BRAC in Bangladesh and beyond: bridging the humanitarian–development nexus through localisation

ABSTRACT

Since its inception, BRAC has combined emergency assistance with longer-term development interventions, grounding its approach in empowering local communities. Its experiences in navigating tensions across the humanitarian–development nexus and in debates around localising aid provide a useful perspective on the way in which these debates intersect, showcasing how prioritising a localised response is conducive of an approach that is “humanitarian in nature and developmental in solution”. Through historical and contemporary perspectives, we explore how BRAC has adjusted its profile, adapted to new challenges, learned about new and changing settings, developed innovations, learned from mistakes, and dismantled boundaries to bridge humanitarian and developmental support in Bangladesh and beyond. These experiences highlight the importance of the “local” beyond geography, as evidenced by BRAC’s engagement with the communities it serves and is part of, and its desire to move forward in an inclusive and socially just manner.

KEYWORDS:

• NGOs
• conflict and reconstruction
• developmental policies
• education
• displacement and resettlement
• South Asia

1. Introduction

From its 1972 inception as an active participant in the reconstruction of the newly independent Bangladesh, BRAC has grown its presence and impact in Bangladesh and beyond, expanding internationally to Afghanistan, the Philippines, Myanmar, Uganda, and South Sudan, amongst others. BRAC has long been recognised as a “pioneering” and “pace-setting” NGO, with its success rooted in its philosophy and identity as a learning organisation (Lovell 1992). It has received international recognition for its impact, innovation, governance, and sustainability work, including being repeatedly judged as “the best” NGO globally in 2023 by The Dot Good (formerly NGO Advisor).¹ The awarding committee highlighted BRAC’s impact and global outreach. It also lauded BRAC’s coordinated efforts in humanitarian response, including its leadership in responding to the Rohingya refugee crisis and its continued action to meet the new development challenges that Bangladesh faces, including climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

BRAC’s five decades of emergency response and development work sets its approach apart from a global norm that draws a clear distinction between humanitarian and development objectives. In responding to on-the-ground challenges in Bangladesh and beyond, BRAC’s experience offers important insights into questions currently vexing the humanitarian and development communities, most notably debates around the “humanitarian–development nexus” and the “localisation” of humanitarian aid. It is these debates that we explore and inform in this paper.

This paper offers a historic approach to understanding BRAC’s organisational approach and development. It explores how BRAC has operated at the centre of the “humanitarian–development nexus” and has been involved in “localisation” practices. We analyse how being a deeply rooted part of Bangladeshi society and community has positioned BRAC to respond with agility to emergencies in ways that reinforced, rather than sacrificed, the pursuit of longer-term developmental objectives. Looking beyond its Bangladesh experiences, too, we argue how BRAC’s model has naturally adapted itself to situations that required a more concerted humanitarian–development approach and a locally implemented and locally co-led response. While fields of development and humanitarian action continue to be largely viewed and operationalised independently of each other, BRAC has long brought these two together to ensure sustainable, long-term benefits.

The following section introduces two key contemporary debates in the field of humanitarian response, namely the “humanitarian–development nexus” and the “localisation agenda”. Section 3 then elaborates BRAC’s organisational history and how this has shaped its positionality, identity, and operations to carefully bridge and respond to humanitarian and development needs. It also introduces BRAC’s international expansion of these efforts and looks in detail at BRAC’s response to the Rohingya refugee crisis and how it has utilised the space afforded by global localisation agendas to sustain a leading role in the crisis. Section 4 concludes by assessing the relevance of BRAC’s rich history and positionality for the furthering of contemporary debates and knowledge around the humanitarian–development nexus and the localisation agenda. We reflect upon its positionality as a leading local and global organisation – a hybrid NGO – and what this means for leading terminologies associated with the "localisation" agenda. And we explore how BRAC's strategies, operations, and, ultimately, its philosophy, intertwine humanitarian and development fields.

In doing so, we bring together a broad range of academic research and grey literature (including internal BRAC strategy and evaluation documents) across three main themes: BRAC’s history in Bangladesh; BRAC’s expansion in other international settings; and BRAC’s involvement in the Rohingya response. We pay specific attention to the challenges and practices of localisation BRAC faces (e.g. BRAC as “local” actor; BRAC as partner within larger humanitarian initiatives; BRAC as an external actor) and BRAC’s involvement in either or both development and humanitarian activities. Combined with this desk-based research, the paper is also inspired by and includes authors’ personal experiences with and within BRAC,² including how BRAC’s experiences relay to broader debates within humanitarian and development realms.

Of course, a paper that combines authorship with personal practitioner experience must contemplate its ability to offer a fully objective view of the organisation and its weaknesses. We have certainly aimed for this, including by starting out the drafting process with a frank discussion on the successes and lessons learned in Bangladesh and beyond as relating to nexus and localisation practices. However, we highlight several limitations here. First, there is a paucity of critical literature explicitly mentioning BRAC, including on BRAC’s activities at large and in its contributions to Bangladesh’s Rohingya response. BRAC has urged researchers to be “as critical as possible” (Hossain and Sengupta 2009, 6), yet there are few critical voices of BRAC in public scholarship.³ We encountered several pieces reflecting on national actors in general terms (see Wake and Bryant 2018), but few singling out specific organisations. This reveals an important research gap in addressing the role that BRAC fulfils within the broader Bangladesh response, and how other actors within this response perceive BRAC as a local, national and international organisation.

