When your computer freezes, no matter how many times you click and nothing responds, how often do you usually press the reset button? Not because you know exactly what’s gone wrong, but because you hope that a fresh start will clear the glitches and get everything working again. In many ways, our global humanitarian systems are stuck in a similar loop, overloaded, unresponsive, and failing to meet the needs of people impacted by crisis. But we hope this reset is not just a reactive and quick solution to patch things up, rather to fundamentally rethink how the entire system operates.
What is the humanitarian reset?
The “Humanitarian reset” originated with OCHA’s statement calling for a sweeping reform of the humanitarian aid system. This reset promises to make humanitarian response more efficient, effective, and legitimate, a panacea to what OCHA described as “a profound crisis of legitimacy, morale, and funding.” This promise sounds like a remake rather than a sequel.
The discussion about the humanitarian reset began in response to increasingly complex humanitarian issues such as change, protracted crises and the global Covid pandemic. However, the reset was intensified by a dramatic shift in global funding priorities earlier this year. The United States’ termination of humanitarian assistance in January 2025 sent shockwaves through the sector. Other international donors followed suit, including the UK and Germany, reducing their overseas development aid budget. Notably, the UK directed some of its aid budget to global defence spending due to escalating geopolitical tensions. The result? A complex and urgent need to rethink how humanitarian aid is coordinated and delivered.
The humanitarian reset is structured around 10 workstreams, one of them being the simplification of the cluster system . While the intended output of this simplification is yet to be determined, the primary focus will be on streamlining coordination between and within the clusters. This is a foundational change that carries both risks and opportunities for the way humanitarian coordination is implemented. The present cluster system has been instrumental in coordinating humanitarian response, yet concerns have been raised around duplication and efficiency; competitiveness between agencies; limited coordination function to communication rather than collaboration; and centralising decision making process around international actors. These challenges are more pronounced for local actors, who often find the cluster system is too convoluted to navigate, and to coordinate with multiple international agencies from different clusters to provide humanitarian assistance. This inefficiency justifies coordination as one of the key areas of the reset process.
This blog focuses on the simplification of the cluster system and its implications for locally led cluster coordination. While it won’t solve the broader challenges of localisation in humanitarian cluster coordination, it aims to spark reflection on what we’ve observed so far, highlight potential risks and opportunities, and propose areas for further exploration.
What does Locally Led cluster coordination look like?
Locally led cluster coordination is recognised in the reset agenda and is driven by local actors, which in the cluster context includes government, NGOs, civil society organisations, and community-based groups. These actors are often the first responders in humanitarian response and have deep contextual knowledge yet are excluded within the global coordination structures. Integrating the paradigm of local leadership into coordination mechanisms entails enabling local actors not only to participate in the coordination process, but also to inform and lead decision-making.
Since the introduction of the cluster system in 2005, global humanitarian actors have advocated for its adaptation to the country level context to enable more locally led coordination for specific crises. Encouraging progress has been made, with increased participation of local and national actors in various coordination mechanisms, including the Humanitarian Country Teams (HCTs) and clusters, though leadership roles remain limited. More clusters have been established at the local level, bringing coordination mechanisms closer to field operations. In 2023, the number of clusters, sectors, and Areas of Responsibility (AoRs) increased from 1,011 in 2022 to 1,153, reflecting this expansion, although United Nations entities still held 56% of leadership roles at the subnational level. The commitment to embedding localisation within cluster coordination is further reflected in the publication of the guidance titled Strengthening Participation, Representation And Leadership Of Local And National Actors In IASC Humanitarian Coordination Mechanisms.
While the global-level cluster architecture is still defining how the humanitarian reset translates into cluster coordination workstreams, progress in locally led coordination continues in parallel, with many country-level innovations already underway. Our study on localising the CCCM Cluster demonstrated best practices for cluster co-leadership by local and national actors in disaster and conflict settings. Common key ingredients of these processes include co-leadership with shared responsibility, meaningful participation of local actors in decision-making; long-term and needs-based capacity development; and consistent resource allocation. Indonesia has made significant progress in localising cluster coordination over the past ten years. During the 2018 Earthquake Palu response, local actors were at the forefront of coordination. In 2007, The Philippines adapted the international cluster system for disaster management to better fit its national context and it is now led by their government.
How will local coordination be reset?
