, local humanitarian knowledge is rarely Localisation; knowledge
taken into consideration and for political, structural and social production; local knowledge;
reasons, not visible and valued. The paper examines if and how protracted conflict; Central
the complementarity of different forms of humanitarian knowledge African Republic; power
can reduce existing gaps as well as power imbalances embedded in imbalances
the humanitarian system. Based on a case study of local humanitar­
ian NGOs’ knowledge production in the Central African Republic,
the paper identifies the specificities of local humanitarian knowl­
edge constructed through social consensus, using different infor­
mation flows and responding to various interests, needs and
expectations. It argues that a better understanding of the local
humanitarian knowledge, its production, and the collaboration
through co-production of knowledge will strengthen sense making
and relevance of contextualised humanitarian responses.

Introduction
Sound decision-making in protracted humanitarian crises depends on the accessibility
and reliability of information and their interpretation through evidence and knowl­
edge. ‘Information is constantly changing, comes from a multitude of sources and is
often incomplete or contradictory. In some cases, there is an overload of information
and, in others, complete gaps in what we know’1 Despite investments in data and
information management, gaps in humanitarian knowledge production and therefore
in decision-making are still a common problem faced by field NGOs as only a part of
the existing knowledge is taken into account. Local humanitarian knowledge, directly
deriving from culture and local practice, is undervalued, not fully trusted as ‘valid and
reliable’ by international humanitarian actors. The existence of preconceived assump­
tions, unconscious biases, habits of thought and mental models2 as well as existing
power imbalances3 embedded in the humanitarian system strengthens this non-

CONTACT Brigitte Piquard bpiquard@brookes.ac.uk

1
King, ‘Humanitarian Knowledge Management’, 2.
2
Darcy et al., ‘The use of evidence in humanitarian decision making’, 8–9.
3
Mock and Garfield, ‘Health Tracking for Improved Humanitarian Performance’, 380.
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any med­
ium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
86 B. PIQUARD

recognition, justified and evidenced through the lack of set-up standards and technical
terminology in local knowledge production. International humanitarian actors recog­
nise the validity of a humanitarian knowledge production sitting strictly within
a system that privileges standardised data collection methods and institutional frame­
works for externally evidenced decisions4 and have therefore adopted a normative and
technocratic approach to information management and communication, as well as to
report mainly to their funders.5 By referencing constantly to international humanitar­
ian principles and rigorous methods, international humanitarian actors make this
context-free system credible and support the assumption that frames of reference,
goals and objectives are uncontested and universal.6
The debate on evidence and methods is embedded in knowledge politics’ leading ‘to
certain knowledge being represented and other remaining invisible’7 and granting
legitimacy only to certain knowledge holders and knowledge producers.8 These epistemic
and political imbalances exacerbate existing gaps and actively subvert humanitarian
knowledge production. However, there is more humanitarian knowledge around
a crisis than is generally perceived and justified although local humanitarian knowledge
remains invisible outside the local realm. This paper explores the impacts of narrowing
what counts as knowledge and who are trusted knowledge producers and seeks to
evaluate the relevance of local humanitarian functional and operational knowledge.
I situate the politics of knowledge production in the recent localisation debate in
humanitarian policy and practice.9 The localisation agenda aims at a shift of power
towards local actors. However, it rarely considers political, emotional and structural
barriers, which strengthen the lack of trust between local and international humanitarian
knowledge producers, nor does it consider the complementarity of different types of
knowledge and knowledge production, which could reinforce indispensable trust and
contribute to the shift of power lifting up local NGOs at a co-leadership level in decision-
making.
This article focuses exclusively on local NGOs already working in the humanitarian
sector in partnership with international organisations and in respect with humanitarian
principles. Conscious of the constraints and challenges of the humanitarian sector,
I highlight the importance of making visible and valued unique and specific local
humanitarian knowledge, which is based and constructed, as I demonstrate later on,
through social relationships, using different flows and channels of information and
making sense through local and cultural reference frameworks. I argue that a better
understanding of the local humanitarian knowledge production and sounder co-
production of knowledge will strengthen sense-making and relevance of contextualised
humanitarian responses and rebalance power relationships between humanitarian actors.
Based on an action-research project that took place in the Central African Republic
(CAR) from 2017 to 2019 related to local humanitarian NGOs’ capacity strengthening
and knowledge production, the paper highlights that different data and information
4
Dijkzeul et al., ‘Introduction; Evidence-based Action in Humanitarian Crises’.
5
Darcy et al., ‘The use of evidence in humanitarian decision making’, 8.
6
Dijkzeul and Wakenge, ‘Doing good, but looking bad?’, S10.
7
Burns, ‘Moments of closure in the knowledge politics of digital humanitarianism’, 51.
8
Macrae, ‘Could the system work better?’, 97.
9
Barakat and Milton, ‘Localisation Across the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus’; Barbelet, ‘As Local as Possible’;
De Geoffroy and Grunewald, ‘More than Money’; Roepstorff, ‘A call for critical reflection’.
 PEACEBUILDING 87

management and reference frameworks are complementary and shaping the under­
standing of needs, realities, priorities of affected populations to reinforce humanitarian
impacts. The Central African context presents numerous challenges for humanitarian
action, being one of the most conflict-affected countries in the world, characterised by
recurrent outbreaks of violence and ongoing displacement,10 creating extreme volatility,
constant insecurity and radical uncertainty. CAR is therefore an emblematic example of
protracted conflict and respective humanitarian challenges.
I proceed in this paper with the definition of (local) humanitarian knowledge and
based on my case study, I evaluate the difference and complementarity of knowledge
production and its power geometry in protracted conflict. Then, I reflect on the relevance
of a flexible process of co-production of humanitarian knowledge respecting the identity
of each knowledge producer and leading to a genuine localisation.