A further limitation of the study is in BRAC’s strategy itself. BRAC works predominantly in non- or post-conflict settings, where development issues such as pervasive poverty and the repercussions of disasters shape its experience. That BRAC’s organisational model was honed within these settings, and not others, will have shaped its experience and its positioning in the nexus and localisation practices. During its more recent expansion internationally, it has become more familiar with environments experiencing conflict (e.g. Afghanistan and Sri Lanka); the associated challenges here have required new innovation and adaptation of its approaches. It also encountered different challenges in Bangladesh itself. Its role in the humanitarian response to the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar was another watershed moment for the organisation. BRAC’s experiences and the theoretical contribution of this paper need to be interpreted within this specific, more limited, light.

2. Contemporary debates in humanitarian and development action

2.1. The humanitarian–development nexus

Humanitarian and development approaches have always been perceived as distinct entities, each drawing on different guiding principles. Humanitarian aid was traditionally geared towards short-term, immediate responses to needs in times of “crisis” (Hilhorst 2018). Humanitarian actors – especially those of the more classical, Dunantist leaning – emphasise the importance of humanitarian principles, including political neutrality, in order to ensure unbiased access to people they need to assist. Fundamental to humanitarian aid is that its distribution is based on human needs alone: ideally, it is supposed to be neutral, impartial, and independent (Lie 2017, 201). While these original principles remain central today in how humanitarian action is framed externally, there is increasing acknowledgement of compromises made and critiques within and beyond the humanitarian sector on the ability to apply principles of political neutrality in practice (Terry 2022).

In contrast, often focusing explicitly on social justice and transformation, the strength of development NGOs and civil society actors lies in providing tangible alternatives to existing market- and state-driven development processes that do not meet the needs of the poor and other marginalised groups (Banks, Hulme, and Edwards 2015). To reorder relationships and accountability between the state, market, and civil society, development NGOs engage more closely with political direction, even if only about the course that development should take, reflecting certain political, economic, and gendered ideas of what constitutes a good life.

In short, while humanitarian aid was conventionally perceived as de-politicised, time-limited, life-saving assistance, the pursuit of development is considered an intrinsically politicised and longer-term process. Suhrke and Ofstad (2005, 3) highlight these differences as “the institutional gap” between humanitarian and development entities – “their different priorities, cultures and mandates” – that create practical difficulties in coordinating their actions. Consequently, NGOs specialising in development aid and those foregrounding humanitarian efforts have so far largely worked independently of each other, even if at times they are one and the same or operating in similar circumstances.

However, the world is changing. Protracted crises and large-scale forced migration require new and more complex interventions that blur the long-held distinctions between development and humanitarian assistance (Medinilla, Cangas, and Deneckere 2016, I, vii). This raised questions as early as the 1990s on the “relief-development continuum” (Borton 1994). It has captured a larger interest among relevant actors in recognising the need to address humanitarian needs whilst preserving, if not improving, development at the same time. There is also increasing awareness that humanitarianism is not devoid of politics; rather its efforts and the on-the-ground interpretation of its principles are profoundly connected to politics and power (Barnett and Weiss 2008; Brković 2017). Politically incentivised local humanitarian action has led to the reassessment of the importance of neutrality as a precondition of “good” humanitarians, accompanied by calls to accept “humanitarian resistance” as the “real” deal and the “authentic” practice of humanitarianism (Slim 2020; 2022, 21).

Indeed, in a classification of humanitarian aid, Hilhorst (2018) juxtaposes the classical Dunantist paradigm with the practice of “resilience humanitarianism”, grounded in different ideas around crisis, response and relationality and offering local and national actors a leading role. It has become widely accepted within some humanitarian circles that responses must strengthen resilience, through preserving and strengthening current systems and building long-term engagement (Stamnes 2016). Such discussions have informed the idea of the humanitarian–development nexus. Howe’s (2019) framework categorises multiple “nexus actions”, identifying a range of potential nexus relationships between development, humanitarian, and/or peace efforts.⁴

Traditionally, the concept of a humanitarian–development nexus is characterised by its transitional nature: it represents a sequencing of interventions that facilitates the move from an emergency to a “recovery” state. Work at this nexus, then, sees the linkages between humanitarian and development actions as a “bridge” or transition from one to the other (c.f. Lie 2017), through interaction (and sometimes competition), rather than two processes running independently. Several large international agencies, such as Save the Children and CARE, have worked successfully in this transition nexus space and become respected for their work in both roles (Barnett and Weiss 2008). However, many organisations continue to operate within these two different “silos”. Structural constraints to bridging these are significant. For example, humanitarianism and development have “their own separate tools, funding cycles and decision-making processes”, and often distinct line management. Moreover, "development co-operation tools" often lack the flexibility to quickly adapt, making the shift from development to humanitarianism, in particular, difficult (less so the other way around) (OECD 2017, 1, 3).

This nexus, to an extent, is intuitive; both domains are so inter-linked that they could be considered, at times, inter-dependent. This is particularly the case in “stable” settings facing natural catastrophes, epidemics, or large-scale displacement – the context of BRAC’s main organisational evolution. Even work pursuing or sustaining traditional “development” is conditional on humanitarian work when crises or disasters occur. Humanitarian actors are increasingly incorporating notions that were originally more at home in the development field (e.g. improving “resilience” in disaster-prone areas (Medinilla, Cangas, and Deneckere 2016)) and development actors face a growing reality of recurring climate shocks requiring immediate assistance and relief. Yet traditionally the type of services and the order in which humanitarian and development organisations prioritise these services differ dramatically. “Livelihoods” is not a humanitarian priority, while “shelter” is, even though the two are closely connected in many refugees and IDPs’ lived experience. These practical differences impact the perspectives of different agencies and their investment choices and capacities.

