Its time has come
Breathing life into the UN’s Triple Nexus

In light of the need for a paradigm shift in the humanitarian response for Syria, given dwindling resources, an old friend has resurfaced: the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, also known as the Triple Nexus. Could the Triple Nexus be the deus ex machina capable of rescuing the troubled humanitarian response and perhaps even the political process? 

For most of its existence since it was introduced by António Guterres in 2016 the Triple Nexus has lived as a buzzword in the strategy papers and public communications of UN agencies, INGOs, and donor governments. The lowest common denominator definition is that the linkages between humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding activities should be strengthened. Neither the UN’s Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) nor individual donors, however, have filled this vague definition with meaning. Accordingly, there is no roadmap for how the Triple Nexus can be operationalised. In some respects, this was a deliberate choice. 

Passive peacebuilding
Peacebuilding is the most nebulous pillar of Triple Nexus, despite being the only key to ending the root causes of the humanitarian crisis. So far, the prevailing approach has understood peacebuilding as the sum of various bottom-up activities. Restoration of infrastructure, support for small businesses, education programmes, promotion of social cohesion – all of these are supposed to stabilise crises. Beneficiaries are said to be ‘empowered’ by playing a role in the implementation of humanitarian programmes rather than being passive aid recipients. This is where another ill-defined buzzword, ‘localisation’, comes into play. Localisation aims to give local actors more agency and self-efficacy. Most actors claim to be champions of both Triple Nexus and localisation. In practice, however, localisation has so far mainly meant gathering feedback from locals and subcontracting them as implementors. Giving locals direct funding or decision-making powers continues to be rare. Despite Triple Nexus and localisation, the core power structure in the humanitarian aid complex remains untouched. This is mainly because the UN and INGOs have little interest in overturning their own business model; but it also stems from a reluctance to confront uncomfortable political questions. The transfer of financial and decision making power to Syrian actors means giving political power to Syrian NGOs and/or ‘local governance structures’ that, willingly or not, are part of the wider conflict tapestry.

The rationale behind the current approach to the Triple Nexus is that the sum total of bottom-up aid activities prevents further escalation of conflict, strengthens social cohesion, creates space for local reconciliation, and allows peace gradually to emerge in a grassroots manner. Since positive peace in Syria is far off, “resilience” is proclaimed as an interim goal: Syrians should become more resistant to their disastrous living conditions and future shocks in order to avert a further downward spiral of mutually reinforcing humanitarian and political crises.

According to this approach, therefore, all activities that help people and their communities – from WASH to the restoration of electricity – could be recorded as part of the peacebuilding pillar of the Triple Nexus. Implementation is supposed to be conflict-sensitive, but not too political. After all, humanitarian and development assistance should not be politicised, as humanitarians and other interest groups tirelessly stress. The bottom-up approach is said to work because it enables peace to sprout organically from civil society and local communities without being muddied with the politics of Track I diplomacy. Where points of contact between the aid community and local governance structures occur, they do so incidentally as the price of doing business. Many Syrian NGOs active in the humanitarian and development response support this approach, not least because it positions them as primary interlocutors and keeps them in business. 

In short, the current approach to the Triple Nexus enables humanitarian actors to use the concept to assign themselves and the romanticised construct of “civil society” and “local communities” a neutral but politically correct role, while keeping the real political actors away from their self-declared turf.

This passive, risk-averse, and self-interested approach to Triple Nexus has negative consequences. The synergies of the three pillars of the Triple Nexus are not being sufficiently utilised and, given the worsening conditions in Syria, those synergies are badly needed. The unresolved conflict, declining funding by donors, and the Assad regime’s predatory system that continues to consume everything around it cannot be offset by investment in “resilience.” The current approach to the Triple Nexus will inevitably lose the race against time as the deliberate firewalling of humanitarian aid and development assistance from Track I politics leaves the political stage to those who have an active interest in exploiting aid for political ends, whether it is UN agencies motivated by self-aggrandisement and the ideological preferences of some of their staff, the Assad regime trying to keep its ailing economy alive with Western-derived UN money, or some Western donors pursuing unrealistic refugee return agendas. 

The irony is that by resisting seeing humanitarian and development assistance as the inherently political acts they are, both humanitarian and political actors end up weakening, rather than strengthening, humanitarian principles and the effectiveness of aid. It is the role of mandated politicians to provide the space in which humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence can exist. Humanitarian actors have neither the mandate nor the capacity to take on this role, as the last decade has sadly shown.

Strategic peacebuilding
The current approach to Triple Nexus – what could be termed “passive peacebuilding” – is not inherently wrong, but it is most certainly incomplete. People in acute survival mode cannot be expected to participate emotionally or intellectually in genuine de-escalation and peacebuilding. Investments in basic services, livelihoods and social cohesion are important. Without an additional layer of peacebuilding, however, they are merely life-sustaining measures that, unfortunately, also strengthen the conflict parties and thus perpetuate the conflict.

The “passive peacebuilding” approach should be supplemented with something that could be called “strategic peacebuilding.” This would involve identifying where aid helps peacebuilding and where it harms it, where conditionality is appropriate, where and how politics can help improve the effectiveness of aid, and how aid can be used to advance major political-humanitarian goals such as stable ceasefires, economic development and convergence between the different areas of influence in Syria. Strategic peacebuilding measures would also include cross-area stabilisation activities, such as infrastructure investments in shared resources like water and electricity, infrastructure for cross-area trade, and solutions for cross-area issues in the field of education.

Next steps
Principles of the Triple Nexus need to be more clearly defined by donors and Syrian partners. Triple Nexus should become a serious category in humanitarian and development programming that explicitly aims to replace siloed approaches. The only potent drivers for that are donors, who themselves have some work to do to end siloed approaches and thus free up the positive synergies of the Triple Nexus. The initial goal should be an honest and constructive dialogue and engagement in joint planning (including context analysis, risk assessments, and goal planning) between political actors (Syrian, regional, and international), and the humanitarian community. Such a dialogue requires an appropriate forum. Multi-donor pooled funds are well-suited for this, but in the past, they have tended to be vehicles for “fire and forget” approaches by donors. 

The Aid Fund for Northern Syria (AFNS) has shown what an inclusive governance system can look like, in which donors, INGOs, and Syrian NGOs all have a say. Donors should push the UN to follow this example. In a second phase, de facto authorities and representatives of Syrian political actors should also participate, and with a well-balanced vote system. The result would be an institution that, aside from structural power imbalances, decided consensually on the distribution of aid and development resources. Operationalising the Triple Nexus in such a manner would not only enhance the efficiency of aid and offer crucial direction for the shift towards early recovery assistance, but would also be a real step toward transitional governance, as required by UNSCR 2254.