The role of social sciences in humanitarian action: Community engagement and decolonising approaches

This article explores the evolving role of social sciences in humanitarian action, focusing on its potential for community engagement, and how this can aid capacity building and localization efforts that might lead toward decolonisation. Drawing on interviews and group discussions with humanitarian practitioners internationally, it examines both the promise and the challenges of integrating social sciences into emergency responses. While valued for their holistic and relational approaches, social sciences often clash with the fast-paced, outcome-driven demands of crisis settings. Participatory and qualitative methods are frequently adapted to meet institutional expectations for standardized, quantifiable results, risking reinforcement of top-down, decontextualized practices. Findings highlight the need for greater reflexivity and alignment between critical social scientists' social justice aims and their professional practices. Decolonising humanitarian action requires more than participatory tools: it demands redistributing resources and shifting decision-making power to local communities. Despite growing localization discourse, participants reported persistent barriers to leadership, funding, and recognition of local knowledge. We call on social scientists, practitioners and organizations integrating social science methodologies into humanitarian programming, to advance a critical, transdisciplinary practice that supports local governance, strengthens sustainable capacities, and disrupts structures that perpetuate dependency, enabling genuinely community-led and sustainable solutions.