This evolving nexus space continues to generate debate among scholars and practitioners (Howe 2019; Slim 2019), with questions around the loss of humanitarianism’s apolitical purity and the risk of mandate drift (Lie 2017). Debates also surround the practicality and challenges of merging two endeavours with distinct timelines, mentalities, and expertise. In other words, can the nexus deliver on its promised objectives or does it run the risks of creating increased complexities and diluted focus?

2.2. The localisation agenda

The localisation of humanitarian support is a less publicly contested, but no less divisive, topic. Its fundamental principle is the belief that local and national organisations should hold as much funds and decision-making power as possible, enabling locally-led crisis responses and program design, with international agencies only stepping in when necessary. Greater inclusion for local actors has been advocated for in debates around how to improve the efficiency and address power imbalances in humanitarian action and (locally led) development (Roepstorff 2019).

As global crises have become protracted, localisation has become an important process for underpinning the sustainability of responses. In prolonged crises, humanitarian funding gradually decreases. Against this declining resource flow, international NGOs (INGOs) seek to transfer the burden of service provision to “local” organisations due to their own high running costs. In such instances, a localisation process essentially serves to create local capacity to “take over” once INGOs leave. In other contexts, local actors have been present (perhaps even most prominent) in responses from the beginning. They are to certain degrees dependent on international funding streams that are allocated and managed by INGOs, who therefore have an oversized influence on the response (c.f. Roborgh 2021; Roepstorff 2019).

Although the localised provision of life-saving assistance preceded the advent of the humanitarian model as we know it, it was long associated with a form of less professional, less effective, and less principled care (DuBois 2020).⁵ However, the changing circumstances that have made the nexus more pertinent have similarly brought localisation again to the forefront, placing it at the heart of recent humanitarian reform efforts. In 2016, world leaders and multilateral agencies committed to the “Grand Bargain”, a pledge to scale up support for locally led humanitarian action and allocate at least 25 per cent of global humanitarian funds to local and national actors by 2020. Little of this commitment has translated into practice, with direct funding to local and national actors remaining low.⁶ Renewed efforts are, among others, focusing on improving multi-year funding “channelled as close to direct delivery as possible” (IASC 2022, 2) and grounded in a collaborative approach (IASC 2022, 4).

Research highlights the ways in which different organisations strategically position themselves as “local” within this new landscape of humanitarian coordination. This has been evidenced in Syria (Roborgh 2021) and Bangladesh (Roepstorff 2021), amongst others. While the Grand Bargain centred “localisation” at the heart of humanitarian systems, the concept has been criticised for being “strikingly undertheorised with a number of key conceptual questions still unaddressed” (Roepstorff 2019, 285). We return to these in our concluding reflections. Nascent literature on “critical localism” has begun to ask “What is the local?” (MacGinty 2015; Roepstorff 2019; Taithe 2019), but there are also questions raised around issues of capacity and complementarity (Barbelet 2019; Roepstorff 2021).

Assumptions on the ostensible relative lack of capacity among local vis-à-vis international organisations have influenced, or at least ostensibly justified, the Grand Bargain’s slow progress on localisation. Fast (2017) argues that international organisations have played a key role in setting the terms of this debate. Assumptions about capacity also affect what is known as “complementarity”, the way the entire spectrum of organisations – ranging from multilateral organisations, INGOs, national NGOs, to local NGOs – come together to assist those needing their help (Barbelet 2019).

Though these two debates around the humanitarian-development nexus and localisation are occurring largely independently of one another, in reality they are intimately intertwined, and driven by similar global developments. The localisation agenda has been lauded as a critical foundation within the humanitarian-development nexus due to its assumed usefulness in strengthening local resilience (Stamnes 2016).

There are few organisations that can be used as case studies through which to explore both debates and the experience of BRAC may prove informative here. Firstly, humanitarian and development approaches have both long been central to BRAC’s identity. It carries out activities associated with both often simultaneously in collaboration with, rather than independent of, one another. Emerging from the aftermath of Bangladesh’s Independence War and in a country geographically vulnerable to drought, cyclones, flooding, and famine, this was in part driven by necessity. In BRAC’s vision of pursuing holistic community-driven development, responding with urgency to emergencies is critical to community resilience and must be part of any developmental trajectory. Driven by necessity and philosophy, in this respect, BRAC has a long history of combining disaster relief and emergency support with development activities. Secondly, alongside serving as a local and national organisation within its domestic context, BRAC also holds status as an “international” organisation – and a Southern one at that – across the other countries in which it operates. These factors make it an example of a “hybrid NGO”, one that fits uneasily into the humanitarian sector’s simplistic language around “localisation” given its operations across the humanitarian–development nexus and at “local”, “national”, “international”, and “global” levels. We next explore BRAC’s experiences in these two dimensions.

