Moving From Control To Commons

Humanitarian actors come together to explore practical responses to shifting power in the aid sector

We often speak of locally-led development, yet the tools, platforms, and rules that shape humanitarian action are still largely designed and controlled in the Minority World. What would it look like to do things differently?

This question sat at the heart of the TOTA (Technical and Operational Tools for All) Launch Event and Panel Discussion hosted by United Edge on 21 May. Through the launch of the TOTA Open Source Sharing Project, led by IRC with advisory support from NEAR and platform hosting from Kuja, participants explored practical ways of redistributing power between the Global North and Global South.

More than 600 humanitarian practitioners from over 100 countries around the world joined the discussion. Speakers including Sameera Noori (COAR), Sofía Sprechmann Sineiro (ACAPACA), Angela Oduor Lungati (Ushahidi), and others shared experiences, tools, and perspectives that addressed some of the debate’s most pressing concerns: who defines priorities, who participates in decision-making, how local ownership can be strengthened, and how the sector can move beyond rhetoric toward concrete solutions.

The event took place amid a major global shift in power. The challenge is no longer simply how to improve aid, but how to fundamentally transform it. Across the aid sector, actors are increasingly asking uncomfortable questions about ownership, control, and legitimacy. 

While many perceive this shift as a threat, others see it as an opportunity: a moment to rethink structures and systems, reorganize relationships, and imagine new ways of working.

The traditional narrative of aid – where the Global North “generously assists” the Global South – is increasingly being challenged. Research has repeatedly highlighted the unequal economic relationships that underpin development systems. For every dollar transferred to the Global South, for example, 24 dollars flows back to the North through extraction, accumulation, and imperialist appropriation. Critics argue that aid systems also reproduce broader structures of elitism, capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, white supremacy, authoritarianism, and other forms of inequality.

The aid sector itself must be willing to confront its role in sustaining these dynamics. Rather than focusing solely on how to lift people out of poverty, we should examine the systems of greed that create inequality in the first place.

These power imbalances are also reflected in the ownership of data, knowledge, and narratives. For decades, humanitarian tools and platforms have largely been designed in the Global North, while data, experiences, and evidence have been extracted from communities in the Global South. Even within localization efforts, many local organizations are still expected to adapt to systems they had little role in designing. They often carry out much of the work while receiving limited funding and bearing significant operational risks. Yet tools can also be treated as public goods: co-designed, shared, and shaped by the people who use them.

Building Shared Ownership

Sara Sannouh, Deputy Director of Partnerships at the International Rescue Committee (IRC), described TOTA as a practical response to the historic lack of ownership local organizations have had over humanitarian tools. She asked, “What if instead of creating new tools, we start from what already exists? What if we build with local actors together?” 

These questions launched a two-year co-creation process involving more than 50 organizations across the Global South. The result is a platform hosting 24 multilingual, open-source toolkits designed as accessible public goods. They cover operational and technical areas ranging from financial management and safeguarding to fundraising, climate, and environmental action. Their purpose is to strengthen local organizations’ capacity not only to implement programmes but also to define priorities, generate knowledge, and lead responses.

“TOTA was created to support local organizations to strengthen their technical and operational capacity to lead humanitarian response in order to advance localization and expand impact at scale.” Sireen Abu Asbeh, Program Delivery Support Coordinator, IRC

Valeria Geremia, Network Influencing Coordinator at NEAR, highlighted a recurring challenge within localization efforts: “Too often, we have seen local NGOs that are consulted, invited into a process, sometimes they have a seat at the table, but they are not really able to influence the direction.”

The key question is not whether resources exist, but whether they are genuinely useful for Global South civil society organizations: Are they adaptable? Available in relevant languages? Responsive to local realities? Do they support local leadership, or simply create another layer of dependency?

TOTA tries to tackle these issues with tools hosted online by Kuja, which is itself more than just a platform. As Doreen Omitto, Global Community Manager at Kuja, explained, “The purpose is to have a space where organizations can connect, discuss, collaborate, share insights, and build community dialogue.”

