As humanitarian crises become more complex, frequent and protracted, our abilities to meet both immediate humanitarian needs and achieve longer term development goals require that humanitarian and development programming and responses are well-integrated and coordinated.
In practice, finding the right balance and achieving this goal is not easy.
In May this year, the International Livestock Research Institute, the Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action, and the Supporting Pastoralism and Agriculture in Protracted Conflict program held a workshop with representatives of donor agencies, UN agencies, international nongovernmental organizations, research centres, governments and local NGOs to examine factors and practices that enable or inhibit integration and alignment in the humanitarian-development-resilience nexus.
The just-published workshop report singles out four key messages:
1. Humanitarian crises are becoming more complex,cyclical, protracted and intense; hence, short-term, life-saving interventions are insufficient.Integrating short-term humanitarian responses and long-term resilience programming can enhance aid efficiency, potentially reducing the cost of humanitarian needs, and contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals.
2. Diverse institutional cultures and organizational mandates, insufficient flexible financing, mismatched coordination, and lack of political will, undermine the practical integration of humanitarian aid and resilience programs in response to climate-induced calamities, such as drought, floods and protracted conflict.
3. Aligning institutional strategies, policies and frameworks during planning, implementation and evaluation stages of interventions can enhance effective integration, reduce losses and improve livelihoods for the affected populations.
4. Incentivizing the humanitarian-development-resilience nexus through multi-year flexible financing, multi-agency interventions, and incorporating integration in organizations’ key performance indicators would stimulate and motivate actors to change and break the silos that undermine integration.
More:
Download the report of the discussions: Mohamed, T.S., Crane, T.A., Roba, G., Derbyshire, S. and Banerjee, R. 2024. Breaking down siloes: Towards effective integration of resilience and humanitarian aid in the Horn of Africa. ILRI Workshop Brief. Nairobi, Kenya: ILRI.
Read a blog post with the workshop notes
Download the presentation by Tahira Mohamed: Breaking Silos: Towards effective integration of humanitarian aid and resilience programming. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/141926
Download a summary poster: Towards effective integration of humanitarian and resilience programs in the Horn of Africa. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/141911
About the project:
Hosted at the International Livestock Research Institute, the ‘linking short-term humanitarian response to long-term resilience ’project is co-financed by Community Jameel through the Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action and the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office through the Supporting Pastoralism and Agriculture in Recurrent and Protracted Crises program.
Fish bowl exercise summarizing key points