Beyond solidarity? Rethinking local legitimacy in rights-based advocacy

Notions like locally-led development and #Shiftthepower are now widely embraced.

While action is often lagging behind talk, development actors are questioning their own power. This includes the idea that the roles of INGOs should be reimagined, as we also show in our book Reimagining Civil Society Collaborations in Development (2023). One key aspect of this is the idea that civil society organisations (CSOs) in low- and middle-income countries should be recognised in their capacities and perspectives, and as leaders in their own contexts.

In their communications, INGOs often uncritically celebrate CSOs in the ‘Global South’. ‘Local’ CSOs tend to get represented as naturally legitimate actors. Supposedly, they are embedded in community realities and relations, able to ‘amplify’ the voices of the people they work with and achieve results based on fit to local contexts. However, there is little openness on how it is actually decided which Southern-based CSOs fit that description, and on what basis.

The truth is: we don’t really have a usable conceptual framework for this. A consequence is that little guidance develops. This deserves more openness and reflection, and also more research. CSOs can gain legitimacy on many grounds, with many pros and cons that we do not have a good grip on yet. And some have a lot more local legitimacy than others. Moreover, vested interests and associated pressures can lead to strategies that hide the truth.

A key question here concerns organisations’ legitimacy with the people they work with . To help catalyse debate on this, in a recent study Yogesh Mishra and I explored the legitimacy of Southern CSOs’ advocacy in Jharkhand, one of India’s poorest states. . These CSOs aim to improve the position of ‘marginalised groups’, like Indigenous groups, Dalits, women and migrants, from rights-based perspectives. We considered three key sources of legitimacy which the development sector often invokes: representation, solidarity and capacity. And we found that claims to legitimacy reveal tensions and limitations, which offer some lessons.

Representation

Our study found the CSOs positioned themselves as facilitators, ‘working for’ the community rather than ‘speaking for’ it. Slogans such as jiska mudda uski aguwai (those who face the issue must lead) were typical.  

However, at the same time, the way CSOs engage with the people they support was grounded in organisational values, objectives and approaches to issues and groups, rather than the aim to strengthen people’s voices. Some organisations , for example, saw themselves as facing uphill battles addressing women’s right in the communities they work with.

Ambivalent and interwoven ways of relating to communities come in here and often sustain CSO roles in ways that underline distance and hierarchy.

Solidarity

Internationally, solidarity is often seen as a cornerstone of development partnerships. And it featured prominently in CSOs’ legitimacy narratives. Empathy and supportiveness were stressed as values underlying action, based on trust built over time. But this support does not have to mean ‘standing with’ people in whatever struggle they face.

The CSOs we analysed primarily expressed a desire to ‘help’ and ‘support’ marginalised people to access rights, services and entitlements in engagement with the state. Moreover, such solidarity was often couched in a language of deficit. This describes community members as lacking ‘awareness’, ‘or ‘capacity’, requiring CSOs to guide, educate and ‘uplift’ them to be able to make use of what the state has to offer.  

Capacity

Legitimacy claims were  strongly anchored in an organisation’s capacity to help communities in relation to the state. CSOs referenced their legal expertise, knowledge of state programmes, advocacy skills and ability to navigate relations with the state. They also stressed their knowledge of the communities they work with.

Interviewees described their capacity to be knowledge holders and intermediaries as the basis of their ability to secure benefits for the people they work with. However, they also spoke of taking care not to become ‘political’; avoiding confrontation with the government. The need to safeguard a CSOs’ intermediary role often keeps its ‘rights-based’ approach limited to topics and goals that powerholders find agreeable.

Negotiated positioning

 Our study shows how advocacy CSOs in Jharkhand operate within a complex ecosystem of power. This system may help advance rights, entitlements and services for marginalised groups, but it also keeps within limits defined by CSOs’ organisational roles, perspectives and assumptions, and their way of navigating relations with the state. This sustains hierarchies and dilutes the emancipatory potential of rights-based advocacy.

Lessons for civil society organisations and donors

1. Recognise that ‘local’ is not legitimate by default

Language of ‘rights-based approaches’ may hide information about whose voices get articulated in what sense. . Close attention should be paid to CSO legitimacy to systematically address how CSOs relate to the people they work with, and which CSOs are in the best position to take up what role and on what basis.

2.  Reflect on what looks like, or is said to be, ‘solidarity’

‘Solidary’ is currently a buzzword that legitimises CSO roles. While the CSOs in this study do not use this term, they do use related language of rights and supporting people in their fight against marginalisation. There is need to not just examine Northern privilege in this context,  but also Southern privilege. It is necessary to consider the power inequalities that may be reflected in organisations’ agendas, approaches, ways of relating to the people they support and their leadership structures.

This is not about moving ‘NGO-bashing’ southwards. It’s about the need to put power in the hands of people seriously on all fronts. This includes recognising that Southern CSOs may be playing the aid system and/or sustaining inequalities as much as Northern ones.