This analysis summarizes and reflects on the following research: Norman, J. M., & Mikhael, D. (2023). Rethinking the triple-nexus: Integrating peacebuilding and resilience initiatives in conflict contexts. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 18(3), 248-263.
Abstract
“The triple-nexus was introduced as a conceptual framework to link humanitarian aid, international development, and peace initiatives. However, the peace component was largely undefined, and there was little consideration as to how these components might be integrated within programs. In this article, we revisit the nexus with a focus on how the peace component can best be integrated with resilience programs in conflict contexts. Specifically, we draw from qualitative fieldwork in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, and South Sudan, to analyze how local communities are using integrative peace/conflict approaches to enhance resilience in contexts with ongoing violence. We develop a typology of peace/conflict approaches, identify challenges to peacebuilding within the framework, and propose locally led processes for rethinking the nexus for protracted conflicts. We maintain that a hyper-local approach to community problem-solving is where the peace component of the triple-nexus can be most effective in fragile contexts.”
Main Findings
The authors ask: How can the peacebuilding component of the triple-nexus be best integrated into resilience programs in conflict-affected areas? How have local communities responded to the integration of this peacebuilding component, particularly as relates to their perceived resilience in the face of violent conflict?
In the context of their research on Christian Aid Ireland’s Integrating Conflict Prevention into Resilience (ICPR) programs in South Sudan, Burundi, DRC, and Myanmar, intended to strengthen resilience to “both humanitarian and violence-related challenges,” the authors find the following:
- There is no one way to integrate peace into humanitarian and development work—this dimension of the programs was carried out differently in different contexts and “was most effective in building resilience and addressing conflict at the hyperlocal level” via community-led processes.
- Peace-related activities in these aid programs fell into three different categories: conflict sensitivity (the minimum of “do no harm”—“assessing how programs could impact or be impacted by conflict dynamics”), conflict prevention (enhancing livelihoods to decrease resource competition, building social cohesion, and creating greater inclusion), and conflict resolution (creating/revitalizing mediation and reconciliation institutions and cultivating a culture of peace).
- Aid programs should integrate peace-related activities in their humanitarian and development work rather than implement each alongside the other; while doing so “will not solve the broader conflicts, …it can improve the resilience of communities by enhancing conflict sensitivity, fostering social cohesion, and mediating local disputes.”
- With regard to resilience, communities generally felt they could better “anticipate and prevent violent conflicts through sensitivity raising and mediation” but not that they could better “absorb or adapt to widescale violent conflict.” Burundi was an exception: There, they felt that social cohesion programs had increased their capacity to “withstand national-level divisions and provocations” to violence.
Definitions
The humanitarian-development-peacebuilding (HDP), or “triple-nexus,” framework: an approach recently adopted by the aid sector to respond in an integrated way to the multiple, interconnected crises faced by communities in fragile, conflict-affected contexts. First introduced at the United Nations in 2016 in a speech António Guterres delivered to the UN General Assembly when he was about to assume the post of UN Secretary-General.
Resilience: “the ability of an individual, a community or a country to cope with, adapt and recover quickly from the impact of a disaster, violence or conflict” (European Commission). Although resilience can be seen as a “bridging concept between the HDP components of the nexus,” conflict-related resilience should be understood differently from disaster-related resilience.
European Commission. Resilience and humanitarian-development-peace nexus. Retrieved February 21, 2025, from https://civil-protection-humanitarian-aid.ec.europa.eu/what/humanitarian-aid/resilience-and-humanitarian-development-peace-nexus_en
Informing Practice
Key Insight: The sudden freezing of USAID’s humanitarian and development assistance will be harmful not only to community well-being around the globe but also to U.S. and global security.
This research makes clear how closely linked humanitarian and development aid can be to preventing and mitigating the escalation of violent conflict in fragile contexts around the world, when designed and implemented intentionally. Advocates and concerned citizens responding to the drastic cuts to USAID need to make the case that the sudden freezing of USAID’s humanitarian and development assistance will be harmful not only to community well-being around the globe but also to U.S. and global security.
Aid programs—in the case of this research, programs focused on building community resilience—can support peace and help manage conflicts without violence in multiple ways: first, by supporting livelihoods and community well-being in a way that limits competition for resources and does not exacerbate existing conflict dynamics; second, by building social cohesion so that a community can withstand polarizing pressures or keep violence at bay; and, third, by creating or revitalizing community conflict resolution infrastructures that can address conflict when it occurs. Effective peacebuilding efforts like these obviously benefit the countries where they take place, but they also benefit other countries by not creating crises that may spill over their borders or require further assistance.
