Beyond Business as Usual in International Civil Society

In this blog post, Dylan Mathews, CEO of Peace Direct and Myriam Ciza Gambini, Programme Manager at the International Civil Society Centre share reflections from a series of engagements about how ICSO roles must change to balance power in the sector. 

The roles that international civil society organisations (ICSOs) have played in humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding activities have come under intense criticism in recent years. A growing number of organisations and activists around the world are pushing for a paradigm shift to tackle the uneven and imbalanced partnerships that have defined the sector up to this point.  

In 2023, the International Civil Society Centre and Peace Direct held a series of ‘Curated Conversations’, that aimed to engage a diverse set of voices to explore alternative pathways and roles for ICSOs in the future international civil society constellation. This built upon Peace Direct’s report on the nine roles for intermediaries. Towards the end of 2025, the Centre and Peace Direct reconvened international and local organisations to discuss the alternative roles again, with a view to understanding mandates amidst a time of significant global complexity. 

Through these conversations, we explored how ICSOs might challenge themselves to develop more equitable, future-relevant mandates. We debated the question of how concretely organisations are rethinking their roles against a challenging political backdrop. 

We started these discussions by acknowledging that the role of intermediary, although well-established, is commonly misunderstood as being focused on the transition of ICSOs away from direct implementation, and into grant managers and funding conduits. However, the role of intermediary is far richer than just a mechanism for managing donor funds. 

In our first series of curated conversations, we heard from local actors who indicated a different range of roles that ICSOs could take up, including: 

• Space Openers, for local actors, enabling and facilitating new opportunities for civil society to operate independently. 

• Relationship brokers, between local organisations and private philanthropy or big donors, as local organisations perceive this to be an area where ICSOs have kept the relationships for their own benefit. 

• Asset Builders, identifying resources (including non-monetary) that local organisations need to scale up and strengthen their work.  

What was most striking about those early conversations was the alignment between local organisations and ICSOs. Both wanted there to be a redefinition of how the sector can work together, in solidarity, and open the door for a broader system change. Fast forward to 2026 and the need for that solidarity in creating the new system we want is more urgent than ever. In addition to the funding crisis, ICSOs are facing intersecting challenges of legitimacy, declining trust and scepticism around their value and ability to operate efficiently in the current paradigm. While many organisations declare wanting to facilitate system change, systems’ thinking is addressed from a theoretical perspective, where funding challenges and institutional inertia hinder its practice. 

Global South organisations are calling for an overhaul of the system, so what is stopping this from happening? 

In the Curated Conversations that took place in December 2025, Riyad Al-Najem, former CEO of Child Guardians, a local organisation based in Syria, outlined some of the challenges he saw in ICSOs transitioning away from their current roles. He said ICSOs: 

• Tend to prioritise their own relevance, brand and visibility, to guarantee donor funding.  

• Operate with funding models that favour projects over partnerships and the delivery of outputs over power sharing.  

• Operate within systems that are built for control and not collaboration, and fear losing that control  

Riyad ended by reminding us that local leadership is not a trend, but the only path to dignity, legitimacy, and sustainability. For him, the measure for international civil society should no longer be how much it delivers, but how much power it gives away.  

In the discussion that followed, some of the ICSO representatives shared that they find themselves stuck on the next steps. In the past, there were no incentives to change, and now, despite the crisis being an opportunity to rethink their models, there is a lack of ability to pivot accordingly. One participant suggested that a catalyst is needed for ICSOs to embrace transformation, and funders could help move the sector forward. Funding should also move away from old models of operating which are seen by grantees as transactional and not rooted in genuine partnership. 

Other participants noted that for organisations focused on service delivery, there appeared to be a reluctance to move into other roles, such as advocacy, either due to a lack of experience or expertise, or concern about it being mission drift. A question for us all, then, is can we take the time to review our purpose and mission? And has it been too narrowly interpreted, conflating mission drift with the methods of delivery?  

There is an increasing consensus that the system has not been working in its optimal state for local actors.  There is space to build something better in lieu of a system in dire need of radical reimagination. Organisations that are keen to seize this critical juncture for change face the risk of rebuilding what they have lost instead of making a conscious effort to build anew. 

As we discuss the post-aid architecture, what positioning might benefit organisations to achieve long-run effectiveness in their missions?  

The discussions we curated were a small contribution to what we hope will be an ongoing and constructive exploration of ICSO roles, and one that the International Civil Society Centre will continue to host. We were very encouraged by all that we heard during the conversations, though we are aware that many more conversations like these need to take place before we can confidently and clearly talk about the future of the sector. We hope you will have these conversations internally, with your donors and partners so you can be an active part of that change process. 

When development and humanitarian aid become progressively driven by foreign policy and economic interest, while multilateralism is declining, international civil society cannot afford to remain passive. The responsibility lies with ICSOs to move beyond rhetorical commitments and make deliberate choices that redistribute power, centre local leadership, and reshape how legitimacy is earned. The future of the sector will be defined not by what organisations say they value, but the risks they are willing to take to embody those values.