- Ensure that host governments apply legal and policy frameworks that are inclusive towards affected populations.
- Incorporate the effects of and necessary responses to crises in national and subnational development plans.
- To facilitate closer collaboration and more coherence, create coordination structures both at national and subnational levels. Establish the capacity to provide data to support this kind of joint analysis.
- Increase partnership and coordination among a range of actors, such as governmental and civil society to enable the sharing of data, joint analysis and needs assessments. Involve these actors in multi-year planning and funding that aligns peace, humanitarian and development operations, with a focus on addressing drivers of, and durable solutions to, protracted crises and displacement as well as enhancing local capacities.
- Provide relevant actors with the necessary tools and knowledge to take practical action (including specific guidance for health, education and other sectors) to ensure coherence and a strategic approach.
- Where relevant, provide efforts to enhance social cohesion and trust, thereby building local resilience.
Crises around the world are becoming more protracted, and development-oriented action remains scarce in many contexts where it is needed. As a result, the scale and duration of humanitarian assistance continues to grow dramatically. In situations where development-oriented action is needed, people are likely to experience a lack of employment opportunities, the marginalization or discrimination of socioeconomic or ethnic groups and inadequate service provision. These kinds of development deficiencies can lead to conflict and insecurity or leave people exposed to disasters. In turn, the impacts of such disasters, including displacement, often result in significant losses in human development and may increase tensions within and between local communities.
Development-oriented humanitarian action offers more sustainable solutions to displacement. It helps prevent crises and increases resilience, thus avoiding or minimizing future crises and associated displacement. At the same time, humanitarian action saves lives, alleviates suffering and meets urgent needs. Today’s complex crises, especially protracted ones, thus require both humanitarian and development-oriented efforts, working in a coordinated and complementary manner.
However, the different goals, approaches and nature of humanitarian and development action, including institutional cultures and ways of working, has made this a difficult task for actors across all levels. On the one hand, humanitarian efforts are short term, with a higher tolerance for risk, aimed at saving lives and following strict humanitarian principles. On the other hand, development interventions are usually longer-term measures aimed at sustainably combating poverty, governed by sovereign law and often government led. The latter thus often require a certain level of predictability and tend to be more risk averse.
The international community has long recognized the multiple and complex interconnections between the two areas. Several complementary processes have been launched to strengthen the humanitarian, development and (if applicable) peace nexus (HDPN or “triple nexus”), including the 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Grand Bargain and the New Way of Working (NWOW). Other United Nations reforms include efforts to reposition the UN development system in achieving the 2030 Agenda, restructure UN Peace and security pillar and shift the management paradigm in the UN, among others (see Solutions and Recovery).
Policy Approaches
Articulating context-specific and people-centred policies and responses to end protracted crises and displacement while meeting urgent humanitarian needs