April notes from the HLA Director | Two conferences, a few honest reflections

In this blog post, Pawel Mania, HLA Director, shares a short personal reflection from his attendance at two humanitarian convenings in April.

April has been a busy month. First, a small but sharp gathering in Copenhagen: Beyond the Bargain: Local Leadership in a New Global Reality.

Then Berlin, and the Humanitarian Congress: a much larger stage, hundreds of participants, but many of the same questions in the air.

Two very different events in scale. Enough in common to make me think.

Who is in the room and why it matters

The most visible shift over recent years is who gets invited. Organisers are making a genuine effort to include local leaders and frontline responders in these conversations, and that is a real change from where we were.

But presence without power is not representation, it’s optics. The test is whether those voices shape the agenda, or simply validate what was already agreed before they arrived.

Tokenism is not always intentional. It is always felt. The same applies to women and youth leadership. The most affected are often the ones carrying the most clarity about how to respond. That is a signal about where trust, resources and genuine authority need to go.

A more honest picture of who we are

Many of you reading this were there long before any international organisation arrived, and you will be there long after. In most contexts, INGOs are a marginal actor in the life of a community – one layer within many systems that already exist: informal networks, mutual aid, community structures. The sooner we in the international sector are honest about that, the more genuinely useful we can become.

What I keep returning to is the gap between recommendations and commitments. We are very good at the first. Commitments require accountability. And accountability, like trust, is not something you produce in a conference room.

I still left both events with something I do not always expect when we reflect on the state of the humanitarian system(s): hope. Not the easy kind. The kind earned through honest conversation, through young leaders speaking with clarity and confidence, through organisers genuinely trying to do things differently.

The direction of travel is right. The work now is making sure we keep moving.

The direction of travel is right. The work now is making sure we keep moving.