How the European Union operationalises and understands the Triple Nexus: complexities, ‘Building Blocks’ and incremental change
This is the ninth 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 are currently being serialised on Global Policy.
The European Union’s executive organ, the European Commission (EC), is one of the largest international aid donors in the world, contributing 8.6% of global humanitarian aid in 2023. Similarly, the EU (also mainly via the EC) aims to provide around 0.7% of its GNP per year to ‘development aid’, as well as around 2 billion euros per year in climate finance grants. Beyond its financial might, the EU is also seen as a source of policy expertise by other regional or multinational alliances, making it central to discussions on how the Nexus is implemented.
So, how does the EU itself operationalise the Nexus? To understand this, it is instructive to look at the history of ‘Nexus thinking’ in the EU. In the following sections we’ll explore it broadly chronologically: from early 2000’s debates about moving towards Linking Relief, Rehabilitation and Development, to adopting a ‘resilience mindset’, the EU’s contribution to the Grand Bargain commitment of 2016, its policy-building blocks and instruments since then, and finally to integrating all of this into its main HDP-related funding mechanism, the NDICI-GE fund.
This chapter is focused mainly on the overall EU approach to the Nexus, through the European Commission and its Directorates-General. There is unfortunately not the space here to consider the operationalisation of the Nexus within programmes supported by the EU around the world. As noted in a 2021 report by the NGO Development Initiatives International, EU-funded programmes in Bangladesh, Cameroon, and Somalia have varied quite considerably in their achievement of operationalising the Nexus.
How does the EU understand the HD(P) Nexus? From LRRD in the 1990’s to the WHC in 2015
While the Nexus gained international attention during the World Humanitarian Summit of 2016, it can be thought of as a coming together of several undercurrents in the decades before. Since the 1990s, the “classical paradigm” has evolved into a “resilience paradigm;" by the early 2010s, concepts like vulnerability, resilience, anticipatory action, gained clarity; and, over the past decade, there has been a growing emphasis on localisation. Within this swirl of ideas is a development of the themes embodied within the ‘Linking Relief to Rehabilitation and Development’ debates and advocacy efforts throughout the 1990’s.
Within the European Commission’s documentation, there is also a reflection through the 2000’s towards this more rounded and joined-up approach to humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding work. In 2005/6 the European Commission launched ‘The European Consensus on Development’, and in 2007 ‘The European Consensus on Humanitarian Aid’. Within the 2005 Consensus on Development, the EC specifically notes that: “Without peace and security development and poverty eradication are not possible, and without development and poverty eradication no sustainable peace will occur.” Here we can see the faint outlines of the integration of Peacebuilding into the Humanitarian and Development Nexus being drawn at an institutional level.
By 2007, we can see the language of the HD(P) Nexus popping up in EU Council Conclusion documents: “The EU as a whole needs to ensure that its support to partners’ efforts in addressing fragility is more responsive, quicker, and more flexible. The approach should be tailor-made, articulated and holistic, combining diplomatic action, humanitarian aid, development cooperation and security.”
And, by the time of the “Action Plan for Resilience in Crisis Prone Countries 2013-2020” (2013), we can see the influence of ‘Nexus thinking’ on the EU’s Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG-ECHO):
A large share of humanitarian funding is allocated to longer-term recurring crises. Of this, a substantial proportion goes to fragile and conflict-affected states, where household vulnerability and the lack of sustainable development are closely linked to state fragility and conflict.
Even three years before the first ‘Grand Bargain’ was made, DG-ECHO specifically notes the cyclical and non-linear nature of crisis response, suggests flexible funding to support Disaster Risk Reduction work, and wraps everything up in a message of sustainable development.
