Since the European Union (EU) published its Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy in 2016, it has made steady efforts to strengthen the connections between its humanitarian, development and peacebuilding actions. However, despite the progress achieved, there remain across EU services and delegations different understandings of the peace component of the humanitarian-development-peace (HDP) nexus in particular – what it includes, and what its integration with the other components should involve in practice.
In October 2023, EPLO published a discussion paper, authored by Summer Brown and myself under the Civil Society Dialogue Network (CSDN) [1], aiming at illustrating through ten case studies how to pursue the integration of the peace component as part of efforts to implement the HDP nexus. The case studies cover a wide range of activities carried out by civil society organisations in different countries and regions in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Each case study is used to identify good practices and recommendations for the EU in operationalising the nexus.
On the basis of the ten case studies, we put forward a number of consolidated recommendations for the EU under the six main headings below:
(please click on the recommendations to expand them)
1. Be intentional and strategic in implementing the HDP nexus in relevant contexts.
- Adopting a strategic-level approach to the HDP nexus supports the ability to pursue holistic interventions involving co-ordination, co-operation and complementarity beyond the level of individual projects. This requires senior-level direction, support and commitment, as well as building the capacity of relevant EU services and delegations to work across components at different levels.
- As a global actor, the EU can play an important role in using its political dialogue with partner governments to defend an open and inclusive civic space, to protect the ability of civil society actors to carry out activities across the HDP nexus, and to foster co-operation between governments to facilitate the implementation of cross-border HDP nexus initiatives.
2. Recognise and pursue peacebuilding as a full component of the HDP nexus.
- The peace component of the HDP nexus should be centred on peacebuilding and conflict prevention.
- Peacebuilding should not be seen as an add-on to development and humanitarian interventions but as a full component of the HDP nexus, with its own range of activities at the local, national and international levels that should receive greater focus and investment. It should be pursued at all phases of the conflict cycle.
- Peacebuilding actors, like humanitarian and development actors, have specific expertise and skills that should be recognised as such. Pursuing an HDP nexus approach provides opportunities for other actors to benefit from the expertise of peacebuilders in preventing conflict and contributing to peace, and in carrying out conflict analysis to strengthen the conflict sensitivity of interventions.
3. Ensure that engagements across the HDP nexus are conflict-sensitive and informed by gender-responsive conflict analysis.
- All interventions and programming should be conflict-sensitive; conflict sensitivity should be seen as a core facet of programme quality to ensure that interventions do no harm and that they actively contribute to peace whenever possible. The EU should support the development of the capacities for conflict sensitivity and conflict prevention of its international, national and local partners across the HDP nexus, in particular of CSOs.
- Conflict analysis processes serve to understand the root causes and drivers of conflict and exclusion, people’s needs, formal and informal institutions, key stakeholders, the distribution of power, and the existing initiatives for peace and development within a given context. They are essential to identifying entry points for interventions across the HDP nexus, to monitoring the evolution of the context, and to determining how to adapt interventions based on this evolution. Joint conflict analysis processes serve to develop shared understandings between HDP nexus actors, and to ensure coherence and complementarity.
- Participatory conflict analysis processes are especially helpful in understanding complex realities and designing holistic interventions that combine a range of HDP nexus activities to achieve collective outcomes. They can also help identify which local actors may be supported in providing humanitarian relief, pursuing development activities, and carrying out peacebuilding efforts. They can help build trust with the civil society actors and community members involved in the process.
4. Pursue a people-centred approach based on the needs, initiatives and leadership of local civil society actors and communities.
- Civil society actors and communities living in the contexts where the EU is engaging should have leading roles in the design and implementation of interventions. They are uniquely positioned to identify and to respond to the connections between needs and opportunities for action across the HDP nexus, to prevent duplication, and to determine which roles are the most suitable for their international partners (including in consortia).
- The EU should help local and national actors to access international mechanisms and decision-making processes, while also drawing international actors into the spaces where communities operate. Closing the gap between international and local action helps to close gaps between humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding efforts.
5. Provide flexible and long-term support to civil society organisations.
- Peacebuilding efforts are extremely underfunded in light of the scale of the challenges to address worldwide and should receive significantly more support and attention.
- Funding should be flexible enough to allow for the focus of project activities to be adapted across the three components of the HDP nexus on the basis of the evolution of the context and of the needs of communities (e.g. shifting to an increased focus on peacebuilding if tensions arise, on humanitarian relief if a flood hits, etc.). The EU should strengthen the integration between its services and funding instruments to facilitate this.
- Funding for HDP nexus actions should be provided and secured for longer time frames than is still often the case (e.g. for at least 5 years), in order to prevent gaps in support, reduce uncertainty, lower administrative burdens, increase accountability and achieve more sustainable outcomes. This would also help ensure that CSOs have adequate time to carry out conflict analysis, to build trust with partners from the other HDP nexus components at the start of projects, and to make sure that local partners are able to fully take over and continue initiatives as projects come to an end.
- Funding the implementation of all HDP nexus components under a single project can facilitate integration, however when this is not possible the EU should look to coordinate geographic preferences in bid and selection processes so that there is geographic overlap in project implementation. When providing support through consortia, the EU should seek to limit administrative burdens, promote the meaningful involvement of local CSOs, and provide time to partners to learn to work together across the HDP nexus.
6. Promote and support integration, coordination and complementarity at different levels of implementation.
- The EU should strengthen its internal expertise, capacities, and knowledge management systems on conflict sensitivity and peacebuilding across its institutions and delegations working on the different HDP nexus components (including for its staff working in geographic units and divisions). Peacebuilding objectives and indicators should feature more prominently in institutional mandates and reporting processes.
- The EU should support information sharing and learning mechanisms in the contexts where it is supporting HDP nexus actions, including with other international actors, donors, and implementing CSOs.
- The EU should ensure that its implementing partners report on how HDP nexus components and activities are connected as part of their work, particularly to ensure that peacebuilding activities are integrated with development and humanitarian activities. However, it should provide time and resources for such ‘light touch’ reporting and avoid increasing the administrative burden on local partners.
- The success of humanitarian and development interventions relies heavily on mainstreaming conflict sensitivity thoroughly and on connected peacebuilding efforts. The reverse is also the case for peacebuilding efforts, which benefit from intentionally incorporating packages that, in addition to strengthening trust and social cohesion, can improve the overall economic, social, psychological wellbeing of individuals and community groups.
The case studies in the discussion paper include additional information, context, and more detail on how to approach and implement the recommendations above. Even though they capture only a sliver of the ways in which peace may be integrated as part of the HDP nexus, they underscore that the EU can play an essential role in strengthening the connections between humanitarian, development and peacebuilding efforts by partnering with, and supporting, civil society actors – and by defending their ability to carry out their activities through its political dialogue with its partner governments.
For a short overview of three of the case studies included in the paper (presenting the work of International Alert in Lebanon, Nonviolent Peaceforce in South Sudan and Search for Common Ground in the Sahel), please feel free to watch the explainer video below!
Lorenzo Angelini is the Senior Policy Officer responsible for coordinating EPLO’s work relating to peace, development and security, the climate crisis, and EU-Africa relations.
[1] The Civil Society Dialogue Network (CSDN) is a mechanism for dialogue between civil society and EU policy-makers on issues related to peace and conflict. It is co-financed by the European Union (Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace and managed by the European Peacebuilding Liaison Office (EPLO), a civil society network, in co-operation with the European Commission (EC) and the European External Action Service (EEAS). The fourth phase of the CSDN will last from 2020 to 2023. For more information, please visit the EPLO website.