What counts as local humanitarian knowledge

There is no single understanding of what counts as knowledge. In this paper, I have
adopted a distinction between data, information and knowledge. ‘Data’ refer to collected
facts usually organised in a particular format and gathered for a particular purpose; while
‘information’ refers to analysed and systematised data revealing the lessons learned and
the underlying meanings; and ‘knowledge’ to an internalisation and transfer of these
lessons and meanings interpreted with a specific frame of references and useful in
different contexts.11
The understanding that international stakeholders have of local knowledge does not
always include its transferability. They perceive local knowledge mainly as ‘tacit’: non-
formalised and practical, intuitive, resident within behaviours and perceptions of indi­
viduals or local organisations.12 It then differs from ‘explicit’ knowledge: formalised,
recorded and stored. This distinction minimises the fact that knowledge production
always takes place in specific contexts and is formulated according to institutional
cultures (which include language, paradigms, and traditions). Recent studies13 question
this distinction emphasising that modes of expression and learning as well as its means of
communication and transfer make knowledge ‘explicit’ or ‘tacit’ rather than its very
nature. This view emphasises the importance to consider locally and culturally defined
frameworks and expressions in knowledge production.
‘Humanitarian knowledge’ is indispensable to assess and respond appropriately to
crisis situations, plan and lead relief operations in an acceptable and effective manner.
Tanner14 suggests four types of humanitarian knowledge grouped into two categories.
Firstly, situational and contextual knowledge combine traditional indigenous know-how,
locally held data about crises with historical, geographical and cultural factors applied to
implement humanitarian projects. Secondly, functional and operational knowledge
derived from field experiences as well as principles, standards and best practices, which
informs humanitarian decision-making, design and evaluation of projects. All types of
10
OCHA, ‘République centrafricaine: Bulletin d’information (jan – déc 2019)’.
11
King, ‘Humanitarian Knowledge Management’; Darcy et al., ‘The use of evidence in humanitarian decision making’, 7.
12
Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 27.
13
Collins, Tacit and Explicit Knowledge; Catinaud, ‘Sur la distinction entre les connaissances’.
14
Tanner, ‘Knowledge landscape report, Humanitarian leadership Academy’, 11–12.
88 B. PIQUARD

knowledge – not mutually exclusive – are crucial to build humanitarian responses. If the
assets of situational and contextual local knowledge, particularly of indigenous know-
how, are obvious, the existence of a specific local functional and operational knowledge is
less recognised.
Interestingly, humanitarian knowledge – rather local or international – is rarely
mentioned in the ‘evidence-driven’ agenda debated, for the last decade in the humani­
tarian sector for accountability purposes. Authors15 reflecting on what counts as evidence
in the humanitarian sector identify three main sources of information used by interna­
tional decision-makers: pre-crisis contextual information, situational information about
the evolution of the crisis, and evidence on what works in response to a particular crisis,
based on standards and protocols. The latter, which corresponds to Tanner’s functional
and operational knowledge, is considered as the domain of external experts and specialist
advisers.16 Limiting evidence or functional and operational knowledge to external
expertise reduces the opportunity for integrating local knowledge in humanitarian
knowledge production.
The notion of ‘localism’ is questioned in the humanitarian debate and should be used
with nuance. The term ‘local’ has moved from a strict geographical and territorial
denomination, opposed to the notion of ‘international’, and from an ‘insider vs outsider’
divide towards a contextual and relational reconceptualisation,17 defining the local
through its agency, its capacities to fit and negotiate the everyday and to navigate
complex and sometimes conflicting local social relationships. Introducing the concept
of critical localism18 aims to avoid pitfalls of either romanticising the local or adopting
a (neo-)colonialist attitude as both approaches flatten local agency. Humanitarian actors
apprehend social realities critically taking into consideration everyday realities and
practices through their own agency.
Humanitarian actors, local as well as international, are partly hybrid as they share local
staff which moves during their careers between different institutions and interacts
through partnerships and joint projects.19 As knowledge production lies with organisa­
tions rather than staff, by attraction, imitation or due to political pressures, local staff
recruited by international organisations adopt the referential framework, the methods
used by the global humanitarian sector and the standardised international working
pattern.20 Following the critical localism approach, local humanitarian NGOs are there­
fore organisations that have embedded a framework fitting the everyday context and
social local relationships. Local NGOs have their own vision of what humanitarian action
should be and how it should work, emphasising its relational dimension over the service
delivery. This shapes an alternative operational and functional knowledge which goes
further than situational and contextual data gathering and information management.

