ASAL Humanitarian Network (AHN)
From fragmented response to locally led, county-anchored humanitarian systems
Humanitarian System Transformation through Local Humanitarian Leadership (HST-LHL) – Kenya
Embedding local leadership, shared accountability, and anticipatory action across Kenya’s ASAL counties
Overview
Kenya’s Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) continue to experience intersecting climate, conflict, and socio-economic shocks that place sustained pressure on communities and the humanitarian systems alike. In these contexts, local and national humanitarian actors are not only first responders, but long-term stewards of resilience, coordination, and innovation.
These shocks are not isolated events; they are recurring, compounding, and increasingly predictable. Responding effectively requires ahumanitarian system that is anticipatory, locally anchored, and capable of translating community realities into timely system-level decisions and resource flows.
Within Kenya’s devolved governance context, counties play a central role in preparedness, planning, budgeting, and response. Local and national humanitarian actors are not only first responders in crises, but long-term stewards of resilience, coordination, and innovation. Yet, despite carrying the greatest operational, security, and reputational risks, local actors often have limited influence over how decisions are made, when funds are released, and how risk is shared.
The Humanitarian System Transformation through Local Humanitarian Leadership (HST-LHL) project responds to this imbalance. Implemented through the ASAL Humanitarian Network (AHN), and supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, HST-LHL is a multi-year system-change initiative working across policy, coordination, financing, and accountability spaces. Its aim is to rebalance power, resources, and decision-making within Kenya’s humanitarian system by embedding local leadership at every stage of preparedness, response, and recovery.
The Humanitarian System Transformation through Local Humanitarian Leadership (HST-LHL) project responds to this imbalance. Implemented through the ASAL Humanitarian Network (AHN), and supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, HST-LHT is a multi-year system-change initiative working across policy, coordination, financing, and accountability spaces. Its aim is to rebalance power, resources, and decision-making within Kenya’s humanitarian system by embedding local leadership at every stage of preparedness, response, and recovery.
Rather than treating localisation as a principle or project modality, HST-LHL focuses on practical system change—strengthening locally led, networked response models; advancing equitable and transparent risk-sharing practices; and improving access to quality, flexible, and predictable financing for local and national humanitarian actors.
Rather than treating localization as an abstract commitment, HST-LHL focuses on practical system change, strengthening locally led, networked response models: advancing equitable and transparent risk-sharing practices;and improving access to quality, flexible and predictable financing for local and national humanitarian actors
Why This HST-LHL Matters
Humanitarian responses in Kenya are increasingly shaped by climate-driven crises, protracted displacement, and growing funding uncertainty. While local and national organizations are closest to affected communities, the first mile of response , they often operate within system rules, timelines and financing mechanisms over which they have little control.
This imbalance means responsibility is decentralized, but authority and resources remain centralized. HST-LHL addresses this gap by shifting how the system functions in practice—who leads, who decides, and how risk and resources are shared.
HST-LHL responds to this imbalance by:
- Strengthening locally led coordination and networked response models; → enabling local actors to act collectively and influence decisions across counties
- Creating safe, evidence-based spaces to address risk sharing across the humanitarian delivery chain; → shifting risk sharing from principle to practice
- Supporting anticipatory action and early response through county-level systems; → linking early warning, planning, budgeting, and execution
Advancing innovative financing approaches that enable local actors to lead; → including pooled, trigger-based, and readiness-linked financing mechanisms.
What This Looks Like in Practice in Kenya
In Kenya, the challenges facing the humanitarian system are not theoretical — they are lived daily by communities and the local organizations that support them. Through the ASAL Humanitarian Network (AHN), HST-LHL translates system reform ambitions into practical, locally led action across some of the country’s most crisis-affected regions.
AHN brings together local and national humanitarian actors who are deeply embedded in their communities and counties. By working as a network, rather than as isolated organizations, AHN enables collective coordination, shared learning, and locally driven solutions that respond to both immediate humanitarian needs and longer-term system constraints.
This networked approach allows community evidence and frontline experience to feed upward into county, national, and global decision-making spaces — ensuring that policies, funding instruments, and coordination mechanisms reflect real operational realities.
The work in Kenya focuses on how power is exercised, how risk is shared, and how resources flow ensuring that local actors are not only responders, but decision-makers, innovators, and leaders within the humanitarian system.
1. Networked Humanitarian Response
AHN’s network enables shared capacity, rapid response deployment, severity-based prioritisation, and county-integrated coordination — delivering harmonised, people-centred responses at scale.
