LOCAL Charter of Accountability
Localising Humanitarian Action – Case Studies
Position Paper on Localisation
Role of Pooled Fund, Intermediaries in Localization and Decolonization of Aid
Facing religious persecution, the minority Hindu population from Pakistan has been fleeing and seeking refuge in India since the time of the partition. As radicalization increases in Pakistan, the number of people escaping atrocity also increases in the same proportion.
These persecuted people emigrate from Pakistan each year to escape discrimination, denial of equal development rights, violation of human rights and forced conversions. While being in Pakistan, the girls felt unsafe, and all of them faced pressure to convert, one immediate negative coping mechanism was to drop out from schools.
Most come from the Sindh province, where the Hindu population in Pakistan is concentrated. Largely these migrants owned land and did farming in Pakistan. Generally, these refugees arrive at valid pilgrim visas, then seek extensions through long term visas month after month.
The Government of India has administrative arrangements for Pakistani Hindus; they may obtain long-stay visas but they are not considered as refugees by the government.
There are almost 400 Pakistani Hindu refugee settlements scattered around India. Delhi and Jodhpur have one of the maximum numbers of the refugee population that have arrived in the last two decades. About 4,230 people, who have migrated from Pakistan in the past five years, are housed in camps in Delhi and Rajasthan.
Refugees in the Majnu ka Tila camp have been arriving in India since 2013 while those living in Signature Bridge camp have been arriving since 2018. As of now 140 families (700 persons approx.) are residing in the Majnu Ka Tila camp and 85 families (350 persons approx.) are residing in Signature Bridge camp. While in Jodhpur there are 21 camps of the migrants in which around 18,000 non-citizen migrants and 12,000 citizen migrants have been staying.
Out of these camps in Jodhpur, five camps are in dire need of support for health, livelihoods, education, legal aid and basic amenities. The details of these five camps are as under: 1. Gangana main (200 families), 2. Gangana 2 (100 families), 3. Chokha (70 families), 4. Marwad Nagar (80 families), Kali Beri settlement (100 families).
We, at HAI, are rigorously working towards the comprehensive development of refugees in Delhi and Rajasthan through activities across the domains of education, health, livelihoods, basic amenities and legal assistance to ensure their eventual integration in India as healthy and productive citizens.
Affected refugee families are facing the following major problems at this time in the camps:
Livelihood Support: HAI is supporting skill training, entrepreneurship & business training, establishing market links for the sale of products and establishing a group of women producers to improve livelihood and employability among, with a focus on the creation of a Training-cum- Production Centres for women’s groups, skill training for adult refugee men /youth through skill training schemes and programmes, marketing support to refugee businesses along with entrepreneurship & business training.
Education support activities: There is a strong need to provide education for youth who have missed educational opportunities at home and need basic literacy/numeracy education and to acquire a productive vocational skill. HAI is engaged with building remedial education centres for children of school-going age, higher and tertiary education support programmes for refugee youth and adolescents and arranging adult education classes for refugees on language, literacy, numeracy and financial literacy.
Creation of legal aid, awareness and documentation support centres in each camp: HAI is working towards establishing legal support centres managed by one advocate and camp administrators. The legal support centre will be responsible for undertaking activities like the creation of legal aid, awareness and documentation support centres in each camp.
Long term action plan
We have created this video report on the condition of Hindu refugees from Pakistan. Please watch it and share it on social media so that more people are aware of this humanitarian issue
Here are some pictures from HAI team’s visit to Pak refugee camp in Majnu Ka Teela in Delhi.
After having worked for over three decades, mainly with international NGOs (INGOs) within India and elsewhere, and feeling disillusioned with the international aid architecture, I decided to return to India to establish Humanitarian Aid International (HAI), together with a few other like minded people. HAI aims to evolve on an Indian value system, resourced by Indians, including people of Indian origin, to work across India while also trying to complement the government’s efforts on South-South cooperation. The realisation came soon about how difficult it is for Indian NGOs to access even Indian funding as Indian fundraising space is largely controlled and accessed by country offices of INGOs, registered in India and calling themselves an Indian organisation. That compelled me to wonder: Are we in a new phase of colonialism?
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A 2019 study published by the EU on ‘Societies outside Metropolises: The role of civil society organisations in facing populism’ recommends that “Concrete and consistent actions over time are needed in order to empower civil society organisations in those regions to deliver their mission and play their role of speaking on behalf of those who are underrepresented and advocating for the marginalised, and to educate and create a kind of genuine bond between different communities”. However, the way the international aid sector currently operates most instrumentalises local and national CSOs as subcontractors for their agendas, rather than supporting them as independent civil society actors catering to the real needs and priorities of the community and encouraging their governments to act as the duty-bearer and protect people’s fundamental rights. The Covid19 pandemic has extensively and adversely impacted the aid architecture, at a time when the lifesaving assistance to population facing natural disasters or protracted crises is most needed. Local organisations are facing further marginalisation at a time when they are at the forefront of the response, be it Covid19 health response or economic or other crises caused during this period. Download Statement.
Dear Grand Bargain Sherpas,
We, one of the multi-country networks of local actors actively engaged on localisation, know that the next annual meeting of Grand Bargain on 24-25 June 2020, is open only to the Grand Bargain Signatories, and only Sherpas will be able to use audio and video. We see the signatories wanting to talk about the future of Grand Bargain and strengthening local action, without presence of local actors around the table who continue to face obstacles to get included in a process, designed for their empowerment. We have tried to proactively engage with the localisation work stream but have been very disappointed with the lack of response. We have seen systematic exclusion and discrimination against meaningful participation of a diversity of local actors in many of these processes.
We believe you share our concern of seeing less than expected progress on most of the workstreams, according to the self-reports of the signatories. The World Humanitarian Summit triggered several good processes, intending to reform the humanitarian architecture and practices for overall aid efficiency, mitigation of needs and better support to the affected population. Given the slow progress, we are hopeful that the Signatories would use the next annual meeting to introspect on the reasons for the slow progress, define the mechanisms to fix the accountability and answerability and come up with a future roadmap which is more inclusive, equitable and respectful of the local actors.
The local actors do not want to remain passive beneficiaries of a change process. They rather want to have equal stake, ownership, shared leadership and representation across all the processes and the discussion fora. We, as one of the committed network of local actors, firmly believe that the signatories are genuinely interested to deliver on the Grand Bargain commitments by overcoming the barriers. As we do not have the privilege of being present, we would like to request that you kindly reflect on the following issues during the annual meeting in our absence:
Although, local actors are overwhelmingly not allowed to participate in the annual meetings, we are still optimistic that our concerns would be heard and reflected on during the 2-days of the meeting, and that appropriate space would be created for us for future collaboration.
In the humanitarian architecture, each of us have to play the complementary role. As Signatories, you have acknowledged the significant role local actors play during a humanitarian response. We have equal realisation of the complementary role you play to strengthen us. Hopefully, next time we would be sitting across the table as equals to exchange ideas.
Members of the Alliance for Empowering Partnership
#LocalActorsMatter