Addressing Everyday Complexities of the Triple Nexus: Lessons from South Sudan and Ethiopia

This is the second chapter in a forthcoming e-book, entitled 'The Triple Humanitarian, Development and Peace Nexus: In Context and Everyday Perspective', edited by Marina Ferrero Baselga and Rodrigo Mena. Chapters will serialised on Global Policy over the coming months.

The triple nexus approach, though not a new concept, has in recent years been increasingly recognised by organisations, including United Nations (UN) agencies and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation (OECD), as the solution to address the root causes of the growing number of complex crises around the world (ECOSOC n.d.; GA ECOSOC 2017; OECD 2019; Weishaupt 2020). Designed to integrate humanitarian, development, and peace efforts to enhance programmatic effectiveness in complex crises, the triple nexus approach, while clear in theory, has been challenged by unexpected issues and complications for practitioners when seeking to put the nexus into practice. Building upon the work of Cochrane and Wilson (2023), this chapter examines concerns surrounding the nexus in terms of (1) control and decision-making, (2) the potential to cause harm, and (3) operational inefficiencies. Through a case-based approach, we highlight everyday difficulties when implementing the nexus and argue for the establishment of robust guardrails, providing recommendations for practitioners to help navigate these complexities effectively.

Opportunities, Risks, & the Need for Guardrails

Despite all its promise, the triple nexus approach is not without its risks. As Cochrane and Wilson (2023) explain, a major concern with implementing the triple nexus is its potential to become a mechanism of top-down donor control, as the nexus becomes a donor requirement and specifies expectations accordingly. Administrative and operational demands by donors related to the nexus’ design and implementation can lead to reduced local decision-making power due to a lack of capacity or technical know-how on behalf of local and national non-governmental organisations (L/NNGOs) (Airey, 2022; Cochrane and Thornton, 2016). This has the potential to counter the trend of localisation in the sector when the nexus is operationalised and institutionalised.

In addition to this, another significant risk is the myriad of conceptualisations of the nexus by humanitarian, development, and peace actors, which can result in the shifting of risk from one appropriate context to another less suitable one (Cochrane and Wilson, 2023). For example, approaches to risk and potential harm are not standardised across humanitarian, development and peace organisations. As organisations collaborate across these domains, differences in interpretation may result in the transfer of unanticipated or unknown risk between organisations.

Finally, operational inefficiencies due to a lack of coordination also pose a major challenge in the effective and safe implementation of the nexus (Cochrane and Wilson, 2023).

To mitigate these risks, we argue for the establishment of guardrails to ensure the triple nexus approach is implemented in a way that respects and integrates local involvement and control, minimises harm, and enhances operational efficiency between humanitarian, development, and peace actors. These guardrails which will be expanded upon below include:

(1) ensuring that local organisations retain decision making control over how, when and where the nexus gets implemented while donors provide support and enabling agreements to be responsive to local opportunities and constraints;

(2) organisations need to be able to retain their principles and values, which includes risk assessments and approaches to do no harm programming, while donors play a supportive and collaborative role to facilitate the nexus; and

(3) the lack of coordination in the humanitarian, development and peace domains of work has long been a challenge, the nexus cannot be expected to remedy this. If donors want to enable nexus approaches, parallel work needs to be done to strengthen collaboration in and across work domains.

The challenges of putting the nexus into practice are exemplified through the following two case studies, which situate these calls for nuancing the nexus.

Case Study 1: Control and Decision Making in South Sudan

Calls for implementing the triple nexus have occurred in contexts where fragility or conflict exist alongside country contexts wherein humanitarian and development activities often occur simultaneously. In the case of South Sudan, a major challenge in implementing the triple nexus has been related to a lack of local control and decision-making (Kemmerling, 2024; Müller-Koné et al., 2024). The nexus approach, which gained popularity amongst actors in the country following the 2018 Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan, has been conducted in a top-down manner, limiting local involvement in coordination and decision-making processes (Kemmerling, 2024; Müller-Koné et al., 2024).

Many actors and donors are reluctant to work with or provide budgetary support to the South Sudanese government due to concerns surrounding corruption and aid dependency, as well as their actions during the conflict (Tschunkert et al., 2023; Kemmerling, 2024). Path dependency of International NGOs (INGOs) was also cited as another issue (Mena and Hilhorst, 2022). Consequently, to address humanitarian needs, many donors have chosen to channel their funding through the UN and allocate more funding to humanitarian activities over developmental ones (Tschunkert et al., 2023). In part, this is because developmental activities, such as health system strengthening or education system development, require      government involvement. International NGOs often play a supportive role in these developmental activities.

These limitations in South Sudan, however, can restrict operational effectiveness and risk encouraging the government to attempt to control humanitarian resources through other means (Tschunkert et al., 2023). As a result, while the involvement of the state is required to achieve sustainable development and peace objectives in the long term, the realities in South Sudan highlight an important issue in implementing the triple nexus surrounding collaboration with governmental agencies (Tschunkert et al., 2023; Kemmerling, 2024). In effect, many developmental activities have been restricted because of political decisions, thereby limiting the operational space of the nexus approach.