HST-LHL strengthen and activate locally led, networked response models that enable local and national actors to respond collectively, rather than in isolation. Through built-in mechanisms for capacity sharing, rapid response team (RRT) deployment, complementary sector-based action, and harmonised response across geographies and counties, AHN members are able to act quickly and at scale. These models are embedded within AHN’s Policy, Advocacy, and Influencing Architecture, which connects community evidence to system decisions and resource flows across planning, budgeting, execution, and oversight stages. Through the ASAL Humanitarian Network (AHN), member organizations coordinate across counties, share early warning information analyse severity data to prioritize the most affected counties, mobilize resources, and align response strategies in real time. This networked approach is deliberately integrated with county-level coordination structures and stakeholders, enabling the coordination of the entire response with county governments, DRM units, and sector platforms, enabling coordinated, packaged responses rather than fragmented interventions.
This approach has been applied in contexts such as the Tana River cholera response and flood and conflict emergencies in Marsabit, and currently Mandera drought response where decentralized coordination, community-based alerts, and integrated WASH, health, and protection actions proved critical.
By working as a coordinated system rather than parallel actors, AHN members deliver harmonised, people-centred responses supported by real-time review, shared situational analysis, and collective decision-making. These experiences demonstrate how locally led networks can function as surge, readiness, and coordination platforms — not just implementers — while generating learning that informs national and global humanitarian practice.
2. Learning, Peer Exchange, and Localisation Networks
From isolated experience to shared system learning: AHN actively contributes to global learning on localisation by convening and participating in peer exchange spaces for location-based humanitarian networks. In September 2024, AHN co-hosted the Global Local Networks Peer Learning convening with Trócaire and the Charter for Change Kenya Working Group, bringing together leaders from over 17 countries.
These exchanges created space for honest reflection on sustainability, power, financing, and accountability, and positioned location-based humanitarian leadership as a core system function rather than a project modality. For AHN, these forums are not one-off events but part of a deliberate strategy to situate Kenyan experience within global practice and shape how localization networks function worldwide.
3. Due Diligence Passporting
From repetitive compliance to shared readiness:
HST-LHL advances Due Diligence Passporting as a practical localisation solution that reduces duplication, accelerates response, and rebalances risk in partnerships. Through this approach, local CSOs demonstrate organisational readiness, governance, and compliance once, with this recognised across multiple partners. To address the heavy and duplicative compliance burden placed on local and national actors, AHN supports the adoption of Due Diligence Passporting as a practical localisation solution. Through this approach, local CSOs demonstrate organizational readiness, governance, and compliance once, and have this recognized across multiple partnerships. Working with Charter for Change signatory INGOs, AHN apllies Passporting as a structured and collaborative process, linking mapping, self assessment and joint verification at county level. This creates a shared, trusted evidence base for partnership decisions and reduces delays during emergencies.
4. Risk Sharing and Risk-Informed Dialogue
From hidden risk transfer to shared responsibility: HST-LHL treats risk sharing as a system design issue, asking who controls decisions, who absorbs risk, and who has access to resources. AHN, together with the Charter for Change Kenya Working Group, led a structured and inclusive process to better understand how financial, operational, security, and reputational risks are experienced across the humanitarian delivery chain. This included the co-development of a Risk Perception Survey, iterative technical reviews with local actors, and external input from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to strengthen neutrality and rigor. Rather than relying on passive data collection, AHN convened a joint online survey-filling session to encourage dialogue, clarity, and meaningful participation. The findings to informed a national Risk Sharing Dialogue held during the C4C Annual Dialogue, and the resulting report now serves as a reference point for ongoing conversations on equitable risk management, redesign partnership models, funding instruments, and accountability mechanisms within Kenya’s humanitarian system.
5. Virtual Pooled Funds and Locally Led Financing
From delayed funding to early, county-anchored action: Through Virtual Pooled Funds (VPFs) and alert-based financing, HST-LHL links early-warning systems to rapid, locally managed funding. Resources are released based on predefined triggers, readiness, and accountability mechanisms rather than proposal-driven approvals. The VPF is designed to align humanitarian financing with county DRM systems, early warning protocols, and public financial management processes — including activation of contingency funds such as the county 2% DRM allocation. This model has supported responses to floods, drought, and public health threats in ASAL counties, with local organizations leading implementation and coordination. Alongside response, AHN uses the VPF as a learning platform testing thresholds, SOPs, and accountability mechanisms while engaging donors and partners on how pooled, flexible funding can strengthen preparedness, reduce delays, and shift decision-making closer to affected communities.