Interlinking Humanitarian Aid, Develop­ment Cooperation and Peacebuilding in Displacement Contexts

HDP nexus in situations of forced displacement

The multi-stakeholder HDP nexus approach is being implemented in twenty-five coun­tries by UN organisations, NGOs, donor countries, national governments and civil society. Humanitarian, development and peace actors work together to achieve col­lective outcomes in, for example, Cameroon, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Forced displacement is relevant in many nexus countries, whether they are hosting refugees from other coun­tries, experiencing internal or cross-border displacement because of their own violent conflicts, or seeing former refugees return.

The HDP nexus is highly relevant in all these contexts, because few forcibly dis­placed people benefit from one of the three so-called durable solutions – local inte­gration, return or resettlement – and the global numbers continue to grow. Return is often the preferred solution both for for­cibly displaced persons and for their host countries and regions; peace and security are crucial preconditions for return to be possible. With its additional focus on peace­building, the HDP nexus therefore offers new opportunities, especially for situations of forced displacement – despite the con­siderable associated challenges. The ap­proaches pursued to date fell short in this respect (quite apart from their lack of suc­cess).

Recommendations

Both support for national peace processes and local conflict management and social cohesion are highly relevant for forced dis­placement, both internal and cross-border. “Small p” elements like conflict sensitivity and supportive peace-promoting activities are vital in these politically sensitive and generally fragile situations. The same applies to “big P” aspects.

The comprehensive peacebuilding ap­proach of the HDP nexus is crucial – albeit often hard to implement in practice – in displacement situations, especially where cross-border displacement is involved. (Posi­tive) peace alleviates the causes of conflict (and thus forced displacement) and rep­resents a step towards durable solutions for forcibly displaced people, whether at their place of origin, place of refuge or elsewhere.

To fully capitalise on the added value of the HDP nexus, there are a number of rec­om­mendations for policymakers.

Support the UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Solutions to Internal Displacement

Although the Special Adviser’s mandate only runs for two years, the Action Agenda on Internal Displacement offers great poten­tial and Germany should actively support this work. German embassies and relevant ministries should include peaceful conflict management and durable solutions for internally displaced people in their high level political dialogues. Wherever possible Germany should also push for (south-south) return of internally displaced people and refugees to be included in these processes. In addition, Germany should lobby for the search for durable solutions and other HDP nexus-relevant objectives to be systematically integrated in the mandates of peace opera­tions under the auspices of UN, EU, OSCE and other regional organisations.

When the Special Adviser’s mandate ends in 2024, it would be in Germany’s interest to assess what lessons can be drawn from the inclusion of high level political dialogue and cooperation with political and peacekeeping missions. Lessons learnt could then be used both for situations of forced displacement beyond the Action Agenda pilot countries, and for implementation of the HDP nexus in general.

Decentralise decision-making processes

To overcome institutional boundaries be­tween departments and ministries (in both donor countries and partner countries) and between UN agencies, Germany should advocate for greater decentralisation, so that more decisions about nexus activities are made at regional, national and local level. That would mean increasing the staffing and funding of embassies and dele­gations on the ground and giving them greater decision-making powers. This aligns with the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator’s so-called Flagship Initiative, which seeks a people-centred reform of humanitarian aid. The initiative seeks to expand the decision-making powers of humanitarian actors at national level and free them from strict global guidelines. The aim is to ensure that activities are better aligned with the actual needs of affected populations and their respective contexts.

For Germany, this means aligning the activities of development cooperation offic­ers, humanitarian aid officers and stabilisation officers in the missions abroad more closely with those responsible for tackling forced displacement and migration and making the latter’s tasks more development-oriented. Existing instruments for coordination between the German Federal Foreign Office and Federal Ministry for Eco­nomic Cooperation and Development – such as the joint analysis and planning – should also be applied systematically and should encompass all available instruments, including transitional development assistance and the special initiative for refu­gees and host countries.

In addition, implementation of nexus measures must be handled to an even greater extent by local organisations, as already provided for in the Grand Bargain for humanitarian aid and called for in the Flagship Initiative. Local organisations often concentrate primarily on needs and do not distinguish between humanitarian, development and peace issues, in contrast to many international organisations and donors. And not least, affected governments should be encouraged to assume a coordi­nating role.

Use “trilingual” experts

Germany and other donors should make greater use of experts with knowledge of all three pillars of the HDP nexus (or train per­sonnel accordingly). This applies above all at the level of embassies and EU delegations and to a lesser extent also to the capitals of donor countries. Greater understanding of the methods, comparative advantages and deficits in other domains is a precondition for mutual understanding, deeper cooperation and improved inter-ministerial coordi­nation.

The Nexus Academy, created as an initia­tive of the OECD and the UN and co-funded by the German Federal Ministry for Eco­nomic Cooperation and Development, rep­resents an important step in this direction. It should be expanded to allow even more people to participate. In Germany, the Centre for International Peace Operations (ZIF) works on capacity-building and offers training on the HDP nexus for experts to be deployed to peace operations or on humani­tarian missions. With a view to utilising all of these resources in an even more targeted manner, HDP nexus advisers working in situations of forced displacement should also be tasked with the responsibility of seeking durable solutions, and ideally located in the respective UN resident co­ordinator’s office. It will also be easier for humanitarian and development actors to cooperate with civil components of peace operations if staff are well informed about such missions and able to differentiate be­tween their components.

Overcome disincentives

The taboo on openly addressing aid organi­sations’ economic interests in the status quo and the factors that frequently disincen­tivise interlinking of the three pillars – both for donors and for implementing orga­nisations – need to be overcome. One cen­tral mechanism for this could be account­ability vis-à-vis – or evaluation of measures by – those affected. The German government should therefore ensure that existing monitoring instruments offer better oppor­tunities for user feedback and that their inclusion in planning and evaluation is mandatory. To date that has been too rare and unsystematic. The incentive structure would change if feedback from recipients played a greater role than visibility and status. That would give an advantage to orga­nisations that align their measures on actual needs and coordinate on this basis with other actors. Accountability is already a significant element in reform efforts such as the aforementioned Flagship Initiative.

(Regional or country-specific) geographical basket funding that includes all three pillars could also contribute to changing unfavourable incentive structures. Donors could also require implementing partners to cooperate more closely with actors from the other pillars (for example through the leverage offered by tendering), and reward this accordingly. Joint commissioning of organisations from different pillars also points in the right direction, as found in UN Joint Programmes; the SUN project com­missioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (“Supporting the UNHCR in implementing the Global Compact on Refugees in the humanitarian aid, development and peace nexus”) and run jointly by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammen­arbeit (GIZ) and the UNHCR; and joint com­missioning of NGOs by the German Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development through the nexus-chapeau ap­proach. However, further expansion of the “big P” dimension of the peace pillar would be desirable in all these initiatives.

None of these measures alone will make a decisive difference. It will be important not simply to rely on the greater efficiency and effectiveness of the nexus approach changing the way actors work. It is also im­portant to ensure that continuous monitor­ing and evaluation takes place. The decisive factor here must be tangible improvements for affected populations. Then there is a real opportunity for humanitarian, develop­ment and peace actors to jointly contribute to conflict resolution and to create perspec­tives for forcibly displaced populations.