In the lead-up to the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit, the EC busied itself with contributing to what became “The Grand Bargain”, launching its “Towards the World Humanitarian Summit: A Global Partnership for Principled and Effective Humanitarian Action” communication in 2015. This document is instructive as it formalizes the previous decade’s work integrating humanitarian and development (and peacebuilding) initiatives, and states that:
The heavier humanitarian caseload has made the partnership between humanitarian and development actors all the more important. Recurrent and protracted humanitarian crises and prolonged forced displacement mean that emergency humanitarian aid can no longer carry the burden on its own. There is a compelling need to reframe humanitarian-development cooperation so that this partnership reinforces the outcomes of both streams.
The document recommends operationalising this approach by bringing together humanitarian and development actors before crises occur, to strengthen risk management and reduction efforts. It also calls for joint analysis during crises, with a focus on enabling a “flexible transition from humanitarian to development aid based on clear exit points where humanitarian action should give way to development efforts.”
Progress from 2016-2021: pilots, incremental building blocks, and bringing the Nexus into operational policy guidelines
Following the WHS in 2016, DG-ECHO has gradually advanced from the commitments made under the ‘Grand Bargain’ to implementing concrete operational steps. As part of its signing of the Bargain, DG-ECHO has provided annual self-reporting on its progress.
In its 2017 baseline report, DG-ECHO outlined several practical steps to operationalise its Nexus commitments. These included incorporating early action mechanisms into programmes in crisis-prone countries. Additionally, 13% of that year’s budget was allocated specifically to resilience and disaster risk reduction (DRR) activities. The regional fund for Syria (The Madad Fund) even began working on its HR and support staff practices to try and ensure more joined-up approaches from humanitarian relief and development-focused staff. A pilot programme was also mooted, for six countries (Sudan, Uganda, Chad, Nigeria, Iraq, and Myanmar), to include:
- Joint analyses and programme activities between humanitarian and development actors
- The introduction and use of social safety nets to avert crises and allow for early pre-emptive action.
- The development of insurance mechanisms to enable local response and humanitarian financing.
- Multi-year programming
In 2017, the EU’s executive body rubber-stamped a plan to operationalise the Nexus: “Council Conclusions on Operationalising the Nexus”. The document consists of 13 ‘conclusions’ (statements) that theoretically provide scaffolding for various EU organs to begin creating programmes and initiatives.
As in the 2015 pre-WHS communication, the primary tool for achieving Nexus-style coordination and complementarity in the EU in this period was joint analysis and information sharing, Conclusion 7 states:
The Council stresses the importance of timely exchange of information by humanitarian and development actors and systematic joint context analyses that identify risks, assess causes of fragility, coping capacities and resilience at different levels. Where possible, joint context analyses should support country-driven response planning and allow for flexible funding. They should be conducted at an early stage and at regular intervals, including with information from early warning systems that could trigger early action. (Conclusion 7)
The document also further develops the pilot programme hinted at in the 2017 self-reporting exercise; with a key pillar of this programme to include the joint identification of needs and “collective outcomes by both development and humanitarian relief actors. Conclusion 10 presents more tools that humanitarian and development actors can use to achieve better coordination: “multiannual planning and programming cycles, joint risk and vulnerability analysis, joined-up planning, as well as co-ordinated programmatic approaches where applicable”. Finally, and familiarly, the EC notes a need for better information sharing and evidence-based decision-making, instructing the various EU-related organs to better use the Capacity4Dev platform.
At this stage, the 'Building Blocks of a Triple Nexus Approach'—a phrase coined by Pauline Veron and Volker Hauck in a 2021 policy paper by the think tank ECDPM—begin to emerge more clearly. These building blocks very much reflect the initial pilot programme highlighted earlier in the initial Nexus integration reporting completed by DG-ECHO in 2016/17.
The first is joint analysis, though the number of EU organisations needed to achieve this poses something of a challenge. Joint planning is the second component, and finally “coordination mechanisms” are considered the third. These mechanisms bear some closer inspection: Veron and Hauck note a ‘Nexus task force’ having been set up in Chad in 2020/2021, noting that it tries to ensure coordination and a common use of the OECD’s HDP Nexus recommendations.
