Seven years ago at the United Nations’ World Humanitarian Summit, the development and humanitarian communities agreed on a “new way of working” that would more seamlessly integrate the two sectors when operating in the same places.
While it began as a good idea aimed at increasing efficiency and reducing costs, the framework has failed to deliver in an era with more humanitarian disasters seemingly by the month. Protracted crises have increasingly blurred the line between urgent humanitarian and longer-term development work as organizations with different mandates attempt to work together on a host of overlapping challenges amid an ever-tightening funding landscape.
Known as the “humanitarian-development nexus,” the framework is defined by the U.N. Office of Humanitarian Affairs as “working towards achieving collective outcomes that reduce need, risk and vulnerability, over multiple years, based on the comparative advantage of a diverse range of actors.”