3. Learning from BRAC’s Historical and contemporary experiences

3.1. BRAC and the humanitarian–development nexus

Understanding BRAC’s positionality in the humanitarian–development nexus requires a historical approach, as it is strongly influenced by Bangladesh’s broader national history (c.f. Zaman, et al., this Special Issue). Lovell (1992: 9) highlights that to “understand BRAC one must understand the context that influences, impels and enables its work”. Two particular historical events served as watershed moments in BRAC’s development: the 1970s Bhola Cyclone, followed one year later by the Liberation War against West Pakistan. Ahasan and Iqbal (2022) highlight how the suffering caused by these events contributed to “a deep, collective humanitarian consciousness”. Facing “neglect and apathy” from the government in West Pakistan and a disempowering portrayal by international media, Bengali people themselves spearheaded the recovery. In addition to this “humanitarian consciousness”, there was also, therefore, “a period of intensifying political consciousness”, forming “the roots for an extraordinary episode of ‘vernacular humanitarianism’” (Ahasan and Iqbal 2022, i; Brković 2020). The resulting approach and philosophy still influences BRAC’s course today, as well as that of other Bangladeshi actors (Ahasan and Iqbal 2022, i; Brković 2020).

“Vernacular humanitarianism” indicates “aid provided by various local actors in tune with their socio-historically specific ideas of humanness, as a response to an emerging need that cannot be adequately addressed through conventional channels of help” (Brković 2020, 224). It consists of “local, grassroots forms of helping others that are less visible and less dominant than the international ones” (Brković 2017). This is thus a humanitarian response that is “local” in its truest sense of the word, not because it is carried out by in-country actors but because of its roots in the “ecological, sociopolitical, and economic realities of the country” (Ahasan and Iqbal 2022, i).

Through engaging in post-cyclone and post-war rehabilitation processes, volunteers developed “a distinct way of learning” that increased their sensitivity to their locus of action, aiding in recognising and responding to communities’ needs. Sir Fazle Hasan Abed was one of these volunteers and would go on to create BRAC, fostering a response that “transformed the trajectory of Southern humanitarianism in Bangladesh, deeply embedded in the historical, political, and cultural landscapes of the region” (Ahasan and Iqbal 2022, i–ii).⁷ BRAC’s drive for institutional learning and connectedness with the community – often leading to innovative practice – has become embedded in BRAC’s organisational culture and carried forth across generations of BRAC staff and strategies. The grassroots beginnings of BRAC’s humanitarianism resulted in “a distinct Southern development discourse and practice” that has not yet been sufficiently understood and theorised (Ahasan and Iqbal 2022, ii; Smillie 2009).

Bangladesh found itself at Independence with a large and largely illiterate population suffering from years of underinvestment by the former West Pakistan government. Poverty and extreme poverty were high and the land remained geographically vulnerable to natural disasters. Women were particularly vulnerable to social and economic deprivation. Against a backdrop of political instability in which formal political systems and institutions struggled to provide social services and livelihoods, the third sector of NGOs in Bangladesh rose quickly to the challenge. While initially small and with limited impact, BRAC was a pioneer in responding to the acute humanitarian crisis in the country caused by this quick succession of catastrophes. It rapidly learned that it would not be able to “sustain” its relief and development work if it did not foreground self-reliance of people and communities in its approach. An integrated approach, focused on building institutional infrastructure and developing human potential, soon followed (Ahasan and Iqbal 2022, iii).

A historical overview by BRAC characterises the evolution of its approach as “a process of learning by doing", of learning from successes and failures from its moment of inception. The organisation realised Bangladeshi communities faced numerous structural constraints to overcoming poverty, which could only be comprehended through staff immersion within these communities and community representation within its staff. This deeply participatory approach to community development led to an “extraordinary fit between beneficiary needs, program outputs and the competence of the organisation” (Lovell, 1992: 4). BRAC’s “understanding of poverty as a deeply relational and complex social phenomenon reflecting power imbalances” shaped its focus on “inclusive development within existing rural power structures and national development plans”. Supporting women played a central role in this (Ahasan & Iqbal 2022, iii; see also Smillie 2009, Ahmed, Hopper, and Wickramsinghe 2007).

We must distinguish between BRAC’s laudable intentions and on-the-ground realities, which could differ. Although women were prioritised from early on, female staff rarely occupied managerial positions, for example (Ahmed, Hopper, and Wickramsinghe 2007, 32–33). Its microfinance success rates also created intense pressures on communities (Ahmed, Hopper, and Wickramsinghe 2007). Some field staff described visiting the same home several times a day to collect weekly payments (Ahmed, Hopper, and Wickramsinghe 2007, 26), suggesting that BRAC’s reputation and programmatic successes at times took precedence in implementation. Community empowerment, a key element of the organisation’s philosophy, similarly could be hampered in practice, with Ahmed, Hopper, and Wickramsinghe (2007, 28–29) also describing practices that weakened BRAC’s intended accountability towards its beneficiaries.

Nevertheless, it is clear that BRAC’s general operational success was made possible by its localised humanitarianism and development model, its focus on people and the community, and its ethos of working with and learning from them. This, combined with its entanglement with the direst moments in the country’s history, explains its ease with shifting between and/or developing hybrid action inclusive of both humanitarian and development activities and philosophies. A stricter separation would deeply underestimate peoples’ and communities’ agency and ability to adapt.

As it has spread globally, BRAC International has applied this same philosophy and values. In 2002, the Afghanistan government invited BRAC International to start operations there in fields of education, healthcare, agriculture, microfinance, and female empowerment. It quickly became "one of the largest NGOs" in Afghanistan (Chowdhury, Alam, and Ahmed 2006, 677). BRAC replicated the “holistic approach” it had honed in Bangladesh to address the root causes of poverty (Chowdhury, Alam, and Ahmed 2006, 679) and focused on mid- to long-term development. It was a rewarding experience for the NGO, illustrating the replicability of its model in other settings and heralding an appetite for involvement in other countries (Chowdhury, Alam, and Ahmed 2006).

Stepping into a new context as an international responder was a different experience for BRAC. The vernacular humanitarian response that gave birth to BRAC and its consciousness of Bangladesh’s “ecological, socio-political, and economic realities” (Ahasan and Iqbal 2022, i) no longer applied. This did not stop BRAC from embarking upon its contributions in Afghanistan with the same values and ethos – investing heavily in local staff and research capacity to facilitate deep learning about the new setting (Chowdhury, Alam, and Ahmed 2006, 678). BRAC ensured, for example, that Afghan nationals came to occupy leadership positions, with, in 2020, “the entire programmatic leadership of BRAC Afghanistan [...] comprised of Afghan Nationals” (BRAC Afghanistan 2020, 5).⁸

Yet the organisation struggled initially to get donor support when it entered the international humanitarian and development stage as an international actor. Even staunch supporters of BRAC in Bangladesh, such as Novib (now Oxfam Novib) at first could not see BRAC as a potentially meaningful actor in Afghanistan (Smillie 2009, 226). Although BRAC emphasises its position as a Southern humanitarian NGO and continues to herald its narrative of local empowerment in its international offices, we must ask the extent to which it has become yet another external player in local actors’ eyes. Even on its home turf of Bangladesh, BRAC was categorised by some analysts as an example of an NGO which was “reactive” and adaptive to more powerful actors, such as international donors (Ahmed, Hopper, and Wickramsinghe 2007, 22, 23).

Following the Indian Ocean tsunami in Sri Lanka, BRAC began emergency response programs there, before moving quickly towards a broader development agenda that sought to address people’s and communities’ short- and long-term needs (BRAC 2014). Again, this dual approach, which sees humanitarian response and development strategies intrinsically linked, best represents the values that are in BRAC’s DNA; there is no artificial separation of this nexus for BRAC. However, not everyone shared this view. Practitioners report how BRAC’s approach drew disparaging remarks from Sri Lankans and other global humanitarian responders as it challenged and disturbed their modes of operations.⁹

Although BRAC became respected for its service provision in these new settings, it sometimes struggled with managing expectations of local staff and local populations. BRAC’s developmental model lacked some of the perks of other international organisations (e.g. salaries, vehicles, and management styles), leading to initial scepticism and varied perceptions among staff and populations about BRAC's ability to deliver services (Cronin 2008). Its reliance on local staff in Afghanistan, for example, led to it often being perceived as a “local” organisation by the local population, aiding trust-building and program implementation. In Uganda, by contrast, BRAC was considered more as an International NGO and initially struggled with being perceived there as a “Southern” organisation. Some local Ugandans wondered what this “Indian organisation” (as sometimes misunderstood) could assist them with (Cronin 2008, 138, 165, 166). Over time, the way local people and partners, including national authorities, perceive BRAC, can be subject to change based on its programmatic and management practices.

A key criticism of BRAC’s international expansion was that it did not, at first, adjust its approach in these new settings. This pertained to programs, but also, importantly, to the implementation of Bangladeshi management and communication practices. Cronin (2008) describes, for example, how Afghan local staff did not appreciate the more aggressive communication style of Bangladeshi management, which transposed Bangladeshi social hierarchies to the new country office. While BRAC attempted to adjust to local needs and conditions (Cronin 2008), more research is needed to fully understand whether it has been able to serve as a more “tuned-in”, empowering, organisation than its Northern counterparts in these settings. There are indications that this might be the case, due to the origins of both BRAC and Bangladesh. Contrary to Northern NGOs, BRAC's Bangladeshi origins arguably facilitated a less imbalanced peer-to-peer relationship. Among others, national level leadership from BRAC International countries were invited to Bangladesh to show what can be accomplished the “BRAC way”.

Although BRAC International is inspired by the approaches and programs developed in Bangladesh, the analysis above emphasises that much more than these is exported to new settings. It is BRAC’s ethos that BRAC International carries with it to inform its approach elsewhere. This includes prioritising research in new local contexts, centring the experiences of local populations and using this knowledge in program design, implementation, and evaluation. It also includes its prioritisation of reaching the poorest and its drive to find innovative solutions to do so; a reliance on and fostering of local talent to form the initial backbone and leadership of new national chapters; a careful monitoring of programmatic impact and willingness to go back to the drawing board and fine-tune ideas; attempts, where possible, to make interventions long-lasting and self-sustaining; a high level of ambition in improving developmental and programmatic outcomes; and a willingness to acknowledge errors and adjust interventions and business culture to be more sympathetic to local experiences of staff and populations. These recurrent features may not always come to full fruition in all its home and international endeavours – BRAC is not impervious to errors and insensitivities, as illustrated above. But they are generally visible in international case studies and shape BRAC’s engagement both in humanitarianism and development, and at home and afield, and may serve as best practices and lessons learned to others.

3.2. The localisation of humanitarian aid: BRAC’s response to the Rohingya crisis

In 2017, nearly one million Rohingya refugees crossed the Bangladesh border from Myanmar to escape ethnic and religious persecution. Most took shelter in Cox’s Bazar, establishing “the largest and densest refugee settlement in the world” (Wake and Bryant 2018, 1). While the nation of Bangladesh and BRAC have a long history of quick humanitarian responses to environmental and ecological crises, the Rohingya refugee crisis stood apart as a man-made crisis involving a political and cross-border element. It required an unparalleled humanitarian effort not seen in Bangladesh since recovery efforts after the Liberation War.

