Who Gets Seen: How RLOs Remodel Media Inequalities in Pursuit of Self-Reliance
By Anne-Sophie Lacombe Garcia
Network Engagement Intern | Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative
In the evolving world of humanitarian aid, the sector community talks about localizing power by shifting leadership to refugee communities and enabling refugee-led organizations (RLOs) to take charge of their futures. But behind the effort to create valuable change that supports these organizations' growth lies a deeper question: When we are working to uplift these organizations, who gets seen in reality?
When one searches the words “refugee-led organizations” and “community-based organizations” on Google, many of the search results are from large institutions such as the UN, IRC, and others whose articles only define the work RLOs are doing but rarely mention them by name. This generalization fails to identify the specific RLO and hides them behind the larger platform’s representation. This creates a level of separation between the person interacting with the media and reduces the potential for growth and support that the RLO is seeking in the first place.
“Media” refers to the broad ecosystem of digital platforms, news coverage, social media, institutional reports, and public discourse that shape how organizations are perceived. Media visibility isn’t just storytelling; it’s a currency of legitimacy. When RLOs are absent from these spaces, they’re not just overlooked, but they’re systematically excluded from funding, decision-making, and strategic partnerships. In today’s media-saturated world, being seen is essential to being trusted, supported, and thus able to create change.
To understand how media visibility shapes refugee self-reliance, I propose we break it down into four interrelated dynamics. Each reveals a different layer of how power, legitimacy, and access are constructed in the humanitarian space.
1. Visibility
Visibility is often mistaken as something organic and natural, but it is carefully constructed by systems of access, control, and power. Mainstream media tends to spotlight dramatic stories and recognizable institutions, leaving little room for grassroots actors. As a result, media coverage and donor attention often favor organizations with polished branding, institutional ties, and familiar narratives. RLOs, by contrast, frequently lack the funding to support communications infrastructure or media training to meet these expectations, leaving their work overlooked, no matter how impactful. They may be granted brief visibility when their stories align with donor-friendly frames, but when they assert their independence or challenge dominant narratives, they risk being pushed aside entirely. As a result, visibility becomes conditional, not based on an organization’s value or voice, but on someone else’s terms, priorities, and platforms.
2. Trust
In global aid, being seen as legitimate means being trusted. However, that trust isn’t shared equally, as it tends to follow visibility. Organizations that are consistently seen, heard, and cited are perceived as more credible by donors, policymakers, and the public. That perception builds legitimacy, opening doors to funding and influence. Yet trust is often extended to those with institutional credentials, sidelining RLOs, whose strengths lie in lived experience rather than professional presentation. Thus, RLOs are frequently tokenized as they are invited to participate in ways that affirm existing ideas about them rather than challenge and redefine them. This power imbalance makes it difficult for RLOs to build the kind of trust that fosters open discourse with donors and long-term support.
3. Funding
Most humanitarian funding flows to large NGOs and UN agencies, not necessarily because they’re more effective, but because they’re more visible, and thus perceived as more legitimate and trustworthy. In 2022, RLOs received less than 1% of total international humanitarian funding (just $26.4 million) while $6.4 billion went through UN-coordinated response plans. This disparity reflects more than scale; it reveals systemic barriers that keep RLOs locked out. Many lack legal recognition, making them ineligible for grants, partnerships, or even basic institutional banking. Applications are often in technical English, loaded with jargon, and tailored to donor expectations rather than community realities.
Much of the effectiveness of larger organizations is self-reported and evaluated internally, with outcomes measured by the same teams that design and implement the programs, rather than by the communities they claim to serve. Even when RLOs do receive funding, it is often hand-to-mouth: restricted to short-term project grants that exclude core operational costs, making long-term planning, staff retention, and institutional growth nearly impossible. Many RLOs are included only as sub-grantees, valued for their access to communities and local data but not trusted to lead the very services they are already delivering. This creates a chicken-and-egg dilemma: without visibility, RLOs are seen as less credible; without funding, they cannot build the infrastructure necessary to gain visibility.
4. Innovation Under Constraint
Despite systemic barriers, RLOs are often at the forefront of innovation, just not in ways that traditional institutions are equipped to recognize. Their media strategies may not involve high-production campaigns or professional PR teams, but they are deeply entrepreneurial, rooted in creativity, adaptability, and community knowledge. From WhatsApp-based education networks to community-run radio stations and podcasts, RLOs are building communication ecosystems that reflect their realities and priorities.
Initiatives like the Resourcing Refugee Leadership Initiative, the Refugee-Led Research Hub, and Reframe Network demonstrate how refugee communities are not just telling their stories but shaping the platforms and structures through which those stories are heard. Podcasts like the Voices of Resilience podcast by Na’amal and initiatives like the RLO-Led Insights Fund from the Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative offer concrete examples of how RLOs are reclaiming narrative power. They do so by producing community-driven research, sharing lived expertise, and creating media that elevates refugee perspectives while directly challenging the top-down narratives often perpetuated by traditional aid institutions.
Smartphones have become essential tools not just for communication, but for documentation and advocacy. RLO members use them to record rights violations and gather evidence for legal cases. These digital practices transform mobile technologies into both archive and megaphone, allowing refugees to store, share, and amplify their lived experiences in real time. Social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook offer new forms of access. RLOs use them to relay information as they are constructing public identities, building solidarity, and demanding recognition in systems that often erase them. Through self-representation, RLOs are not merely adapting to the system’s limitations but are seizing the opportunity to reshape its rules entirely.
Reclaiming Narrative Power as a Path to Self-Reliance
A closer look at refugee self-reliance reveals that media access plays a quiet yet pivotal role. Visibility shapes the very conditions that allow organizations to grow, as it helps build trust, attracts funding, and opens space for innovation. It influences which actors are seen as legitimate, which receive resources, and which are invited into leadership spaces. Many RLOs are already doing the work: developing local solutions, mobilizing communities, and innovating with limited tools. Yet their contributions often remain invisible, not because of a lack of impact, but because they lack access to the platforms that shape perception and opportunity.
In this light, narrative power is thus essential to advancing refugee self-reliance—particularly at the community, organizational, and systemic levels. The question is no longer whether refugee-led organizations are ready to lead, but whether the system is equipped to listen. Whose stories reach the public and on what terms continue to shape who gets included, who gets funded, and who gets to lead the change we haven’t yet achieved.
