GISF publishes "Security Risk-Sharing in Partnerships: Practical barriers and pathways for intermediaries"

While donors and system-wide structures play a key role in shaping risk distribution, intermediaries – notably international NGOs (INGOs) and UN agencies – can reinforce inequitable risk-sharing dynamics when partnerships transfer risk to local and national partners without providing the resources, flexibility, information, and support needed to manage those risks safely.

This article examines those challenges, drawing on risk-sharing literature and practitioner case studies from interviewed organisations at different stages of the journey. To this end, it asks:

• What intermediary policies, practices, and incentives create or reinforce barriers to meaningful security risk-sharing with local and national partners?
• Where are promising practices emerging, and what can be learned from organisations at different stages of the journey?
• What practical steps can intermediaries take to begin closing the gap between security risk-sharing commitments and operational reality?