Cox’s Bazar’s Rohingya response has become an important case study in localisation debates. A number of strengths have helped mitigate the crisis, including the existence of a strong “eco-system” of in-country emergency response; heavy investments in developing governmental and non-governmental responses to natural disasters; and an army which was experienced in peacekeeping (Van Brabant and Patel 2018, 62). The “right to localisation” played an important role for local NGOs, who made direct references to the Grand Bargain and its localisation agenda for leverage (Roepstorff 2021, 9, 12). As we return to in our concluding reflections, this also exposed some of the contradictions of “localisation” terminology and debates.

There were several unique elements to the coordination of this response. First, there was a big role for the Bangladesh government, which awarded the International Organization for Migration (IOM) a leading role and insisted on strong leadership roles for Bangladeshi organisations in the response (Parker 2017; Wake and Bryant 2018, 10).¹⁰ A shift away from the usual leadership of UNHCR created controversy and confusion among international organisations, who feared a watering down of the status, rights, and duties of the Rohingya as refugees and a sense of competition among UN agencies for space, resources, and recognition (Parker 2017; Wake and Bryant 2018, 12). Several coordination bodies emerged led by different stakeholders, including a locally-organised Cox’s Bazar Civil Society Forum led by COAST (CCNF).

Despite these efforts, local agencies found themselves as little more than sub-contractors in “distribution-oriented projects” for international “partners” who displayed attitudes of “superiority” rather than a genuine partnership (Van Brabant and Patel 2018, 62). Smaller local partners “could not deliver assistance or handle funding on a large scale” (IRIN News 2013). While BRAC, in contrast, was perceived as a strong local partner with “the required capacities and processes”, this did not necessarily translate into partnerships with them (Wake and Bryant 2018, 28, 29; see also IRIN News 2013). Nevertheless, BRAC was soon considered to be one of the “main players” (in addition to the core UN agencies and a handful of large INGOs) in terms of financial power and influence (Van Brabant and Patel 2018, 62).

It may have been the first time that BRAC dealt in earnest with the global humanitarian system and architecture on its own soil. However, BRAC’s role and leadership were considered a “standout example” of a national NGO in the Rohingya response (Rieger 2021, 41). It managed, at one point, several camps directly and worked in a range of emergency support and development assistance in all camps, partnering with local and international organisations in the process (Rieger 2021, 41). Other local organisations viewed BRAC and fellow Bangladeshi organisation COAST as “effective representatives and advocates for the localisation agenda” (Wake and Bryant 2018, 32).

This does not mean that BRAC’s role has been without tension. Pro-localisation national organisations have expressed discontent with BRAC’s leading role. Due to BRAC’s nature as a Southern NGO behemoth that had become an international player, it was seen as unrepresentative of other humanitarian initiatives in the camps (Wake and Bryant 2018, 32). Reflecting wider debates on what constitutes a “proper” local organisation,¹¹ there were attempts to categorise Bangladeshi agencies like BRAC as “National” and to equate localisation processes with more “local” organisations in Cox’s Bazar. Despite its strong commitment to local empowerment and bottom-up programming, it contained few of the characteristics that had made national actors around the world so passionate about how the localisation agenda could restore power dynamics within the humanitarian response.¹² In practice a situation emerged where the presence of organisations such as BRAC and COAST was considered as sufficient “local” engagement by international humanitarian actors, with few other local actors included (Wake and Bryant 2018, 32). More research is required on how BRAC handled this position and whether and how other organisations felt represented and empowered by BRAC.

This uncertainty about how “local” BRAC is created questions of ownership and participation in the response. Pro-localisation campaigners have tried to claim that the CCNF is the only legitimate platform for local responders through which localisation can be promoted. CCNF has criticised the lack of access of local organisations to the awarding of funding and decision-making forums. It also raised questions about the localisation strategy implemented by international organisations. In this, the role of BRAC University’s Centre for Peace and Justice was criticised, for example, for showing “little results” in its task to create a localisation road map (The Business Standard 2020; The Daily Star 2020).

The de facto establishment of a hierarchy in national NGOs can create tensions within the local response. Organisations such as BRAC, with its experience in international engagement, familiarity with international professional standards, and its well (often Western-) educated leadership, are in many ways treading the line between “local” and “international”, playing different aspects of their identity as and when needed for leverage. They can serve as crucial brokers for other organisations and the wider national response, but similarly can serve as another set of gatekeepers (see also Roborgh 2021; Roepstorff 2021).

The complexity of BRAC’s role within localisation can also be observed with regards to its nexus positionality. BRAC’s multi-dimensional approach to interventions is clear in the Rohingya camps. Some interventions are common to “traditional” humanitarian responses, but many are more developmental in nature. For example, BRAC organised several community-led interventions around health, including training community health workers, hygiene promotion, and WASH committees.¹³ Since many trees were destroyed during shelter construction BRAC also mobilised the Rohingya community to plant trees in camps and promoted homestead vegetable gardening to improve nutrition. They provided skills training to help residents meet their daily needs and build livelihoods (practitioner reports and BRAC (2020).