L/NNGOs are also excluded from much of nexus programming and decision making in South Sudan. Earmarked funding (i.e. funds provided for specific projects or purposes) remains predominant in South Sudan (98% from 2013 to 2020) allowing for international and multinational donors, agencies, and NGOs to control decision-making through administrative and operational demands related to nexus design and implementation, thereby relegating L/NNGOs to subcontractor roles with little decision-making power (Kemmerling, 2024; Müller-Koné et al., 2024). Furthermore, pooled humanitarian funding (i.e. a common fund to which multiple donors contribute) in the South Sudanese context is also rarely allocated directly to L/NNGOs (2.4% in 2019), limiting their leadership potential (Kemmerling, 2024; Müller-Koné et al., 2024).

One reason for this is the limited confidence international donors and actors have in L/NNGOs capacities, as well as fear of corruption (Kemmerling, 2024; Müller-Koné et al., 2024). Therefore, while the triple nexus approach holds promise, its implementation in South Sudan highlights significant challenges related to local control and decision-making. It also highlights the risks of increasing donor control over nexus expectations and the resulting reduction of localisation efforts and decision making.

Case Study 2: Conceptual Ambiguities and Avoiding Harm in Ethiopia

The triple nexus, known in this context as the New Way of Working (NWoW) by the UN, has gained significant traction with the Government of Ethiopia and humanitarian, development, and peace actors in the region (United Nations, n.d.). The Government of Ethiopia, along with these actors, have pursued several projects and programmes with common objectives, particularly regarding drought and refugee response (United Nations, n.d.). However, the rapid implementation of integrated programmes has sometimes led to unintended negative consequences, particularly concerning the principle of ‘do no harm.’

For example, in an effort to capitalise on the benefits of the nexus approach, one organisation attempted to shift from humanitarian to development activities too rapidly, and it resulted in conflict. In humanitarian situations resources tend to be spread widely across demographic groups and geographic areas to ensure basic needs are met, while developmental programming might be more “concentrated” on a particular geographic area, such as in multi-sectoral programming that seeks to enable communities to overcome poverty traps. In this case, humanitarian needs were unmet, but a developmental approach was started in a subset of communities.  Since vulnerability and needs remained high in surrounding communities, made additionally complex in this case due to ethnic and linguistic differences, excluded communities felt this was an issue of exclusion or favouritism.

In this case, the enthusiasm to implement nexus approaches triggered resentment and distrust, which resulted in conflict and the loss of lives. Implementing the nexus requires careful consideration, as this Ethiopian experience demonstrates. All actors, including donors and governments, need to take a much more nuanced approach to nexus implementation to ensure that choices do not cause harm. Although we cannot confirm in this specific case, the transfer of risk considerations from one environment to another may have played a role. As organisations begin to operate in less familiar contexts, this becomes increasingly relevant given many organisations have a sectoral specialisation as well as a domain strength which the nexus may encourage them to move beyond.

Recommendations for Donors and Organisations

Donors: Enthusiasm for nexus approaches requires attention to the risks, which includes donors (re)taking control over decision-making and pushing organisations into unfamiliar operational environments. Donors need to ensure they play a supportive role, including in advancing collaboration in and across domains of work, while respecting the decisions of local organisations and granting them the flexibility to adapt based on contextual knowledge. To better support flexibility and localisation, donors should consider requiring a certain amount of funding be non-earmarked and that a certain amount of funding be provided to local actors to increase L/NNGO decision-making capabilities and leadership opportunities.

Organisations: Applying the nexus approach requires careful consideration not only of collaboration across organisations (e.g., considerations of risk and harm) but also internal strengths and limitations, especially in multi-mandate organisations. Critical self-reflection and honesty are necessary as we put the nexus into practice. Value-based and principled refusals may be a way to ensure that actions in humanitarian, development and peace domains are not causing harm and are facilitating positive change.

Conclusion

In practice, the triple nexus approach – designed to enhance programmatic effectiveness in complex crises by integrating humanitarian, development, and peace efforts – reveals significant unforeseen challenges for practitioners. This chapter, building on the work of Cochrane and Wilson (2023), has highlighted three critical concerns surrounding the nexus: (1) control and decision-making, (2) the potential to cause harm, and (3) operational inefficiencies. Through a case-based approach, we have highlighted the everyday difficulties when implementing the nexus and argued for the establishment of robust guardrails to navigate these difficulties effectively.

First, it is essential that local organisations retain decision making control over how, when, and where the nexus gets implemented while donors provide support and enabling agreements to be responsive to local opportunities and constraints. Second, organisations need to be able to retain their principles and values. This includes risk assessments and approaches to do no harm programming, while donors play a supportive and collaborative role to facilitate the nexus. Lastly, the lack of coordination in the humanitarian, development and peace domains of work has long been a challenge, the nexus cannot be expected to remedy this.

In conclusion, these guardrails, if established, will allow for the triple nexus to better fulfil its promise. Addressing complex crises requires nuance, flexibility to adapt to unique local and changing contexts, collaboration, and coordination to make any meaningful impact.

Alexandra Wilson, School of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada.

Logan Cochrane, College of Public Policy, HBKU, Qatar.

Image: Henry Wilkins, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons