Nyibol Racheal is a refugee mental health advocate, author, and founder of Mental Health Family, supporting refugee women and youth through psychosocial support, storytelling, and mental health awareness initiatives. 

Refugee-led organisations have completely transformed humanitarian response in the last five years, and now they are beginning to pay heavily for proving that you can achieve so much with so little, often with less than 10% of the resources that traditional humanitarian structures use to achieve similar outcomes.

We are the first to respond and the last to leave, if at all we ever leave.  We live in the same communities we serve, which means our accountability is not abstract, it is daily and personal. We do not need reports to tell us what is happening; we experience it directly.

Because of this proximity, we can stretch limited resources in ways that often surprise the wider system. We build trust faster, we reach people more directly, and we adapt quickly when situations change. In many cases, we are the invisible backbone of humanitarian response. And yet, despite this central role, we remain positioned at the margins of decision-making. 

We were just dreamers 

Most refugee-led organisations did not emerge because there was funding or opportunity. We emerged because there was need. We came into this space with one major dream: to solve the problems our communities face every day, problems of mental health, survival, education, livelihoods, protection and dignity.

We wanted something more structural. We wanted to create systems that serve communities and also employ them, especially youth and women, so that response becomes sustainable and locally led. We imagined a humanitarian system where people closest to the crisis are also the ones shaping the response, designing the solutions, and benefiting economically from the work. But over time, that dream has collided with a very different reality.

The reality and conditional inclusion 

In practice, decision-making power rarely sits with refugee-led organisations. Instead, power is concentrated within donor structures, UN agencies, government departments, and implementing partners. RLOs are often consulted, but rarely trusted with final authority over decisions or resources. Is this a classic case of beggars can't be choosers? You tell me!

We are invited into meetings, but not into ownership of outcomes. Our input is documented, sometimes quoted, and often used in reports or public narratives, but rarely translated into shared decision-making.

Funding relationships frequently reinforce this imbalance. Many RLOs operate in a space where speaking too boldly risks losing support altogether. This creates a system where participation is conditional, not equal.

At the same time, refugee-led organisations are often treated with suspicion when funding does arrive, as if proximity to the community is a risk rather than an asset. Here is the thing, most RLOs have survived long before formal funding structures looked our way. We have not disappeared. We are not external actors passing through. We are rooted here.

This contradiction makes you wonder, if RLOs have consistently worked in their communities for years without external support, what exactly is this narrative that we shall run away with funding? Run to where? 

Of course, like any sector, RLOs are not perfect. Some face capacity challenges, and accountability systems must exist. But isolated weaknesses should not justify structural exclusion. We do not apply this logic uniformly to governments or international institutions.

If this were an ideal world and things were to change, allow me to dream for a minute and tell you what it would look like or mean!

It would mean shifting from “consulting refugee voices” to sharing decision-making power with refugee-led organisations and communities. It would mean at least 50% meaningful partnership in design, implementation, and funding decisions, not as subcontractors, but as equal actors.

It would also require reducing micromanagement and building trust-based accountability systems that recognise both lived experience and implementation capacity. Most importantly, it would mean acknowledging that the people closest to the problem are often best positioned to design lasting solutions.

What would the world turn into if this happened? 

I am glad you asked. If this shift happened, the humanitarian system would look fundamentally different. Responses would become faster, more contextual, and more cost-effective. Communities would no longer be passive recipients of aid but active architects of their own solutions.

Funding would circulate more directly into local economies, creating sustainable employment for youth and women within refugee communities. Trust between institutions and communities would deepen because it would be built on shared responsibility rather than observation from a distance. And humanitarian impact would increase because decision-making is finally aligned with lived reality.

What should we do with this information?

The question is no longer whether refugee-led organisations are capable.
Haven’t we already demonstrated that? The question is whether the humanitarian system is willing to let go of control enough to recognise us as equal decision-makers. Because until refugee-led organisations move from consultation spaces into decision-making spaces, we will continue to celebrate participation while quietly denying power. And participation without power is not transformation, it is performance.

So, the real question is: what do we do differently from today? If you are a donor, funder, or implementing partner, start here: Stop designing programs for refugee communities without designing them with decision-making authority for them, not advisory roles, not consultation windows. Real authority over priorities, budgets, and implementation.

Fund refugee-led organisations as primary partners, not subcontractors. That means trusting them with core funding, not just small, restricted project components. And before you approve another program, ask 2 questions:
Who is actually making the final decisions in this model, and why is it not the people most affected? 

If you sit in a position of influence, do not wait for a system-wide reform to act. In your next meeting, push for shared decision-making structures. Advocate for at least equal representation of refugee-led organisations in governance, not symbolic inclusion after decisions have already been made.

Fortunately, change in this system does not only come from policy, but it also comes from what powerful actors choose to prioritise today. And if you remember nothing else from this piece, remember this:

Refugee-led organisations do not lack capacity. They lack shared power. And until that changes, participation will remain what it too often is today, visible, documented, and celebrated… but empty of real influence.