Still struggling to give “P” a chance?

Volunteers clean the streets and distribute food near the site of the Beirut port explosion in Lebanon in August 2020. Photo © picture alliance / abaca | Abd Rabbo Ammar/ABACA

Lessons from our in-country work show that there is more we can and should do to integrate peace more effectively into nexus programming.

By Joshua Rogers

When it comes to addressing complex conflicts, holistic approaches that tackle interrelated humanitarian, development, and peace challenges are needed to overcome silos and blind spots in coordination and cooperation. The Humanitarian-Development-Peace (HDP) nexus approach aims to do this.

The Berghof Foundation has found that working in tandem with development and humanitarian actors within the HDP framework has significant added value. For example, our community dialogues in Somalia have generated widespread buy-in and social cohesion around shared climate action plans, with implementation of key measures supported by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). Integrated HDP programming helps us to address interconnected challenges, allows us to benefit from partners' expertise, and enhances our sustainability and long-term impact. We have also seen how integrating peace considerations strengthens humanitarian and development practice in fragile and conflict affected contexts.

But there's more to be done. Lessons from our in-country programming, high-level mediation support and participation in the HDP Nexus Community of Practice suggest three key lessons, explored below, for integrating peace more effectively into nexus programming. In times in which aid budgets are under significant strain and humanitarian, development, and peace actors are being asked to do more with less, there is more we can and should do to give “P” a chance.

“Big P” and “small p”

A core debate in attempts to operationalise the nexus revolves around how to successfully integrate the peace pillar. A common distinction has emerged between “small p” and “Big P,” where small p refers to conflict sensitivity, social cohesion, and some local peacebuilding programming, while Big P relates to support for peace negotiations, security sector reform, mediation support, and other peace support programming deemed more politically sensitive. Within the HDP nexus discussion, humanitarian and development actors have expanded their small p programming while raising concerns that Big P activities risks politicising aid and compromising humanitarian principles.

Building on these distinctions, we argue that we can and should do more to get small p right, bring Big P in, and align strategies and approaches beyond the Big P, small p divide at the meso-level where some of the most consequential possibilities for integrating peace concerns into nexus programming exist.

Doing small p right

In HDP projects, Berghof supports humanitarian and development actors with conflict sensitivity. Here, it is important to recognise that conflict dynamics can differ significantly even between localities in close proximity to each other and of course change over time, highlighting the importance of fine-grained and continual conflict analysis as part of everyday programme delivery.  We have found that national, or even governorate-level conflict analyses are sometimes of limited value, while district or even village-level analysis can be extremely valuable for avoiding harm and supporting local drivers for peace.

Berghof also contributes programming on social cohesion, participatory planning, and supporting communities and local authorities to manage conflicts alongside HDP partners, particularly those arising around the interventions of other actors. Done right, integrating these “small p” concerns has significant added value. For example, in Dhamar, Yemen our support to local mediators enabled them to resolve longstanding conflicts surrounding water infrastructure. Addressing these conflicts, in turn, allowed UNDP to restore water access to households.

Effectively integrating small p concerns in programming requires integrated planning that brings in partners from multiple perspectives from the outset. This ensures that local partners own and co-determine approaches, conflict analysis, and project priorities and that there is a shared understanding of key terms and methods. HDP projects are less successful when implementers employ a “box ticking” approach to conflict sensitivity, seek to rush dialogue and consultation processes, or don't take the political nature of peace programming seriously.

Effective HDP programming does not require everyone to be an expert in all three pillars of the nexus or deliver integrated programming on their own. To the contrary, Berghof experience suggests that partnerships between H, D, and P actors are often the most fruitful way to operationalise the triple nexus.

Bringing Big P in

Such partnerships between H, D, and P have particular added value when considering how to bring broader, “Big P” concerns into nexus programming. Partnerships can help navigate concerns over who owns what and help ensure programming contributes to overarching peace objectives.

Peace work is inherently political and needs to keep the big picture in view—it is well known that aid can, if done poorly, sustain war economies, contribute to political fragmentation, and legitimate and stabilise the rule of conflict actors or undermine pro-peace constituencies. Conversely, it can provide peace dividends and alternative livelihoods for combatants, rebuild social cohesion and trust in institutions, and put in place the prerequisites for potential peace agreements to stick. In this way, nexus programming intersects with power and politics. If H and D programming practices and goals collectively and individually affect Big P concerns, proponents of nexus programming must choose to engage with that reality thoughtfully, ethically, and strategically and articulate how their choices contribute to overarching objectives to move towards peace and address the structural causes of violence and fragility—and where it cannot or should not do so.

What does this look like in practice? While direct political engagement may exceed humanitarian mandates and the self-understanding of some development actors, leveraging the strategic complementarity that peace-focused organisations bring to nexus partnerships can open avenues for regular strategic exchange and coordination with diplomatic peace efforts and the sharing of (conflict) analysis, risks, and early warning. This helps ensure not only that programming is aligned (or at least not contradictory) with political dialogue and stabilisation efforts, but that its grounded insights inform high-level peacemaking efforts.

Beyond Big and small P

Leveraging this complementary also means recognising that some of the most significant impacts in peacebuilding can be achieved at the meso-level—below sometimes blocked and politicised national-level peace processes, but above community level programming, where gains in social cohesion, for instance, can fall prey to renewed escalation linked to higher-level dynamics. In this sense, the distinction between small p and Big P that has become established in the HDP nexus debate may be unhelpful in identifying some of the most consequential possibilities for integrating peace concerns into nexus programming.

Civil society-led national dialogue efforts, dialogues on peace and reconciliation at sub-national level, or the leveraging of watershed and aquifer management across conflict divides as an entry point for mediation and cooperation are just some examples of peace programming that does not fit readily into the small p, Big P distinction as currently understood. Thinking about integrating this level of peace activities into HDP programming comes up against sectoral silos and the different intervention logics and approaches of H, D, and P actors. Yet this sort of work is central to what many peacebuilding and peace support organisations do. Better connecting such work to development and humanitarian interventions can help to further strengthen nexus programming and can help conflict parties and local communities turn agreements on contentious issues into tangible outcomes. One initial step could be to synchronise planning and implementation around a strategic focus on peace in conflict-affected contexts as a way to institutionalise coordination.

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