These three main instruments (to keep the EU’s own language) are also reflected in DG-ECHO’s own self-reporting from 2020 and 2021 for the previous years. The 2020 report refers to a programme in Somalia, linking cash aid and social protection, particularly in response to those affected by COVID-19 that is part of the six-country Nexus pilot referred to earlier. In the 2021 report, DG-ECHO notes that it is trying to integrate joint needs assessments across its various programmes, based on its experiences of linking cash aid and social protection in Somalia, and it intends to further link cash aid programming to “education, health, food security, disaster preparedness and climate resilience.”
This ‘Nexus’ between cash aid and other societal problems that straddle the humanitarian, development and peacebuilding silos is an innovative approach, and perhaps also demonstrates how ‘Nexus thinking’ has begun to permeate some of the planning and policy development processes within DG-ECHO.
NDICI-GE: from building blocks to concrete action
The EU works primarily through targeted funding and grant-making and has had a long road (it is a slow-moving organization) towards integrating ‘Nexus thinking’ into its work. Though too much to discuss here in lots of detail, it’s good to note that prior to 2021 the EU had a truly enormous list of departments and funding mechanisms for its humanitarian and development work.
So, the reorganization of the “Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument – Global Europe (NDICI-GE)” funding mechanism can be seen to be the biggest single step of integrating the policy “Building Blocks” discussed above with the gentle development of the EU’s understanding of the Nexus. Adopted in June 2021 and to be used until 2027, the financial instrument brought together a wide variety of pots and funds that had previously been used to fund humanitarian, development and some peacebuilding activities. In preparing the instrument, and as noted by DG-ECHO in its 2022 (for 2021) report to the UNIASC, policymakers worked to focus money on jointly analysing “humanitarian, development and peace actors, making sure to increase complementarities and coherent response between the different instruments”. The funding framework of the NDICI money was (comparatively) very flexible, with various pillars intended to support programmes across several areas including geographically, thematically (on ‘Human Rights & Democracy’, ‘Civil Society Organisations’, ‘Peace, Stability, and Conflict Prevention’, and ‘Global Challenges’), as well as rapid response funding, and even a 9.3 billion euro “flexibility cushion”.
This new funding instrument has also been combined with the continuation of some of the direct programming mentioned earlier, with the 2023 (for 2022) report to the UNIASC noting that HDP Nexus Coordination bodies had been established in Mozambique and Iraq (a body had been established in Chad in 2021), as well as joint analytical and planning frameworks having been established for programming in Jordan, Ukraine, and Palestine. Perhaps buoyed by the success of the NDICI-GE funding programme, the EU was also in the process of setting up joined-up financing mechanisms in Myanmar and the Central African Republic.
Conclusion: challenges of patchy implementation and small steps
As discussed throughout this article, the European Union has gradually progressed from initial discussions on Linking Relief, Rehabilitation and Development (LRRD) in the pre-2000s, to adopting a ‘resilience paradigm’ in the mid-2000’s, exploring the beginnings of ‘Nexus thinking’ in the 2010s, and moving towards operationalising the Nexus since 2016. Through the work of DG ECHO and DG INTPA, the EU is slowly taking on and operationalising joined-up thinking, coordination, joint analysis, and cross-sectoral collaboration. It is likely that in the lead-up to whatever replaces the NDICI-GE fund after 2027, the EU will try to continue to operationalise the Nexus and bring more Nexus thinking into its work. Whether it succeeds in doing so will certainly be interesting to watch.
Tom Ansell is Coordinator and Programme Manager at The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre, part of the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. He also Coordinates the International Humanitarian Studies Association. His working experience covers local government, advocacy, and fundraising, and he has research interests in humanitarian learning and innovation and Disaster Risk Reduction. He regularly contributes to (both academic and non-) publications, and is based in The Hague, the Netherlands.
Photo by Daffa Rayhan Zein
