While refugee-led organisations (RLOs) remain chronically underfunded, recent years have seen a growing willingness among government donors to invest in refugee leadership.

But this fragile progress is being jeopardised by the current funding squeezes in the humanitarian sector. Cuts from above are already cascading down from donors to intermediaries to RLOs.

This paper adopts a two-pronged approach to protect and unlock funding in the short term, whilst laying the groundwork for systemic change in the long run. The emphasis is on scaling up what is happening, taking inspiration from what others are doing, and sustaining momentum.

While the six recommendations target government donors, they build upon a collective response that sees funders, intermediaries and refugee leaders playing different yet complementary roles towards a shared objective: increasing quality funding to RLOs.

Report by the Overseas Development Institute