One key area in which BRAC disrupted the traditional humanitarian response was in its approach to children and education. Education accounts for "less than 3 per cent of the global humanitarian aid budget" (Erum, Ahmad, and Sarwar 2021, 134–135). This is despite the fact that "protracted refugee situations" continue, nowadays, for 26 years on average, with generations spending their full formative years in a refugee context (Erum, Ahmad, and Sarwar 2021, 134). Despite a UNICEF-coordinated Child Protection Sub-Sector within the Rohingya response, the focus of humanitarian aid was to meet the short-term needs of Rohingya children rather than their long-term educational and development needs (Erum, Ahmad, and Sarwar 2021, 134–135). In contrast, BRAC prioritised coordinated action around early childhood development and education, designing a “Humanitarian Play Lab” for children under six, offering play-based learning and psychosocial support. It implemented a bottom-up and “community-based participatory approach”, building educational content from Rohingya cultures and experience (Erum, Ahmad, and Sarwar 2021, 133, 146), and ensuring community ownership through employing young Rohingya women. BRAC ran 304 labs (December 2019) in the camps, with approximately 41,000 Rohingya children reached(Erum, Ahmad, and Sarwar 2021, 136).

Two factors enabled BRAC's Play Lab activities in the camps in these challenging circumstances. First was BRAC’s positionality as a Bangladeshi organisation, as well as its activities in “all sectors”, allowing it to spread and scale-up rapidly across the camps. As Erum, et al. highlight, BRAC embarked on its humanitarian response in the Rohingya camps with “scalability and replicability in mind” (2021, 137). Second was their approach that remained focused on the agency of people and communities. Its desire to involve affected communities in program design, planning, and implementation remains central (2021, 145). The Play Labs support the notion that localisation can serve as an important facilitator for the success of humanitarian–development nexus activities. Indeed, it is hard to imagine running such bottom-up, yet large- scale, development-oriented interventions in the camps without a robust local presence (see also DuBois 2020).

However, BRAC’s Rohingya response also highlighted its vulnerability. Concerned that the framing of the response in humanitarian terms neglected the refugees’ longer-term needs, BRAC moved quickly from relief distribution towards their longer-term development needs, including initiatives like the Play Labs. This was a sensitive area given the government’s desire to repatriate refugees rather than provide long-term protection in Cox’s Bazar. This view of the government was particularly relevant to local and national organisations like BRAC, who – unlike the international actors operating there – had to maintain a good relationship with the authorities for their survival (Rieger 2021, 18, 41).

BRAC’s continuing reliance on government tolerance for its operations in Bangladesh means it provides an informative case study for debates on localisation that increasingly highlight the politicised and contentious nature of interactions with authorities. It shows how in certain politically restrictive environments, a position of “political astuteness” is critical for operational impact and sustainability.

4. Concluding reflections

Reflecting on BRAC’s experience introduces a nuanced and complex perspective on the linkages between humanitarian and development aid and localisation processes. While fields of development and humanitarian action continue to be largely viewed and operationalised independently of each other and remain dominated by Northern-led power dynamics, Bangladesh’s experience of responding to the huge Rohingya influx is unique in bringing these three dimensions of humanitarianism, development, and locallydesigned actions together to ensure sustainable and future-oriented interventions, rooted firmly in the people and communities involved. Recurrent tenets can be found in the manner in which BRAC operates and achieves its objectives, whether “at home” in Bangladesh or internationally.

A locally empowering approach that is, like BRAC’s, humanitarian in nature and developmental in solution, would benefit many communities facing chronic crises. The urgency of integrated nexus responses can only become more acute in the context of climate change. There is a need for resilience, innovation, and adaptation to ensure the readiness to respond to increasingly frequent and severe shocks, especially when those most impacted (and displaced) will be the poorest. Such an approach was also critical to national resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, with BRAC’s research infrastructure and ability to identify and respond to the breadth and depth of the social and economic crisis that the pandemic triggered, leading to quick action and response. PPRC and BIGD research revealed the profound impacts on urban informal settlement households, around 20 per cent of whom experienced a fall below the poverty line (Rahman et al. 2021). Crises like this threaten to set back Bangladesh’s developmental achievements unless responded to quickly and at scale, as BRAC did through its “New Poor Program” (See Gomes et al. 2023, this Special Issue). The ability to identify problems quickly and move within and across developmental and humanitarian boundaries through well-capacitated local responses proves critical.¹⁴

BRAC’s experience highlights that it is not the geographic definition of the “local” in localisation agendas that underpins its successes in Bangladesh’s localised responses or in its work at the humanitarian–development nexus. In localisation debates, the “local” constitutes a geographic term that refers to the role that regional, national and sub-national actors can and should play in countries experiencing humanitarian crises. As we have seen here, BRAC’s strengths as a humanitarian and development actor are not only in its geography but in its rich history of vernacular humanitarianism, born of deep knowledge and respect for communities across Bangladesh and a desire to rebuild with them, recover, and move forwards in inclusive and socially-just ways.

Looking across both the localisation and nexus debates, the experience and voice of an organisation like BRAC is disruptive, demonstrating the case of a “hybrid NGO” in the humanitarian and development fields. Not only does BRAC operate as a strong local and national organisation in its Bangladesh operations, it is also emerging as an international organisation globally. It does so through a programmatic approach that sees humanitarian and development activities as complementary, rather than separate. Of course, this role as a “disruptor” is accompanied by challenges. It threatens well-established and powerful global architecture used to working in strictly delineated ways. And through its international work, BRAC has learned that it is not simple to transport reconstruction and development solutions from one geographic context to another. While BRAC does not hold the same vernacular knowledge of people, cultures, and contexts in their new countries of operation, it seeks to build this through maintaining a focus on the agency of people and communities and investing in local research to generate knowledge.