15
Darcy et al., ‘The use of evidence in humanitarian decision making’; Knox-Clarke P. and Darcy J., Insufficient Evidence?;
Dijkzeul et al., ‘Introduction; Evidence-based Action in Humanitarian Crises’.
16
Darcy et al., ‘The use of evidence in humanitarian decision making’, 19; Daoust and Dyvik, ‘Knowing safeguarding’, 97.
17
Mac Ginty and Sanghera, ‘Hybridity in peacebuilding and development’.
18
Roepstorff, ‘A call for critical reflection on the localisation agenda’, 9; Mac Ginty, ‘Where is the local?’; Richmond, ‘De-
romanticising the local, demystifying the international’.
19
Anderl, ‘The Myth of the Local’; Zyck and Krebs, Localising Humanitarianism; Barbelet, ‘As Local as Possible, as
International as Necessary’.
20
Anderl, ‘The Myth of the Local’; Ward, ‘Capitalising on ‘local knowledge’.
 PEACEBUILDING 89

Research methodology in the Central African context

I came to the Central African Republic in July 2017 to deliver a training session related to
‘camps coordination and camps management’ (CCCM) to a local NGO. This was
supposed to be a one-time mission however the dire needs in capacity-strengthening of
local actors21 and the intractable situation of the country called for further action. Indeed,
since its independence in 1960, the Central African Republic has experienced
a succession of crises and conflicts that has torn apart the social fabric and the efforts
for development. Since the last coup d’état in 2013, the crisis has become increasingly
protracted resulting in spreads of violence, proliferation and criminalisation of armed
groups, mainly categorised in two factions, Seleka and Anti-Balaka (also named ‘auto-
defence’).22 In a place characterised by extreme poverty, the ‘business conflict model’ of
armed groups has proven to be very attractive.23 The fair presidential and legislative
elections of 201624 and the deployment of UN peacekeeping forces MINUSCA created
hopes for peace and for sustainable change among the population and international
observers. Peace negotiations took place in Khartoum from January 24 to
5 February 2019 and led to the Political Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation (APPR-
RCA)25 signed on 6 February 2019 by the Central African Government and 14 armed
groups. Despite this Peace deal, the country keeps experiencing relapses of violence.26
Economic hardships and failing governance have jeopardised efforts of stabilisation.
Humanitarian actors have been present in the CAR for the last 45 years. Two adult
generations have therefore integrated the humanitarian presence in their social landscape
and normalised reliance on relief as part of their coping strategies. Beyond the logistic
challenges of inaccessibility and insecurity as well as the lack of basic infrastructure and
qualified human resources, there is fatigue in the international humanitarian sector. The
recurrent crisis often results in international humanitarian actors restarting the same
projects over and over again. For example, local and international interviewed humani­
tarian workers reported that schools or dispensaries were looted after being rehabilitated
and seed and agricultural inputs stolen by rebel groups just after being distributed. There
is no feeling of long-term impact and of possible end-of-crisis.
From the very first training day, I realised that the participating local staff had a wealth
of knowledge and experience that they could not always articulate other than through
illustrative examples and descriptive experiences. These everyday experiences were
widely shared between similar organisations but not mentioned during coordination
meetings with international partners. Based on these observations, I decided together
with the local NGOs involved and some of their international funders to conduct an
action-research project that documents how local NGOs, with their specific

21
Pico and Vircoulon, ‘Etat des lieux du système d’action humanitaire en Centrafrique’.
22
Vircoulon, ‘Écosystème des groupes armés en Centrafrique’.
23
Agger, ‘Warlord Business: CAR’s Violent Armed Groups and their Criminal Operations for Profit and Power’.
24
see for example the UNDP report https://www.africa.undp.org/content/rba/fr/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2016/
02/14/centrafrique-scrutin-dans-le-calme-pour-le-2-me-tour-de-la-pr-sidentielle-et-le-1er-tour-des-l-gislatives.html; or
the French newspaper ‘La Croix’ https://www.la-croix.com/Monde/Afrique/Elections-Centrafrique-population-veut-
croire-2016-02-11-1200739204
25
UNSC, Political Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation in the Central African Republic, February 2019 (S/2019/145)
https://reliefweb.int/report/central-african-republic/political-agreement-peace-and-reconciliation-central-african
26
OCHA,‘République centrafricaine: Bulletin d’information (jan – déc 2019)’.
90 B. PIQUARD

characteristics and strengths, produce their own humanitarian knowledge and to exam­
ine how this knowledge could be supplementary and integrated in the existing humani­
tarian responses.
In order to investigate the visibility, usability and transferability of local knowledge,
I adopted participatory action research (PAR) ‘to combine needs and capacity, action and
learning’.27 I was able to integrate the research in existing operational projects related to
displacement, community mobilisation and protection. The use of local expertise was not
only investigated but implemented in everyday action, reflected upon daily with field staff
and further action points were determined together. Field missions in four areas of the
country (Bangui, Kouango in the Ouaka, Sibut in the Kemo and Kaga Bandoro in Nana-
Gribizi) were conducted in order to mentor staff in their everyday practice and to reflect
on the identity and specificities of local humanitarian knowledge producers.
PAR, through local research partnerships, proved to be a way to open up for considering
and correcting potential biases.28 Through dialogues and exchanges of practices, local
partners were able to explain or illustrate factors revealed during workshops. PAR also
enhanced the potential of including local knowledge production in training and enabled
a better visibility of local perspectives, strengths and opportunities. I applied these observa­
tions and information to co-design new strategies and methods of capacity strengthening
and co-deliver training sessions starting from existing practices and knowledge and locally
defined needs. My involvement, starting as an international ‘freelance’ facilitator, trans­
formed gradually into a role of ‘external catalyst’ or ‘cultural translator’, using technical
humanitarian terminology to qualify their experiences and expertise.
Over the two years of the project, seven workshops were co-organised with the local
NGOs. This involved participatory training exercises and close field mentoring. More
than 50 members of staff (including 8 women) and 40 members of local communities
(with an equal gender representation) participated. This was triangulated with 10 formal
interviews of representatives of clusters and international NGOs and regular informal
meetings with international stakeholders. Through these capacity strengthening exercises
in data management, reflections on leadership, ethics, validity and reliability of data and
creation of contextualised tools, the local staff was able to make visible and systematise
their own functional and operational humanitarian knowledge. The insights and exam­
ples used in this paper are those which made a broad consensus among local participants
or which came recurrently in discussions or field practices. They were categorised after
a thematic review over three major themes: social interactions in everyday practices,
channels of information sharing and expectations and priorities management.
The Central African humanitarian landscape was conducive for this research as the
local staff was so keen to enhance its capacities and international stakeholders were
willing to strengthen the local NGO sector. The project took place benefiting from the
support of existing partnerships with academic institutions, international agencies and
local NGOs. The following sections are based on its insights.

