Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Entwicklung und Humanitäre Hilfe
Outside view (EN)
What does it really mean to listen to people directly impacted by crisis? In humanitarian, development, and policy spaces, “listening” is too often performative—a box to check. At best, directly impacted people are consulted. They share their stories of pain, resilience, and hope. Their words might be quoted in reports and echoed in speeches on distant stages. But when decisions are made—on funding, programming design, or political priorities—their presence fades. The systems they live under remain unchanged.
Outside view by Rez Gardi and Marisa Leon Gomez Sonet
What is called “listening” is, in reality, just hearing—passive, selective, and disconnected from action. It reinforces rather than reimagines the status quo.
True listening can make people uncomfortable. It requires those in power to act on what they hear—to shift resources, change course, and rethink power structures. Until this happens, listening remains symbolic; actors are not listening, they are simply hearing, and mistaking the presence of impacted people for influence.
Yet is real listening enough? Does it translate into more effective policies and programming? History tells us it does not. Without structural change, listening risks tokenizing people’s experiences, reducing them to testimonies that might stir donor empathy or satisfy organizational mandates. The real challenge is moving from listening to meaningful participation. This means humanitarian actors must ask: How can directly impacted people shape the decisions that govern their futures? Are we extracting stories to validate pre-set priorities? Or are we ready to be reshaped by the perspectives of people who have lived through crisis, displacement, and recovery?
Meaningful participation goes beyond merely being consulted[1]. It means being present at decision-making tables as equals. It requires a shift in mindset, from seeing affected people as “beneficiaries” to recognizing them as leaders, experts, and partners in humanitarian response. Their knowledge is not anecdotal; it is political, strategic, and rooted in lived experience.
Encouragingly, we are beginning to see change. Refugee-led organizations (RLOs) and refugee leaders are compelling states, UNHCR, donors, and other stakeholders to recognize them as central to designing and delivering solutions. Five states have established national refugee advisory boards, and at 2023 Global Refugee Forum, fourteen states included refugee advisors in their delegations. UNHCR has also instituted a global refugee advisory group with the potential to influence policies at the highest levels.
These partnerships recognize the deep contextual knowledge within refugee communities, qualities that external experts, however well-meaning, cannot replicate. This shift is not easy. It requires courage from institutions to share power, and humility to accept that expertise exists in many forms. Solutions imposed from outside rarely last; solutions built with those who live the consequences every day have a chance to transform systems.
Listening must therefore be understood as a political act. It only becomes meaningful when paired with action—when it drives systemic change. A true humanitarian reset depends on this evolution: from symbolic participation to structural, sustainable, and substantial leadership by impacted people. The polycrises of our time—conflict, mass displacement, and climate emergencies—demand responses as complex and nuanced as the crises themselves.
Directly impacted people are not voiceless; they have been systematically excluded by systems that prioritize expediency over equity. If we are serious about effectiveness, legitimacy, and justice in humanitarian action, listening must lead to shared governance, co-design, and ultimately, co-leadership.
Tom Fletcher names listening as one of four key principles for humanitarian action—alongside outspokenness, innovation, and effectiveness. But listening is what unlocks the others. Without it, innovation misses the mark, advocacy rings hollow, and effectiveness is measured by outputs, not outcomes. When we listen fully—with intent, humility, and follow-through—we build systems not just for people, but with them.
Let us listen not to validate our strategies, but to confront them. Only then will listening become not a tick-box exercise, but an act of transformation.
[1] Refugees Seeking Equal Access at the Table (R-SEAT) defines meaningful refugee participation when refugees from diverse backgrounds have sustained influence in all fora where decisions, policies, and responses that impact their lives are being designed, implemented, and measured in a manner that is accessible, broad, informed, safe, free, and supported.
Rez Gardi is an international lawyer and human rights advocate. Born as a refugee in Pakistan, Rez sought to use her difficult start in life as motivation to help others. She became New Zealand’s first female Kurdish lawyer and the first Kurd to graduate from Harvard Law School, where she graduated as a Fulbright Scholar with a Master of Laws. Her previous roles include working for the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, as lecturer on international law and human rights, and a Harvard Human Rights Fellow in Iraq working to build cases for the prosecution of ISIS regarding their targeted genocidal campaign against the Yezidis. Rez is the founder of ‘Empower’ – a refugee-led organization which aims to address the underrepresentation of refugee youth in higher education. She is also the Co-Founder the Centre for Asia Pacific Refugee Studies at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Rez represented New Zealand at the first ever Global Refugee Youth Consultations in 2016, helped establish the Global Youth Advisory Council to the UNHCR, and is a co-founding member of the Refugee Advisory Group to the UNHCR Annual Tripartite Consultations on Resettlement (ATCR). She currently serves on UNHCR’s Advisory Board and as an expert on the Refugee and Forced Displacement Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Rez has received an array of awards including: 2017 Young New Zealander of the Year, 2018 Women of Influence Finalist, 2019 Outstanding Youth Delegate Award at the UN Youth Assembly, 2019 Eisenhower Youth Fellow, 2020 Global Impact Award, and 2021 Peace Ambassador for the One Young World Summit, and was recognized as a Gates Foundation Global Goalkeeper in 2022.
Marisa Leon Gomez Sonet is the Partnerships and Communications Coordinator at R-SEAT in Geneva, Switzerland. She has extensive experience in policy and advocacy on migration, refugee, and human rights issues across multilateral, national, regional, and city levels. Previously, Marisa worked with Quaker organizations to advance migration justice, lobbying U.S. Congress for regularization pathways, opposing discriminatory travel bans, and increasing refugee resettlement. At the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in Geneva, she contributed to strategies for meaningful migrant participation in processes such as the Global Compact for Migration (GCM) and the International Migration Review Forum (IMRF). In Chicago, she supported sanctuary migration policies led by directly affected communities. Originally from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Marisa began her career focusing on U.S. foreign policy and military spending in Central America in connection to human rights. She holds a Master’s in Global Affairs (International Peace Studies) from the University of Notre Dame and a Bachelor’s in Global Studies and Development from Salve Regina University.
Inspired by Tom Fletcher’s statement of commitment to the humanitarian community when he resumed his position as Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator (OCHA) in November 2024, this channel provides expert views and impulses that highlight the current importance of listening, efficiency, outspokenness, and innovation in humanitarian assistance.
