“The triple nexus needs to be more flexible and tolerant of error”

Katharina Valjak in an interview with Leon Kirschgens

Ms Valjak, it’s nearly 10 years since the HDP nexus was officially introduced. These days, governmental and non-governmental organisations alike regard it as a routine part of their work. So, it is a resounding success, in other words?

It’s true that the nexus has become something of a fixture in development cooperation. Dedicated departments have been established in ministries such as Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Federal Foreign Office; special coordination and exchange formats exist at the UN level and there’s also a Nexus Academy where HDP professionals are trained in and sensitised to nexus approaches. Germany has also initiated the so-called nexus chapeau approach, intended to increasingly shape and fund humanitarian assistance, development cooperation and peacebuilding efforts under one strategic “umbrella”. This allows actors, including non-government organisations, to join forces and form partnerships. Ministries also run complementary programmes and task their implementing organisations with more systematically combining these areas of activity. Clarity is still lacking in many areas, however. In practice, the triple nexus is not having the desired impact yet.

What impact was the HDP nexus supposed to have – and what is its current status?

The overriding goal was to more closely connect short-term aid with long-term support. In other words, humanitarian assistance was supposed to consider the structural needs of development cooperation from the outset – and vice versa. This was expected to lead to new, more effective approaches. Perhaps the most groundbreaking innovation was the decision to place greater emphasis on promoting peace with the “P” in the HDP nexus, and to engage not only in “peacekeeping” but also in “peacebuilding”, actively establishing structures to foster peace rather than simply maintaining the status quo.

However, the triple nexus has long been and remains one thing above all: a term used by Western think tanks, donor institutions and development agencies in projects to describe how crises, development shortcomings and violent conflict are interrelated. Admittedly, this is gradually changing, and nexus strategies have been implemented increasingly in recent years. Nonetheless, over time a common misunderstanding has often become entrenched, namely that the nexus follows a logical sequence in practice: first humanitarian aid, then development, then peace.

Yet this is not the case.

At least not always. The nexus is often more reminiscent of a triangle, where in different scenarios one or the other component may be more important or need to be prioritised: sometimes peacebuilding measures are needed to gain access to people or regions in the first place. In other cases, humanitarian aid, development activities and peacebuilding efforts will proceed in parallel. And indeed, this is exactly how many organisations, especially those at the local level, have been operating for years – without even being aware of the term. For instance, a priest in the Philippines who has been familiar with and part of local structures for decades will intuitively know how conflicts are related to natural disasters and poverty. It tends to be external actors who talk about the HDP nexus in an attempt to make it easier to grasp complex interactions and develop possible solutions.

In the HDP nexus, the emphasis is on the P – peacebuilding. And yet it was long assumed that development would eventually lead to peace of its own accord. 

This is precisely the assumption that the HDP nexus wishes to debunk because it loses sight of the big picture. If, for example, a new well is built in a village without sufficient knowledge of the local circumstances or of the potential for conflict between Indigenous groups, it may ultimately do more harm than good. We need to consider all kinds of questions from the outset: Who will benefit from the measures? Who might feel excluded? Is there a history of tensions between villages, ethnic groups or religious communities? Time and again, well-meaning development projects have ended up merely exacerbating conflicts and causing frustration, competition and – at worst – violence. This is exactly where the nexus comes in, postulating that peace is not a byproduct of development but a clear goal in its own right.

That can be achieved by getting the conflicting parties together around the table?

It is much more than that. A fairly narrow interpretation of peace was long the norm: peace was regarded above all as the absence of violence – a ceasefire, for instance, or an agreement between elites. Many actors have meanwhile come to realise that peace involves a lot more than this and that the absence of violence per se is not equivalent to “achieving” peace. People’s attitudes, prejudices and behavioural patterns must also be addressed long term – ultimately, this is about taking steps to prevent violence from escalating. This could mean initiating dialogue between different groups at the local level, be it between generations, women and men or ethnic groups. It is also about creating spaces in which people see themselves as part of a community – through something as banal as joint activities or religious practices. In a sense, it’s more about the “small p” – everyday peacekeeping efforts.

Which brings us back to the three elements of the nexus. Most organisations focus on just one of them. But if the idea behind the nexus is to regard the elements as interrelated, shouldn’t organisations act accordingly and take responsibility for all three?

That would not necessarily work in all cases. It may sound like a good idea in theory for a single organisation, especially a local one, to take care of all these different steps. However, it is rarely realistic in practice. Most agencies have a clear mandate for historical reasons and therefore enjoy the trust of the local population. A few organisations, such as Caritas, do attempt this kind of strategic “joined-up thinking” in countries like Burkina Faso or Ethiopia. Though fascinating to witness, very considerable capacities are required to make this successful. In many contexts, it makes more sense for different agencies with different areas of expertise to work together – provided they strategically coordinate their cooperation. Local actors in particular play a key role here because they are familiar with local circumstances and often keep track of several levels simultaneously. The challenge is to ensure that collaboration is flexible enough to react to changes so that the joint project does not remain a rigid construct. This is also something the nexus has made clear, even if it is still difficult to achieve.

Where do the difficulties lie?

Well, the flexibility the nexus approach requires to be truly effective is often absent – not only during the implementation stage but even when the project is designed. This is evidenced by the funding logic used in many donor institutions. Though the HDP nexus nowadays features significantly in the calls for tender issued by major donor organisations, their requirements for how a project should proceed remain fairly inflexible. Yet situations change very quickly during crises and other fragile contexts – be it because of the dynamic nature of the conflict, the security situation or the political circumstances. A nexus project needs to be able to respond just as quickly to such changes.

What does this mean in concrete terms?

It means, for example, allowing funds to be swiftly redeployed or the focus of the entire project shifted. However, applying for changes and realigning a project within a matter of weeks or months still entails a great deal of bureaucracy for local and international actors. If the worst comes to the worst, the entire nexus approach in a particular region will collapse as a result, with actors reacting instead of continuing to act strategically. This is what happened in Haiti and Myanmar, where humanitarian organisations, development projects and UN missions maintained a strong presence for a time – which should be the ideal prerequisites for the nexus approach. However, in practice many actors worked alongside one another in “silos” rather than interacting with one another. Hierarchies and competition often play a role in this context, too; what would help most would be to acknowledge the work done by local organisations, for instance by allocating them a fixed share of HDP nexus programme funding. When the situation deteriorated again and organisations left the country, virtually no strategic readjustments were undertaken to address questions such as: What is now needed most urgently? Who can make up the shortfall? This illustrates how difficult it is to adapt the construct if it is not kept flexible from the outset.

What could be done to change this, apart from making funding more flexible? 

Spaces are needed where actors can talk openly about mistakes and failed measures without having to fear reprisals. Far too often, projects are assessed internally and externally to determine whether they are reaching the goals that were defined at the beginning – even though the circumstances may have changed considerably and quite different goals should now be the focus. There is also a tendency to commit the “sunk cost fallacy”, continuing blindly on despite changed circumstances because so much has already been invested and a change of course would be tantamount to starting over. Here, too, it is about the flexibility to rethink, in other words. Peacebuilding is a lengthy process that is difficult to measure. Many things do not work out – or at least not the way one intended.

Katharina Valjak is a peacebuilding expert with Misereor. She works on conflict transformation, peacebuilding and the interlinking of development, humanitarian aid and peacebuilding efforts, especially in fragile contexts.
katharina.valjak@misereor.de