There are number of uncertainties as the reset process unfolds. These include the change in global humanitarian architecture, shifts in resource availability, and potential ripple effects of ongoing or potential new crises. These uncertainties, raise important questions about the impact of the humanitarian reset on locally led coordination. These include:
Will the humanitarian reset accelerate locally led coordination and how?
Will it restructure existing coordination systems?
Or will it hinder the progress of locally led coordination?
The answer may be all of the above, depending on how the reset is implemented.
Accelerate. Leveraging momentum to deliver comprehensive support that enables local actors to take the driving seat is critical. Currently, global actors are facing shrinking resources and tight timelines, often leaving no other option but to expedite their programming and limit localisation to their exit strategy. This makes localisation tokenistic which is further compounded when local actors are excluded from decision making within the cluster system, and UN agencies and international NGOs continue to hold the majority of leadership roles. Instead, the process must be deliberate and inclusive, offering the necessary support to enable meaningful and sustainable local leadership. In this way the reset can accelerate locally led coordination rather than reinforce existing bad practice.
Restructure. Local actors have been working diligently to interpret and translate global sectoral language into local coordination structures, such as determining which government department the shelter cluster sit under. However, as global frameworks evolve, humanitarian actors may need to redefine and reclassify these needs to align with new configurations or recreate whole new coordination architecture.
Set back. Coordination is often viewed as less critical among competing operational demands. The agenda of supporting locally led coordination is frequently buried under what is perceived as more immediate, life-saving programmes. Consequently, little to no resources are allocated to support it, leaving this critical area underfunded and neglected. This might reinforce challenges that already faced by local actors to take leadership in humanitarian coordination such as double hatting, unable access to coordination platform, or overwhelmed by the complexity of the coordination mechanism. New systems may by default run without the local leadership as a core component.
Alternative Models
Beyond the cluster system, alternative coordination models are gaining traction, offering solutions to the limitation of cluster-coordination particularly in bringing the localisation model closer to local context. It will be interesting to see how these inform a humanitarian cluster rest in any meaningful way.
Area-Based Approaches (ABA): This focuses on geographic or administrative boundaries rather than sectors, aligning more closely with integrated community’s need provisions. This approach is more relevant to the structure of humanitarian coordination at the country level, which is typically organised based on the administrative divisions.
Network-Based Coordination: In some contexts, networks of local NGOs or civil society organisations create platforms to facilitate humanitarian coordination, elevating their preestablished structures down to the community level. Many of these organisations already implement humanitarian programmes and operate through this network. In many cases this model enables faster delivery humanitarian assistance with local first responder teams pre-positioned on the ground.
Humanitarian-development-peace collaboration platforms. As more crises demand long-term support beyond the scope of traditional humanitarian aid, the humanitarian-development-peace nexus model seeks to foster stronger alignment and synergy between humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding efforts. This approach is not without criticism to humanitarian purists, but it woul allow a wider range of local actors including government bodies and community-based organisations, who traditionally involve in development programming, to collaborate in addressing complex and multi-dimensional challenges needs.
These alternative coordination models are highlighting the need to re-examine how locally led coordination can feature in the humanitarian reset to better enable local actors to drive the coordination in addressing the need of the affected people.
Who will the reset serve?
The humanitarian reset must primarily serve those receiving humanitarian assistance and not the people who administer it. Locally led humanitarian coordination is critical to ensure humanitarian action is context relevant and led by people who are the closest to the needs of the affected communities. This leaves us with more questions than answers, not least:
Are local humanitarian actors really prepared and supported for this transition?
Will the new coordination model bring improved quality of humanitarian assistance?
And most importantly, how do we ensure that the reset doesn’t recreate humanitarian coordination with its inherited flaws, but rather strengthens it in ways that are equitable, inclusive, and locally driven?
The current humanitarian system has demonstrated a clear need for reform to better respond to the evolving nature of crises. The humanitarian reset represents a critical and necessary step forward; however, it must be undertaken with caution and humility. While it presents an opportunity to reimagine outdated structures, there is also a risk of reinforcing existing challenges if not implemented thoughtfully and inclusively.
Image reference
https://emergency.unhcr.org/coordination-and-communication/cluster-system/cluster-approach
https://unsplash.com/photos/a-group-of-balls-on-a-table-3V1rt-xNOIg