This case study of BRAC also illuminates contradictions in the concept and terminology of “localisation” in the humanitarian sector. It becomes visible, when taking a “hybrid” NGO like BRAC as the focal point of analysis, that the universal notion of “the local” lacks analytical precision. “Localisation” as a process has been conceptualised by the humanitarian sector from a narrowly focused perspective that equates “international” with “Western”. In its implementation, these tensions and contradictions are quickly revealed. It becomes clear that the language of localisation was never intended to recognise the new relationships, collaborations, and antagonisms between Southern organisations – and between national organisations and governments – as these new landscapes play out. Against the inefficiencies and inequities of a humanitarian system that conceptualises Western organisations as the senders of aid to non-Western “others” in need, it has also overlookedthe important and international role of Southern organisations like BRAC that are working at a global scale.

Returning to the humanitarian–development nexus, a more fluid reality of humanitarian and developmental practice needs to be acknowledged and strengthened, a reality which will at times be complementary and at times need to phase in and out. In this reality, the “nexus” concept can provide a guiding and facilitating role but should not itself lead to new restrictive dogmas. Artificial boundaries between humanitarian and development actions in protracted crises should not be set in stone, particularly for local actors, for whom a more long-term perspective focused on future survival and prosperity perhaps comes more naturally. Local actors are in a better position, compared to international organisations, to assess the scale and depth of new crises and to respond at pace, as well as to gain legitimacy for undertaking nexus activities in complex and sensitive political contexts. In this, the localisation agenda is right in identifying the “local” as key actors deserving greater funding and decision-making power in humanitarian action.

Yet, in its current use the “localisation” terminology in humanitarian and development circles has not yet recognised the depth of comparative advantage that “the local” can have in terms of its deep-rooted knowledge of and respect for a community and country’s social, political, economic, ecological, and environmental past, present, and future. Notwithstanding issues emerging from new hierarchies of “the local”, current supporters of localisation do well to fully appreciate the potential of the nexus. The importance of local actors in designing, implementing and scaling-up locally-relevant programs that bridge the humanitarian-development divide can ensure that peoples’ short and longer term needs remain centre stage. Examples like BRAC, then, provide a crucial argument in taking the localisation agenda forwards to improve humanitarian and development outcomes for refugees and other vulnerable communities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 See The Dot Good (n.d.).

2 It is explicitly reported within this paper whenever a statement is based on practitioner experiences.

3 This raises questions about the way in which scholars who form part of, are temporarily affiliated with, or whose research is facilitated by the organisations they study, may engage with these organisations. Scholars have, for example, published important work that recognizes BRAC's unique positionality and history (c.f Lovell 1992, Smillie 2009). Yet there may be a hesitancy to be too overly critical, perhaps because of a general support for the organisation's objectives, interpersonal relationships with colleagues and friends working there, a fear that criticism may be misinterpreted and wielded by others against an organisation, or a desire to continue the working relationship for personal and career purposes. The question how “embedment” within an NGO affects topic choice, research methodology and write-up is in itself deserving of further investigation. For the purposes of this article we were challenged by reviewers to highlight how as academics and practitioners working or affiliated with BRAC we overcame the risk of bias in the account we present here. These challenges led to upfront conversations between us that started with the conversation “what doesn't make it into official accounts and records in these experiences?” They also led to us bringing in an additional author to support this process. In these revisions we worked much more centrally with some of the problems and dysfunctionalities that exist within BRAC to build a more honest and open account, in some parts basing entire new sections around them.

4 The addition of peace efforts leads to the categorisation of a “triple-nexus” (Howe 2019).

5 Even ICRC founder Henry Dunant discovered upon his arrival to Castiglione in the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino that local people were already involved in providing assistance to the wounded (Dunant 1986 ed., 62). His memoir offers a (rather patronising) description of the ineffectiveness of the local response, where the arrival of Dunant and other external actors serves to improve the local efforts.

6 Only 13 (of 53) grant-giving signatories allocated 25% or more of their humanitarian funds to national or local responders in 2020, and the overall funding allocated to them was 4.7% of all funding. This was far below the original ambition of 25% and a lower share than it had been in 2016 (Metcalfe-Hough et al. 2021, 52, 53).

7 In doing so, BRAC was one in a wave of several influential organisations emerging in Bangladesh, including Nijera Kori and Proshika, which both began in humanitarian work before evolving into broader development-focused NGOs and microfinance organisations such as Grameen Bank and the Association for Social Advancement (ASA).

8 However, this has changed in recent years with a re-emergence of international leadership, partially because of the changing political situation on the ground in Afghanistan.

9 BRAC has since departed from Sri Lanka.

10 See Khan and Kontinen (2022) for a detailed overview of the structure of the response’s governance and coordination at national and local levels.

11 This debate is fostered among others by efforts to no longer have national affiliates of large international NGOs counted as “local”, due to their superior access to resources compared to non-affiliated national and local organisations (A4EP 2019).

12 Tellingly, Van Brabant and Patel describe BRAC as “a huge Bangladeshi ‘non-governmental' organisation, that is variously perceived as an ‘NGO' or a ‘corporate entity’” (2018, 62).

13 These groups worked towards behavioural change, maintained sanitation facilities in the camps, and increased access to basic health services, including immunisation (practitioner reports and BRAC (2020).

14 Furthermore, the deep respect a home-grown NGO like BRAC holds nationally means that alongside its own emergency responses it can achieve great impact on broader policy formation on a national level. Occupying a position as a respected local and national actor is important in encouraging and demonstrating to the Bangladeshi Government what can be done in times of crisis: after BRAC released its study findings around the “new poor” linked to Covid-19, the Government announced it would start a new social protection programme, worth $150 million to support the “new poor” in the urban informal sector (Rahman et al. 2021, 2).