Technology like this can be used as a tool for agency. Ushahidi, for example, focuses on citizen-generated data and community-led solutions. Executive Director Angela Oduor Lungati put it bluntly, “The focus really has been how do we center people’s lived experience at the heart of decision-making, and also give them agency in designing the kinds of decisions and solutions that they want to see happen. We do that essentially by building technology tools.” Open-source technology makes otherwise expensive resources accessible while enabling continuous and horizontal learning among communities.

Hopes and Risks

When invited to reflect on what gives them hope, participants pointed to solidarity, agency, equity, education, local ecosystems, shared benefit, freedom, independence, and the principle of “nothing about us without us”. These responses reflected a strong desire for a humanitarian system grounded in trust, participation, and local ownership rather than external control and extractive approaches.

Yet, beneath this optimism lay a more cautious sentiment. Some questioned whether localization has become another development buzzword – frequently invoked in strategies, funding proposals, and institutional narratives while deeper power structures remain largely intact. There is a risk that localization becomes a rebranding exercise rather than a genuine redistribution of power, offering the language of transformation without developing new models or changing who sets priorities, controls resources, and defines success. 

Will we be able to build a shared understanding of localization and actually translate its principles into meaningful shifts in ownership, decision-making, and accountability?

What Must Be Given Up?

The panel discussion questioned what international actors are actually willing to relinquish. Sameera Noori, Executive Director of the Citizens Organization for Advocacy and Resilience (COAR) and a member of the TOTA Steering Committee, argued that direct and flexible funding is one of the clearest ways to shift power – “Flexible funding, direct funding, should go directly to the local actors, because they know the exact context of the crisis, and they are the ones close to the community.” She challenged assumptions that local organizations lack capacity: “The international community should give up the control over priorities, the control over narratives, and the assumption that there is no capacity with the local actors. How did we respond to the crisis all these years if there was no capacity?”

Sofía Sprechmann Sineiro, Coordinator of the Latin American Forum on Decolonizing Aid at Acápacá pointed to Latin America as an example of how alternative models can emerge when external funding declines. Latin America stopped being a “donor darling” over a decade ago, whilst solidarity-based cooperation has gained prominence. She said, “It means moving from charity to justice, from control to trust, from beneficiaries to political actors, from project delivery to long-term social transformation. Communities and movements should define priorities, govern resources, and shape solutions.” Yet, Global North institutions continue to retain disproportionate control over decision-making, resources, narratives, and risk. “Too often, power stays in the Global North institutions,” she added, “while risk is transferred to local organizations.”

Speakers emphasized that change must come from both sides. While international actors must be willing to cede control, local actors and communities must also continue to build collective visions, claim space, and advance practical alternatives. In Sameera’s words, “When different actors have different interpretations of localization, it makes it hard …. Different thoughts, different ideas, different struggles happening, but no one is getting to the final result. It's all about us, local actors as well, [we] should be aware of ourselves and … claim our space and our position.”

Just the Beginning

Ultimately, the discussion returned to the question of justice; “If the world were a country, it would be the most unequal country in the world,” Sofia reminded us.

Addressing unequal power distribution requires more than reforming individual organizations. It requires transforming relationships between actors and replacing charity-based approaches with solidarity, trust, and shared ownership on the basis of awareness and a shared understanding. What does it take to enact this shift? For organizations in the Minority World, this may mean stepping back from the role of protagonist and embracing a new role, eventually, as facilitator within systems and movements led by the Majority World.

This conversation is only the beginning. The shift from control to commons brings complex challenges, but also creates space for new, justice based possibilities and opportunities. Across the world, communities, organizations, individuals and networks are already developing alternative models, tools, and practices that point toward different ways of working. The question now is how bravely each one of us is willing to examine and exercise the power we hold, and whether those who currently hold the greatest power are willing not only to learn from these alternatives but also to act on what they learn.

The full event recording can be accessed online here. 

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Serena Borgni is a Fellow of United Edge’s Justice Collective and a passionate development practitioner active in Italy and Syria working in support of youth, diversity and justice through trust-based philanthropy. She is a committed advocate of the Justice Based Approach to social change.