27
Wall and Hedlund, ‘Localisation and Locally-led Crisis Response’; Refstie, ‘Action research in critical scholarship’.
28
Fast, ‘Researching local humanitarian action’, 7.
 PEACEBUILDING 91

Differences in humanitarian knowledge and knowledge production

The humanitarian knowledge produced by local and international NGOs is determined
by their specific methods of data gathering and information management as well as their
interpretation according to their own frame of references.29 Three main factors influen­
cing consciously or unconsciously the humanitarian knowledge production of Central
African NGOs came out of the interviews of local project managers and personal
participant observation during field action-research. First of all, local humanitarian
knowledge is based and constructed through social relationships, integrating historicity
and diachronic information concerning different stakeholders. Second, it uses different
flows and channels of information in operational activities and for dissemination pur­
poses. Finally, the functional and operational knowledge of local NGOs help local staff
navigate differently between interests, needs and expectations. These three factors are
used by local NGOs as interpretative frameworks to make sense of the everyday, of social
context and relationships and to enable actions.30
Within local NGOs, information management is done through the organic process of
collective reflection and social consensus building, to understand trends, interpret events
and evaluate impacts.31 This produces contextualised humanitarian knowledge,
embedded in the shared experiences with people living with protracted conflict, which
helps to reach agreement on the ways projects are developed and implemented. Due to
the volatility of field situations, inaccessibility of affected populations and areas, as well as
ongoing insecurity, the data collected by international NGOs follow rapid assessment
methods, limited to ‘good enough’ or ‘quick and dirty’ processes.32 Representatives of
informal protection groups met in Kouango explained during one of my visits that many
NGOs were administering surveys directly through the window of their cars, without
stepping down. They added how much they were trusting ‘those who walk’. While the
data collection based on social relationships risks that only those with whom contact
already exists are consulted, in practice, it reaches a wider and more diverse population
than rapid assessments and therefore produces more detailed and nuanced social
pictures.
During a workshop on data collection, a project manager from a local NGO defined
himself as ‘son of the country’ to highlight his motivation and commitments. This
expression became popular among participants and came back regularly in the following
meetings. They explained staying despite the insecurity ‘to help their families’. Their
engagement and resilience go beyond professional duties and push them to stay close to
their communities, close to their families and relatives and work for long-term changes.
Most of them live in the same neighbourhoods as beneficiaires, use the same facilities,
participate in the same social activities and experience the same impacts of the conflict
being sometimes themselves victims of violence or forced displacement. Staff thus shares
the same reference frameworks (aspirations, beliefs, language and social space) as the
affected population.

29
Macrae, ‘Could the system work better?’, 197–198; Muhren W. and Van de Walle B., ‘Sense-making and information
management in emergency response’, 30–31.
30
Muhren and Van de Walle, ‘Sense-making and information management in emergency response’, 31.
31
Macrae, ‘Could the system work better?’, 192; Muhren and Van de Walle, ‘Sense-making and information management
in emergency response’, 33.
32
Maynard, ‘The effectiveness and efficiency’; Stoddard, ‘Out of Reach’.
92 B. PIQUARD

Due to their embeddedness in the communities, local NGOs mobilise alternative

networks of influential persons. One of the action research training sessions was part
of a project aiming at enhancing community-driven support mechanisms against
Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in the Ouaka region. I participated in a workshop facili­
tated by local NGOs resulting in the selection of traditional midwives (though illiterate)
and wives of religious authorities as community leaders. They had to facilitate the
campaign against GBV as co-designers and co-owners. The staff of local NGOs knew
that those women were organic authorities trusted by the communities for mediating
domestic issues. Their inclusion in the project allowed the use of local channels of
communication such as word of mouth, women informal social protection groups and
midwives’ home visits to mobilise quicker, gain trusted access to violence survivors and
collect sensitive data in remote areas. These women were usually excluded from co-
facilitating humanitarian programmes as their illiteracy did not allow them to report in
writing and fill in imposed forms. Local NGOs solved the reporting requirement of
international partners by proposing midwives to work in pairs with literate colleagues.
The international agencies tend to regard this local embeddedness a priori as
a disadvantage and consider the local staff as biased, not neutral and therefore question
the reliability of their information.33 However, this also offers opportunities. Interviewed
participants testified that they were ‘listening to the voices of the communities’ as part of
their daily life. The local knowledge of how information is channelled, who key infor­
mants are, and how to culturally translate and interpret formal and informal information
from the local communities or from the aid system contributed to a better understanding
of everyday realities necessary for longer term impact.
Another important point in terms of flows of information and communication
channels is to consider as key information not only what is said but as importantly
what is not said. Rumours in the Central African Republic34 play key roles in social
control and social cohesion.35 The presence or absence of rumours, the delay between
alleged facts and the spreading of rumours are all elements that are locally used as
evidence. Managing these forms of ‘evidence’ is a key element when acting on internal
conflicts, safety and security. Interpreting differently but always seriously the (absence of)
rumours is part of local staff’s frame of references and humanitarian knowledge. Most of
the time, international NGOs do not consider rumours as a useful and serious social
mechanism. Therefore, standardised response to the management of various forms of
violence in IDP sites consists of hotlines, listening and counselling centres or electing
internal committees. In Kaga Bandoro, I interviewed local NGOs’ staff, responsible for
Camps Coordination and Camps Management (CCCM). They were resolving conflicts
by evaluating rumours to confirm facts. Based on their findings, they searched for
traditional social consensus, mediated by displaced traditional village chiefs living in
the sites.
These are examples of how ongoing monitoring of everyday realities, dialogues with
communities and empathic abilities allow local NGOs to collect and refine data about
underlying motivations and attitudes. Based on this socially constructed information and

33
Berenstain, ‘Epistemic exploitation’, 571.
34
Scharnitzky, ‘La Fonction Sociale de la Rumeur’.
35
Greenhill and Oppenheim, ‘Rumor Has It’; Kirsch, ‘Rumour and other narratives of political violence in West Papua;
Fairhead, ‘Understanding Social Resistance’.
 PEACEBUILDING 93

the interpretation with their own frame of references, local NGOs, through their agency
to navigate everyday social realities, produce operational and functional humanitarian
knowledge. This local knowledge is used to tailor messages and contents to live everyday
realities and cultural references of the communities to bridge knowledge gaps. However,
the humanitarian environment contains hindrances that challenge the process.

Knowledge as a game player in power relations

The humanitarian system includes political and social factors, which condition knowl­
edge production through self-referential norms, strategic choices, decision-making and
power relationships between local and international partners.
In the Central African Republic, the most visible knowledge producers are intergo­
vernmental actors. After the 2016 elections, the United Nations, the World Bank and the
European Union conducted comprehensive assessments oriented towards the return of
displaced populations, recovery and peacebuilding, even though field realities were
showing relapses of violence, insecurity and ongoing displacement.36 These assessments
served as strategic orientation plans and enforced ‘path dependent’ decision-making.37
Despite the volatility of the situation which was calling for new assessments and the
limited parameters set up by the policy papers, UN agencies kept producing updated
factsheets and situational reports38 including latest statistics, national estimates of needs
grounding into ‘evidence’, the strategic choices made after the general elections. In the
way strategic priorities were set up, local humanitarian knowledge holders were not
consulted.
This political environment creates barriers and constraints for the recognition of local
humanitarian knowledge and its integration in the global humanitarian sector.
Dependency on donors and funding for both international and local NGOs, bureaucratic
and techno-centric approaches, debates on capacities, methodology or principles
increase power imbalances, which condition the value and visibility of local humanitar­
ian knowledge and the trust and legitimacy in local knowledge producers.39
Strategic plans have implications on how funding is distributed and calls for proposals
oriented. Needs assessments are conducted taking into consideration the political orien­
tation as much as the evidence from the ground. International and local NGOs are
trapped in this system, depending on partnerships to access funding. A restricted number
of Central African NGOs are considered eligible for international partnerships. In 2017,
at the start of my research, only 4% of the funding of the humanitarian fund (CHF) was
allocated to six Central African NGOs. ‘Funding to national partners significantly
decreased in 2017. The main reason was that the highly volatile and changing humani­
tarian context required a rapid response capacity that most national NGOs lack’.40 The

36
see for example the plan for humanitarian response 2017–2019 https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/sites/www.
humanitarianresponse.info/files/documents/files/rca_ocha_2016_hrp.pdf or the final report on PCIA evaluation: impact
des projets de l’OIM sur le processus de paix en Republique Centrafricaine (sept 2016), or the UNIFEM report:
‘programme d’Appui aux Autorités de Transition en République Centrafricaine pour renforcer la participation des
femmes dans les domaines de la Paix et la Sécurité et l’Assistance aux femmes et filles touchées par le conflit (dec 2016).
37
Darcy et al., ‘The use of evidence in humanitarian decision making’, 7.
38
see for example UNOCHA situational reports: https://reports.unocha.org/en/country/car/
39
Dijkzeul et al., ‘Introduction; Evidence-based Action in Humanitarian Crises’; Macrae, ‘Could the system work better?’.
40
Humanitarian Fund, ‘Central African Republic, Annual Report’, 17.
94 B. PIQUARD

sole reliance on international standards and capacities left, despite good will, too limited
room for local empowerment and for integrating local humanitarian knowledge into
project-oriented decision-making. If local NGOs were invited into joint initiatives, it was
to meet donors’ requirements of local grounding and ‘used’ for the implementation of
activities of already designed projects.41
Besides funding constraints, knowledge travel is undisturbed within the humanitarian
sector though clustered among the same type of organisations, such as local NGOs,
international NGOs or faith-based groups. If there is knowledge transferred from one
type of organisation to another, the travel direction tends to be one way, top-down and
serving international interests and needs.42 As Kruke and Olsen43 note: ‘Interests con­
flicts and distrust among actors are important sources of resistance to information
dissemination, depriving decision-makers of the information they need’. Humanitarian
NGOs are subject to a heavy bureaucratic institutional culture and the same norms,
modes of data collection, communication and presentation are imposed on all – local and
international- while local NGOs are only able to mobilise limited human resources,
networks and financial means44 and therefore cannot meet the requirements.
These upward (towards donors and headquarters) and inward (towards internal
processes) approaches illustrate a systematic gap in perceptions of realities,45 leaving
no room for ‘outward’ approaches and partnerships outside the ‘bubble’.46 The fact that
local NGOs have their own identity, strengths or specificities is not envisaged. A local
NGO emergency project officer mentioned that during joint meetings, international
partners were taking one hour to present themselves as well as their vision and mission.
Local NGOs were given five minutes each to introduce themselves and usually could not
express their specificities properly as they were not accustomed and prepared to the use
of humanitarian technical jargon and international NGOs not conscious of local posi­
tions. Local NGOs continue to serve as subcontractors, providers or implementers.47
Recognition of local knowledge takes place when it serves or fits requirements of
international goals.48
Another argument coming from discussion during a workshop on research methods
illustrates how general international policies create bias in the data collection. Due to the
prioritisation of displaced populations’ return – despite the volatility of the situation –
questionnaires administered for the registration of IDPs touch on return options and
plans to people who had just managed to escape extreme violence. Local NGOs workers
felt that these questions were highly insensitive and thus created mistrust and fear. Other
field realities such as pendular migrations or the hosting of IDPs in families were not
monitored, not fitting the strategy of creating displaced sites and enforcing return. As
already mentioned, quick and dirty processes create ‘snapshots‘ of local realities trans­
formed into evidence and become an accepted starting point for decision-making and
formulating (inter)national policies. The data collection process is regularly administered

