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. A new article by Tahira Mohamed and colleagues reviews approaches to integrate humanitarian and development aid through the lens of drought management in the Horn of Africa.
Linking short-term humanitarian aid and development assistance has been a mainstream agenda in the Horn of Africa since the early 1980s. Questions on the most effective approaches to use have underlain polarized debates in policy, practical, and theoretical spaces over recent years.
This is due in large part to the diversity of actors, institutional mandates, funding sources, programmes (themselves always changing), and operational dynamics that exist between the two domains.
In pastoral areas of the Horn of Africa, which experience recurrent drought emergencies, integrating the two forms of assistance has been attempted in several instances, which have often been disjointed and have sought to grapple with an unpredictable terrain of shifting policies and program designs. Such challenges have been further compounded by a substantial disconnect between programming (across humanitarian aid and resilience building) and existing pastoralist practices and strategies comprising local social safety nets.
Using a comprehensive literature review, this paper explores some of the practical strategies that have been implemented to integrate these two forms of assistance over recent years. It surveys implications that arise in relation to the question of how best to address persistent drought in the Horn of Africa.
Interrogating mechanisms for enhancing aid efficiency and effectiveness including crisis modifiers and contingency planning, the paper examines what progress has been made in transitioning from reactive, short-term emergency responses to long-term development and what barriers still exist.
The paper argues that despite multiple policy shifts and the adoption of new frameworks (including, recently, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s Drought Disaster Resilience and Sustainability Initiative – IDDRSI), when it comes to practical implementation, there has been little progress.
We suggest that this is due in part to the well documented complexity of the aid system, and the forms of bureaucracy and upward accountability that make change extremely difficult, and in part to a lack of meaningful community participation in planning and practice.
More:
Read the article: Mohamed, T. S., Crane, T. A., Derbyshire S. and Roba, G. 2025. A review of approaches to the integration of humanitarian and development aid: the case of drought management in the Horn of Africa. Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice. https://doi.org/10.3389/past.2025.14001
Read an earlier workshop report: 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 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.