Risk-Taking, Risk-Making: How Uncertainty Shapes Refugee-Led Organisations’ Engagement with International Agencies
探讨风险与不确定性如何影响难民领导组织与国际资助方的人道主义本地化进程，基于乌干达南苏丹难民领导组织的案例，指出国际机构为降低自身风险的措施反而迫使难民组织承担更多不确定性。
This article explores how different notions and manifestations of risk and uncertainty shape discussions on, and processes of, humanitarian localisation in relation to refugee-led organisations (RLOs). Focusing on South Sudanese RLOs in Uganda and their engagements with international funders and agencies, we argue that the very measures undertaken by INGOs and donors to mitigate their perceived risks of localisation in fact require their supposed beneficiaries to embrace uncertainty and risks. While existing works on local partnerships and risk show how localisation may result in the transfer of security risks to local actors, here we focus on the mitigation of fiduciary risk by international actors and its local implications in contexts of economic precariousness. We argue that in Uganda, the localisation of refugee support through partnerships with RLOs is enabled by and ultimately replicates the economic uncertainties of refugee lives and livelihoods. Localisation thus often relies upon and reproduces inequality gaps. The article draws upon qualitative research with RLO leaders, refugees, and humanitarians, conducted in 2024–2025, and contributes to the critical scholarship on localisation in humanitarian and development settings, and in refugee contexts specifically.