41
Daoust and Dyvik, ‘Knowing safeguarding’, 97.
42
Seybolt, ‘Harmonizing the Humanitarian Aid Network’.
43
Kruke, ‘Knowledge creation and reliable decision-making’, 216.
44
Pico and Vircoulon, ‘Etat des lieux du système d’action humanitaire en Centrafrique’.
45
Macrae, ‘Could the system work better?’, 93.
46
Ibid., 196.
47
Morse and Mcnamara, ‘Analysing institutional partnerships in development’.
48
Mcfarlane, ‘Crossing borders’.
 PEACEBUILDING 95

with the support of local NGOs, but using an imposed standardised questionnaire. As
members of different UN clusters, local NGOs are bound to provide data to supplement
statistics produced by international cluster members. The information requested is often
factual, taking the forms of lists (i.e. of stakeholders), figures (i.e. counts of existing
resources available), names (i.e. of providers) rather than qualitative analytical outputs
and local humanitarian knowledge.
During a workshop on data-collection methods, local NGO participants shared
a general cultural assumption that it is inappropriate to contradict openly the views of
external actors, particularly because communities and individuals fear the loss of support
if they challenge expectations.49 They also shared that rapid assessments create mistrust
and confusion. There is a cultural trend to provide important information in the second
part of an answer, the first part being usually used to confirm what the interlocutor has
said. When only a minimum time is given to answer, sensitive information concerning
appropriateness, feelings of threats or tensions between local stakeholders normally
included in the second part, is not captured. They regretted not being involved in the
systematisation and analysis of data undertaken by those who commissioned the collec­
tion. This reduced the validity of the information analysed with formal techniques and
the level of integration of local specificities in knowledge production. Aware of those
critiques, they explained that they compensate, for their own use, by triangulating the
findings with their own information and data collected through consultation with their
broad social networks, composed of local formal and informal authorities, parties in
conflicts and particularly through constant contacts with beneficiaries and communities.
Techno-centric approaches based on ‘expertise’ exclude de facto categories of knowledge
producers. ‘Assumptions about expertise become less about what is actually known, and
more about who is assumed to have knowledge and therefore included in the category of
expert’.50 Local NGOs have a holistic and comprehensive view of everyday situations,
sometimes less technically specialised but integrating in their humanitarian knowledge
different layers of lived realities and the global needs of the population, putting social
relationships, social cohesion and long-term solutions at the centre of their practice. Local
staff involved in IDP site management reported that in 2015, in Kaga Bandoro, fires were
a common issue in spontaneously developed and ‘disorganised’ sites. A Kenyan expert
called by the UN CCCM cluster, came to plan the reorganisation of the sites according to
set standards. Without talking to local stakeholders, he used sophisticated GPS and map­
ping techniques to redesign the sites. He left and sent a ready-made plan. The local NGO
responsible for the site management explained that the newly designed plan requested
thrice more land and that the collective land ownership system was not taken into
consideration. They also explained that the ‘disorganisation of the site’ was a way to protect
IDPs from potential intrusion of rebel groups and from the abduction of displaced children.
Insecurity was actually their main problem. ‘Local knowledges are valued mainly to
contextualise previously developed policies and practices – rather than being considered
expertise in their own right and integral to developing global policies and standards’.51 The
new plan was forgotten and never implemented.

49
Van Voorst, ‘Praxis and paradigms of local and expatriate workers’.
50
Crewe and Harrison, Whose Development?, 92.
51
Daoust and Dyvik, ‘Knowing safeguarding’, 97.
96 B. PIQUARD

