The Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies in collaboration with the Peace Research Institute Oslo; UN-OCHA; The Hague Institute for Global Justice and the University of Jena, invites you to submit abstracts for its upcoming conference “Localisation of Responses to Conflict in the Arab World”, which will take place in Doha, Qatar, 16- 17 December 2017.
The aim of the conference is to examine in detail the concept of localisation of responses to crisis and conflict within the context of the Arab region. Community participation has long been recognized as a cornerstone of successful development and for effectively working with communities affected by disaster and conflict. Yet over the years this guiding principle has often only been paid lip service to, with fewer resources going into genuine participatory work at the local level at a time when more communities have developed the capacities to engage with regional and international actors. This is further compounded by a lack of understanding of the significance of localisation and a lack of leadership in developing it as a practice. Localisation seeks to address the issues of a top-‐‐down approach by utilizing culturally appropriate local knowledge and giving ownership of recovery and responses to conflict to local actors with support from the wider structures of the international community. The World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016 brought the already hotly debated concept of localisation into the mainstream in its ‘Grand Bargain’ agreement signed by 52 national and international humanitarian and development organizations. The agreement commits the humanitarian community to principles of local ownership and to pledges including providing 25% of humanitarian aid directly to local actors by 2020.
You can access the full Call for Papers under the Related Pages tab on the right.
