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. Here we share some notes and insights from a recent discussion in Nairobi.
On 7 May, as part of a research project on ‘linking short-term humanitarian response to long-term resilience’, practitioners from humanitarian and development organizations joined a roundtable discussion to examine factors and practices that enable or inhibit both integration (and dis-integration) and alignment in the humanitarian-development nexus.
The aim was to better understand and map features of institutional cultures and how they enhance or inhibit collaborative and integrated resilience and humanitarian programming in the Horn of Africa’s drylands, take stock of practices that have enabled integration of resilience, humanitarian and community practices in drought management, and identify pathways to institutionalize some of these practices to better manage environmental and climatic shocks.
Framing the issues
Three speakers helped us set the scene:
A short presentation by ILRI post-doctoral fellow Tahira Mohamed who made the case for better integration, introduced key terms and outlined some of the issues holding back integration and coordination.
IGAD Centre for Pastoral Areas and Livestock Development Director Dereje Wakjira reflected on lessons and insights from the IGAD Drought Disaster Resilience and Sustainability Initiative (IDDRSI) set up in 2013 to mobilize humanitarian and development actions in several priority areas.
He noted how the concept of resilience has been evolving with different interpretations from different actors. He highlighted how, despite much wider magnitudes of drought and other emergencies, responses are much better, through, for example, better infrastructure, improved early warning, improved capacities of governments, and improved coordination at national and sub-national levels and regionally.
On coordination, he emphasized the importance of intentionality and willingness – both to coordinate and be coordinated. Noting that these efforts are mostly with public resources, he observed a missing link so far in involving the private sector.
UNDP Resilience Hub for Africa Humanitarian Development Peace Nexus Advisor Troels Mahieu-Sorensen talked about on institutional roles and experiences at the humanitarian development and peace (HDP) nexus.
Explaining how the UN system, at global levels, has multiple institutions and working groups on working better across the HDP nexus, he observed that a key challenge is to ensure that efforts move away from missions, visions, and statements at headquarters level to local levels. How do we move from the concept of the nexus to tangible action?
Noting that most of the programming in crisis transition and recovery falls between humanitarian aid and development, he singled out some HDP nexus operationalization challenges: Lack of specific nexus coordination structures, lack of dedicated funding, lack of a common understanding of what the nexus is (to address this, he highlighted the roles of ‘HDP nexus academies’ to share and promote better practice), and, more generally, lack of priority or incentives to address the challenges of such crises across the region.
At these levels, he suggested, it is important to ensure ‘joint diagnostics’ where the different actors combine and contribute to joint outcome statements in which all their activities can fit and lead to bigger impacts. It is also critical to place government and local authorities at the center of the nexus so they take strong ownership of the activities and outcomes.
Integration enablers and inhibitors
Diving deeper into the issues and challenges, a chat show conversation among Cynthia Mugo ILRI), Stephen Mutiso (Save the Children UK), Simran Khataw (World Food Programme), and Peter Burgess (IAWG) dived deeper into some specific experiences.
Some ideas why integration and coordination is problematic: We don’t have a shared common understanding of the nexus; there is perhaps too much attempted coordination; bridging the gap with academic institutions is a challenge; the issues are complex and inter-related while organization mandates are circumscribed.
Some ideas of what can be done differently: Intentional institutional integration (include ‘integration’ into organizational and country strategy plans and performance measures); know the contexts and communities better; have common understandings of key concepts; map interventions.
Some take-away advice: focus on the goals and outcomes we want integration to deliver; have single teams of people working on both humanitarian and resilience work; Don’t wait – plan for drought during the inter-dry season; use the inter-rain season to practice water harvesting.
Following these plenary segments, the rest of the day participants worked in groups in brainstorm mode.
First, to identify some indicators of successful humanitarian-resilience integration:
- Evidence of geographic-based (and cross-border) coordination with complementary activities.
- Increased efficiency in resource use.
- Coordination structures that are accountable, sharing lessons, and providing incentives.
- Reduction in international humanitarian programs.
- Examples of multi-agency institutional integration – donor, implementor, government.
- More locally accountable assistance.
- Disasters contained locally.
- Alignment of practices, interpretation and operationalization of policies.
- Meaningful engagement and dialogue at system levels.
- Funding complementarities.
Second, some ‘inhibitors’ of effective humanitarian-resilience integration:
- Different funding streams and cycles discourage integrated planning and response.
- Inter-agency competition and ‘self-preservation’.
- Disconnects between action and decision making.
- Many coordination frameworks, mostly top heavy.
- Lack of long term programming.
- Under-recognition of community-based processes and solutions.
- Organizational cultures, orientation, structure and niches.
- Lack of incentives and motivations for integration.
- Emergency interventions tend to drop resilience building during implementation.
Third, some ‘enablers’ of effective humanitarian-resilience integration:
- Joint resilient programming (humanitarian organizations plus resilience organizations); potentially sharing program management staff.
- Partners and donors being together; appreciating and designing different approaches that work for all.
- Funding specifically oriented to integration or coordination’
- Agreement and commitment to common outcomes and goals.
- Diversity approaches plus diverse expertise.
- Joint needs assessment to develop integrated programs.
- Multiyear outcome-oriented funding that blends resilience and humanitarian funding and programming.
- Stronger local capacities and leadership to own processes and hold others accountable.
- Integration goals can be achieved by more than just working together: Complementarity and layering for example.
- Turn integration incentives into requirements or deliverables.
These various ideas form part of the next phase of the project in which Dr Mohamed will carry out interviews and fieldwork to help formulate more effective interventions for dryland communities in East Africa.
Fish bowl exercise summarizing key points
More:
Download a 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.
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.