The lack of capacity is often used as a reason for limiting the role and contribu­
tion of local NGOs52 and for not acknowledging the value of their humanitarian
knowledge. This is in part due to ‘the focus on making local organisations a better
fit for partnerships rather than better and more effective humanitarian actors at
their own right’.53 This recurring discourse on the inability to conduct and lead
humanitarian programmes is at the same time political and actual. There are
undoubtedly gaps in terms of structural capacity. However, this is triggering plug-
and-play capacity strengthening overlooking existing attributes without contextua­
lising needs. Project officers of some local NGOs testified having followed several
times the same training on gender because it was a requirement of funders; or on
forms filling to meet administrative expectations of their international counterparts.
Looking at the complementarity of local actors’ roles in humanitarian actions and in
knowledge production would have created a climate of change strengthening capa­
cities, formulating and sharing knowledge. ‘Localisation should be first of all about
empowerment and effectiveness’.54
The constant reference to rigorous methods of data collection and analysis, to evi­
dence-based decision-making and to humanitarian principles is driven by the will to
ground policies and programming into well-informed parameters and tight globally
accepted institutional frameworks.55 However, they also become rhetorical devices to
claim upward trust and legitimacy towards donors and key decision-makers.56 By dis­
regarding local NGOs’ methods and frame of references, as well as considering their
embeddedness in the conflict as a risk of compromise with humanitarian principles,
international humanitarian actors deny local NGOs trust, legitimacy and co-leadership
roles in order to maintain their own.
The local NGOs’ knowledge of the social background of armed civilians is based
on their understanding of the historicity of these groups and families, their existing
relationships before the conflict, as well as the understanding of their trajectories
and modes of organisations without putting them in strict categories of civilian vs
belligerent. Staff of local NGOs gave during workshops two examples, one in
Bangassou and the other one in Alindao, when they used their operational huma­
nitarian knowledge to mediate food distribution. Focussing on social cohesion, they
reduced tensions by including the wives and children of armed civilians (living in
the IDPs site), leading to a more nuanced definition of vulnerabilities and support
to the different communities. Not doing so would have probably led to the use of
force and the cancellation of life-saving support. International Humanitarian Law
(IHL) is based on a strict division between belligerents and civilians. However,
armed civilians are not strictly fitting this categorisation. A better understanding
of social realities increases mutual trust between humanitarians and the local
population and strengthens the general feeling of security, enabling project
implementation.

52
Barbelet, ‘As Local as Possible, as International as Necessary’.
53
Ibid., 1.
54
Barakat, ‘Localisation Across the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus’, 10; Van Leeuwen,’The local turn’.
55
Darcy et al., ‘The use of evidence in humanitarian decision making’, 7.
56
Dijkzeul et al., ‘Introduction; Evidence-based Action in Humanitarian Crises’, 14.
 PEACEBUILDING 97

These examples highlight how local humanitarian knowledge stays particularly under­
valued due to incentive structures and quests for legitimacy and trust by all humanitarian
actors.57 International organisations take for granted that dominant standards, which
define what counts as relevant knowledge, evidence and principles on how aid should be
delivered are universal.58 Consciously or not, technical language, expertise and standar­
dised methods create power imbalances rooted in a mindset and a monopoly on the
validation of knowledge excluding local humanitarian knowledge expressed in an organic
way and validated with another frame of reference. The power geometry in humanitarian
knowledge production follows different cleavages.59 It is often reduced to a north-south
divide though the main sources of imbalances are found in language, bureaucracy,
privilege, technocracy as well as security and accessibility.

Local knowledge in the localisation agenda: bridging different realities,

interests and expectations
The discourse on local knowledge has only slowly emerged in recent discussions on
‘localisation’ in humanitarian studies and practice since May 2016.60 While there is
limited agreement on a single definition of localisation, a common denominator is the
need to recognise, value and strengthen local humanitarian responses61 and shift power
and co-leadership roles to local humanitarian actors.62 Localisation claims to maximise
‘the value of local actors, based on their proximity and their shared vision with affected
communities’63 and aims at increasing the impacts of humanitarian responses by inte­
grating local actors in the decision-making process. However so far, its implementation
has not really challenged substantially how the aid system is organised and why power
imbalances are tolerated.64 The lack of integration of local knowledge and acknowl­
edgement of the politics of knowledge production keep rendering particular knowledge
undervalued65 and hindering the localisation process. Local humanitarian knowledge is
not only essential for a more localised implementation of projects and programmes. It
also contributes fundamentally to the creation of a climate based on trust and proximity
between local and international stakeholders, necessary for contextualised decision-
making and long-term impact.
In protracted conflicts where communities have relied upon international aid for
decades, the presence of international NGOs creates tensions due to conflicting expecta­
tions. An essential role of local humanitarian knowledge is to bridge and manage
interests, priorities and expectations of the different stakeholders involved in
a humanitarian programme.66 During interviews, local NGO workers explained how

57
Barbelet, ‘As Local as Possible, as International as Necessary’.
58
Jayawickrama,‘If you want to go fast’; Van Voorst, ‘Praxis and paradigms of local and expatriate workers’.
59
Van Voorst, ‘Praxis and paradigms of local and expatriate workers’.
60
Barakat, ‘Localisation Across the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus’; Barbelet, ‘As Local as Possible, as
International as Necessary’.
61
Zyck S. and Krebs H., Localising Humanitarianism; Roepstorff, ‘A call for critical reflection on the localisation agenda’.
62
Geoffroy, ‘More than Money? Localisation in Practice’; Shifting the Power Project, ‘Localisation of Aid’; Barakat,
‘Localisation Across the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus’.
63
Austin, ‘The Future of Humanitarian Surge’, 22.
64
Roepstorff, ‘A call for critical reflection on the localisation agenda’.
65
Schenkenberg, ‘The Challenges of Localised Humanitarian Aid in Armed Conflicts’.
66
Van Voorst, ‘Praxis and paradigms of local and expatriate workers’.
98 B. PIQUARD

