Overview

The Grand Bargain, a pact between donors and aid providers, promised to direct 25% of global humanitarian funding to local responders. However, Women-Led Organizations (WLOs) and Women Rights’ Organizations (WROs) in Uganda continue to struggle with insufficient funding and bureaucratic challenges.

Between April and June 2024, CARE, in collaboration with the Charter4Change Uganda Secretariat, and the National Association of Women’s Organizations in Uganda (NAWOU), conducted a series of consultative workshops across six sub regions of the country. These consultations brought together WLOs, WROs, and Refugee-Led Organizations (RLOs) to share their experiences, challenges, and priorities in advocating for more locally-led Humanitarian and Development Response.

Participants from regions including Karamoja, Northern Uganda, Western Uganda, West Nile, Eastern Uganda and Kampala provided compelling insights into the realities they face. Despite the Grand Bargain’s ambition to allocate 25% of humanitarian funding to local actors, less than 1% of aid focused on women and girls reached WLOs and WROs directly. The consultations offered a rare platform for grassroots voices to be heard, highlighting persistent funding inequities, structural exclusion, and the urgent need for more inclusive and equitable funding practices in
Uganda’s humanitarian and development landscape.