The widespread recognition that our global structures and systems are unable to stand up for human rights, fight for peace and reduce poverty and division is magnifying and perpetuating a trust deficit that dominates, and ultimately undermines work to make the world a better place.

From the suffering in Gaza and now Lebanon, to the unimaginable crisis in Sudan, to the back tracking on net zero commitments, our institutions are paralysed by endless vetoes and a desperate clinging to outdated systems no longer fit for purpose. To reverse this bleak trajectory, we need to recognise and change the drivers of the trust deficit. Failure to do this will only lead to further instability and polarisation.

To start this process, there needs to be a reckoning of the behaviours and practices which dominate our sector. Having worked across the spectrum of ‘international development’ for 27 years, I have come across at least three different types of trust deficits, which I summarise under extractivism, the surveillance culture, and a failure to listen.

Extractivism

Working in Zambia there was a lack of trust between national community-based organisations (CBOs) and UN agencies or INGOs. The international actors who came in white four-by-four vehicles, with flags or logos flying, do assessments and ask a lot of questions, never to return to the village again to explain what the findings were, what was decided or even who was deciding about future support to their village/ country. These same CBOs, many representing women or minority groups such as people living with disabilities, were often asked to help find representatives to attend the meetings and voice their concerns. The CBOs valuable network, relationships and time was put at risk during many of these processes, damaging their communities’ trust in them if no funding, information or projects followed as a result.

Trust can only be built by understanding the true limitations and parameters and having flexibility to design community led approaches from the outset. Trust isn’t given, it is earned and a lack of trust flows in all directions.

In response to this, we’re seeing some interesting approaches centring community agency, decision making and listening such as: Survivor and Community Led Response (SCLR); the Movement for Community Led Development (MCLD); Asset Based Community Development (ABCD); or M&E approaches such as Community Based Participatory Research. There are also some comparatively new areas of work from within INGOs, reflecting on inherent biases through, for example, the work of Pledge for Change and Aid Reimagined.

Surveillance culture

UN agencies and INGOs, also have a lack of trust of their so-called Implementing Partners or national actors. They have a project they need to implement with timelines, budgets and a complex array of due diligence and reporting mechanisms that they ‘have to’ comply with. Their local partners are chosen and then used to implement these plans. The trust deficit is often around how the funds will be spent and accurately accounted for.

Extractivism is also embedded in the surveillance culture which helps to uphold the humanitarian industrial complex. At odds with the need for communities in crisis to be in the driving seat to determined what is needed, the surveillance culture assumes that the ‘supply’ side knows best. Femke Mulder in The Paradox of Externally Driven Localisation partly attributes this to the sector’s operational actors’ knowledge and ability to ‘market’ and ‘sell’ their work to buyers who aren’t ‘the local disaster-affected people… but the donors who have the resources to pay for them.’

To continue their domination in the lucrative world of humanitarian contracts, UN agencies and INGOs need to maintain their image as trusted overseers. Part of this requires a strict upholding of the surveillance culture to help foster what Humentum called in a 2023 report as ‘false assumptions [where] the sector’s rules, regulations, and polices are built on outdated and pernicious myths – that local organisations cannot manage large grants, that they are more prone to fraud, and that their capacities need to be built from the ground up…’

These ‘myths’ are also assisted by a tightly controlled narrative. Invariably this simplifies complexity, mutes moral outrage, and sees UN agencies and INGOs overinflating their role and impact. This keeps the white narrative strong, and feeds a system founded on minimising peoples’ true experiences and agency.

Against this, it’s hard to see how trust can exist in such a system. This is why it’s important to look for the glimmers of change. From initiatives to drive due diligence passporting, to support systems delivered by Kuja and SOLVOZ, to IFR4NOP, to communities looking beyond traditional aid, work is happening to nurture trust.

Failure to listen

Finally, our system has an inherent unwillingness to listen. In 2021 Mark Lowcock, then UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs said, ‘the humanitarian system actually is set up to give people in need what international agencies and donors think is best, and what the agencies have to offer, rather than giving people what they themselves say they most need.’ Yet we know from influential thinkers, practitioners and from our own lives that listening is a transformative tool.

I saw deep distrust between communities in Guinea and Ebola treatment centres bridged through an authentic commitment to listening and to responding, rather than talking and telling. Trust cannot be fostered if listening occurs in a vacuum, it relies on multidirectional communication.

Talk to Loop and Upinion are examples of using technology to enable real time, collective multidirectional communication to learn from communities and to represent their views, experiences and wishes when decisions are being made. However, their real value will only be maximised when duty-bearers meaningfully engage and respond directly. At the moment this is not measured or possibly valued sufficiently, to ensure it occurs.

When the system seems inherently incapable of authentically building trust, we must do two things, build incentives for change, and start with ourselves. I know from my own experience that building trust starts with letting go of the need to control. It grows with listening and learning.

There is a role and need for everyone to be more open to listening. To be more invested in transparency and communication, and more committed to letting go of control and the false assumption that control brings better results.

Trust is earned and it’s everyone’s responsibility.

Alex Ross is the founder of Loop. She has recently announced her decision to step down as Loop’s Lead, making way for new leadership which is better able to elevate and amplify the voices of those too often sidelined and silenced. Applications are open until 28^th November and more information can be found here.