One of the main findings from the research here is how important it is for these projects to be locally led and responsive to local conditions, as conflict dynamics can differ from locale to locale even in the same country. This finding is consistent with recent critiques of top-down aid and the greater emphasis now put on supporting local initiatives, expertise, and capacities. These findings only highlight the complexity and delicacy of aid decisions, including the importance of building trusting, equitable relationships over time between donors and local partners and conducting ongoing conflict analyses to assess what it means to be conflict sensitive in a particular context. Just suddenly stopping all aid, in the blunt fashion undertaken by the current U.S. administration, can rupture these trusting relationships and carefully designed programs, exacerbating inequality, grievance, and therefore conflicts in already fragile areas.
Done well—in collaboration with local partners and responsive to their needs and ideas—international aid can be a powerful tool of global security. On the most fundamental level, “we” are more secure when everyone else is secure in the broadest sense of the word. It is common sense: People who have their basic human needs met and who do not live in fear due to threats to their own safety are less likely to engage in violence against others (or be susceptible to calls for such violence). In this way, aid supports global security both indirectly and directly: indirectly through economic development and humanitarian aid that supports basic health, livelihoods, and so on, thereby diminishing the grievance that can enflame violent conflict if implemented with conflict sensitivity in mind, and directly by preventing and resolving conflicts that might otherwise escalate.
Even if we look at it through a more transactional lens and from a narrow U.S. perspective, aid is critical to U.S. national security. Aid is a form of soft power—a way for the U.S. to increase its influence around the world through goodwill. When community members who have just experienced a natural disaster see that the food aid, medical kits, or tents they are receiving are from the U.S., when patients know their life-saving HIV retroviral drugs are coming from the U.S., or when democracy activists have the funds they need from the U.S. to buy vital communications technology amid repression, these individuals are more likely to have a positive perception of the U.S. and be generally supportive of the U.S. on the global stage. When and if this aid is frozen (like right now), you can be sure that another country eager for the same level of influence will fill the void. You can also be sure that positive perceptions of the U.S. will—and probably have already—sour(ed), as life-saving, health-giving, and democracy-supporting programs have been abruptly pulled out from under numerous populations around the world.
Furthermore, a different argument for the value of aid can be directed towards those concerned about high levels of immigration. Aid can help address the root causes—like poverty, instability, climate disasters and climate-related resource scarcity, and violence—that ultimately push people to leave their home countries and migrate to the U.S. in search of asylum or simply a better life for their families. Instead of battling the effects of these problems with a militarized response to an influx of migrants and asylum-seekers at the border (going as far as naming and treating it as a military “invasion” so the military can be mobilized in response), the Trump administration should reinstate and even increase funding for USAID programs, while also seriously investing in a just transition to clean energy and climate funding worldwide to slow down and even reverse climate catastrophe. (Interestingly, most Americans estimate that the U.S. spends about 25% of its budget on foreign aid but think it should be around 10%. In truth, foreign aid currently represents less than 1% of the federal budget.) These efforts will serve everyone’s security much more effectively than mass deportations or a militarized border will, making it more likely that people can lead safe and thriving lives in their home communities if they wish to remain there.
The work and funding of the dedicated staff at USAID and other such aid agencies around the world, implementing humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding projects to address multiple, overlapping crises, is critical to global wellbeing and thus security. We are all connected, with our security deeply intertwined, and we disregard that reality at our peril. [MW]
Continued Reading:
Miolene, E. (2025, February 26). Nearly 10,000 awards cut from USAID, State Department. Devex. Retrieved February 27, 2025, from https://www.devex.com/news/nearly-10-000-awards-cut-from-usaid-state-department-109517?utm_content=link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=audience&utm_source=LinkedIn#Echobox=1740606175
Nolen, S. (2025, February 20). Emergency food, TB tests and H.I.V. drugs: Vital Health aid remains frozen despite court ruling. The New York Times. Retrieved February 27, 2025, from https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/health/usaid-freeze-hiv-tb-nutrition.html
Thompson, C. (2020, June 1). In transformational moments, supporting local peace work is more urgent than ever. Inside Philanthropy. Retrieved February 27, 2025, from https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2020-6-1-hlvrxq8zcrbjgn1az5u7eiot3k3zw2
Kristof, N. (2025, February 12). The U.S.A.I.D. chaos already has dire effects. The New York Times. Retrieved February 27, 2025, from https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/opinion/usaid-foreign-aid.html?searchResultPosition=2
Peace Science Digest. (2020, October) Special issue: Local, national, and international peacebuilding. Retrieved February 24, 2025, from https://warpreventioninitiative.org/peace-science-digest/special-issue-local-national-and-international-peacebuilding/
Ingram, G. (2019, October 2). What every American should know about US foreign aid. Brookings Institution. Retrieved February 26, 2025, from https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-every-american-should-know-about-u-s-foreign-aid/
Organizations:
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID): www.usaid.gov (Note: At time of writing, this website did not seem to be operational.)
Peace and Security Funders Group: https://www.peaceandsecurity.org/
Key Words: development aid, humanitarian aid, peacebuilding, triple-nexus framework, resilience, conflict sensitivity, conflict prevention, conflict resolution, USAID, security
Photo Credit: PICRYL