communities, particularly local leaders and authorities, have developed their own
mechanisms to attract international aid such as over-estimating needs or number of
potential beneficiaries meeting international vulnerability standards, risking to lead to
forms of elite capture.67 Local NGO workers were conscious of these biases. They were
able to minimise the impacts of those biases by monitoring names, numbers or actual
prices on markets, based on their social embeddedness. Concurrently, due to donor
fatigue and expectations of a reduction and reorganisation of relief, the localisation
agenda is evoked for legitimising cuts in the budget. This is, for example, translated
with the introduction of ‘CCCM light’ promoting IDPs camps self-management to
strengthen autonomy. If the concept is promising in terms of resilience enhancement,
the implementation is often limited to the training of elected camp leaders without
considering the existing informal and traditional leadership, organic assistance mechan­
isms and the necessity to monitor the implementation of the process and its acceptance
by the beneficiaries. Staff of local NGOs were able to introduce in CCCM light, a system
based on traditional justice to solve internal conflicts. This allowed them to bridge
sometimes conflicting expectations from different humanitarian stakeholders, build
trust between the parties involved and reassure IDP communities. Through their
ongoing presence and their localised operational humanitarian knowledge, they kept
monitoring the process and transformed a financial strategy into a contextualised re-
appropriation by the IDPs.
Management of priorities was a constant concern for local NGOs staff. Group discus­
sions with local project officers and camps managers involved in CCCM highlighted that
the focus on sustainable return of IDPs, prioritised in international strategy policies,
pushed international NGOs to rehabilitate village houses using corrugated iron in order
to induce a feeling of safety and a willingness to return. Local NGOs advised their
international partners that local communities perceived these rehabilitated houses as
more luxurious than the previous ones. This created tensions with the non-displaced
populations to the point that some decided to join displaced sites hoping to have their
house refurbished. They then decided to use vernacular construction techniques such as
the mud hut and straw roof in order to avoid exacerbating displacement and to maintain
social cohesion.
‘What makes local actors different is their understanding – and operationalizing – of the
principle that humanitarian response is or should be – a social interaction, not just the
delivery of a service’.68 This statement is key to understanding local humanitarian sense
making. Indeed, social space and relationships outbalance the end product and ‘the way
assistance is delivered is as important if not more as the assistance itself.69 Their knowledge
production is based on building social consensus and social sense with communities. The
main contribution to the localisation agenda brought by local NGOs is their understanding
that humanitarian action is a social interaction that goes further than a shared vision with
affected communities; bridging expectations and priorities and through the operational and
functional humanitarian knowledge, increasing trust and proximity between stakeholders
needed for contextualised decision-making and long-term impact.

67
Platteau, ‘Monitoring Elite Capture in Community-Driven Development’.
68
JSIA, ‘Conference Report: South-South Humanitarianism’, 11.
69
Wall and Hedlund, ‘Localisation and Locally-led Crisis Response’, 16.
 PEACEBUILDING 99

Towards a complementarity of humanitarian knowledge production

The localisation debate has neglected the role of local humanitarian knowledge in its
agenda, stressing much more financial allocation or rules in partnerships. Evidence-
driven information and external expertise have also partly altered humanitarian knowl­
edge production and have left hardly any room for local humanitarian operational and
functional knowledge.
However, without romanticising local NGOs practices, in keeping with critical
localism,70 this paper highlights that specificities of local humanitarian knowledge
are situated at the three different phases of its production. Local humanitarian
knowledge is constructed over socially oriented data gathering; information man­
agement based on social consensus, ongoing everyday interactions and
alternative channels of communication; as well as the use of specific cultural
frames of references for sense making. In protracted conflicts where gaps in
knowledge are particularly striking, valuing humanitarian functional and opera­
tional knowledge of local NGOs improves the understanding of local needs,
realities and priorities and brings additional understanding and value to plan
and implement humanitarian responses. Focusing on complementarity and
strengths of different humanitarian knowledge production and producers contri­
bute to a genuine shift of power allowing local actors to regain a co-leadership role
in humanitarian action.
The lack of recognition of local humanitarian operational and functional knowl­
edge is not only due to cultural sense making. Technical, political and social
barriers such as self-referential norms, strategic choices and power relationships
between local and international partners, and preconceived perceptions about the
universal understanding of humanitarian aims and principles are also hindering
the acceptance of local humanitarian knowledge production and producers.
Interplays between stakeholders and constraints imposed by donors and the very
humanitarian system impel actors to search for legitimising their decision-making
process through strict protocols and standards which creates ipso facto power
imbalances. Putting into dialogue knowledge and knowledge producers in joint
reflections and practices will enable a change of mentality on what counts as
knowledge and who counts as knowledge producers.71 This co-production relies
on equitable recognition and mutual trust, respecting the specificity of each
knowledge producer.72 More than considering that one form of knowledge
works best, it is the complementarity of different kinds of knowledge from
a wide range of methods and frames of references that works well and will
strengthen sound decision-making.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

70
Roepstorff, ‘A call for critical reflection on the localisation agenda’.
71
Chambers, ‘Can We Know Better’.
72
Jayawickrama,‘If you want to go fast’.
100 B. PIQUARD

Notes on contributor
Dr Brigitte Piquard is Reader in Humanitarianism and Conflict at Oxford Brookes University
(UK). She is an anthropologist and a political scientist by training. She has carried out most of her
research in South and Southeast Asia, in the Balkans, South Caucasus and in the Middle-East on
conflict and humanitarian issues, such as culture of peace and war, transitional political set-up and
social rehabilitation of war-torn societies. She is currently conducting research on the nexus
between humanitarian action and peacebuilding and has conducted action-research projects
with local NGOs in conflict and post-conflict settings such as Colombia, in Lebanon and the
Central African Republic. She is also director of CERAR, Centre d'Etudes et de recherche-Action
sur la resilience, in Paris.