Making the case for conflict prevention and the triple nexus

The triple nexus discourse emerged as a response to interrelated situations of growing conflict and fragility in the world on the one hand, and of rising demands for humanitarian assistance and action on the other.

A quarter of the world is living in fragility. More and more countries are experiencing aspects of fragility. And in no time, every country will, in one way or another, become fragile. The constant decline in democracy and the rise in authoritarianism; the pressures of climate change coupled with unsustainable production and consumption practices; the decreasing attention to social cohesion initiatives and for an inclusive, participatory, and enabling environment; and the growing mistrust among publics toward governments and skyrocketing amounts of disinformation and propaganda all point to a dimmer world.

Funding prospects to keep the world afloat is disheartening either. For instance, the 2024 preliminary Official Development Assistance (ODA) data shows that humanitarian assistance has dropped. This is partly due to the decreased funding for the Ukraine reconstruction and in-donor refugee costs (IDRC). While IDRC must not really be counted as ODA, the drop shows that the funding for humanitarian assistance is never sufficient to address the overwhelming, compounded crises we are all facing, especially those in contexts with high to extreme exposure to fragility.

But while humanitarian assistance should be enough and flexible to respond to humanitarian crises, the share for development and peace projects that curb the need for humanitarian funding, should be equally sufficient. According to the States of Fragility 2025, of the USD 70.1 billion ODA disbursed to contexts with high to extreme fragility, 31% is dedicated to humanitarian assistance; 58.6 % is for development; and a meager 10.4% is for peace.

Though ODA is a critical resource for peace, it is just a tiny (financial) contribution. Trade and economic flows and relations; the fight against climate change; the proliferation of the arms trade; the strength of multilateralism and preventive diplomacy; gender justice; and respect for human rights and international humanitarian law, among others play a key role that must also be taken into account and must also be demanded of states. All these are related to promoting policy coherence on peace.

Conflict prevention is just part of the 10.4% funding for peace-related activities. In 2023, less than 4% was dedicated to conflict prevention. This is not enough, not to mention just and fair, to respond to the 61 fragile contexts where 25% of the world’s population live (States of Fragility 2025). 

There are also other elements contributing to prevention and peacebuilding that we should take into consideration, such as gender and women’s rights. Gender inequality is the most important risk factor after autocratic regimes, according to the States of Fragility 2025. And surprisingly, gender funding remains significantly low, at 4% as a principal objective in ODA.

The quantity of aid is one thing; the quality is another. One of the major challenges in this humanitarian-development-peace conundrum is the lack of a comprehensive and coherent humanitarian-development-peace programming or what we call, the triple nexus programming. When put together, the triple nexus should be able to help build a peaceful, just, and inclusive society. 

However, one couldn’t make a case for a triple nexus without discussing the colonial history of now fragile contexts and how the current dominant economic model of monopoly capitalism finds ways to survive and maintain control over the world’s political and cultural structures.

Geopolitics and fragility 

Our world has been shaped by geopolitical competition —from sailing expeditions and “discoveries” to the Scramble for Africa to present-day trade agreements —world powers and elite corporations  are in the constant search for the next big ticket: which resource and which market. Today, the race is toward energy and critical minerals. And which countries will you find these resources? Mostly those experiencing high to extreme fragility. 

Geopolitical competition is never fair —one gets to profit; another gets indebted. Countries where resources are being extracted from are highly indebted and heavily reliant on aid. But the aid system has become broken. What was once envisioned as a system of support, cooperation, and reparations after the Second World War, has now become a system where donor countries perform transactions. Often than not, in exchange for aid, recipient countries change or reform their fiscal policies, national priorities or worse, governance structures. The aid system is itself a fragile, precarious sector. 

Unfortunately, the aid system has bred a culture of complacency and dependency (whether this is a consequence or an objective from the get-go, recipient countries are complicit to this and should be accountable too). So when donor countries shifted their interests, thus allocating their money elsewhere, recipient countries had to figure out how to satisfy these new interests. The ending? Without national and sustainable industries, especially of productive sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing, and the strength to protect their sovereignty, recipient countries are trapped in a never-ending cycle of poverty and an ever-widening gap of inequalities. 

Geopolitical competition is also deadly costly. Dominant powers don’t just make calls and negotiate, offer concessions, and start digging. In several instances, such as in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, geopolitical competition resulted in conflicts, which sometimes have escalated to wars. Armed conflicts then turn states fragile, fragmented, and haunted. This is why defense or security budgets are so much higher than development budgets, and why military agreements are aplenty —for every corner of the world, there is an agreement or a strategic partnership that signals “there is potential threat to our interests here”.  And the aggressors flout international human rights law with impunity.  

Trade wars and armed conflicts have also aggravated the climate crisis, an added pressure to the multifaceted fragility of fragile contexts. Separate studies, programmatic interventions, and policy recommendations on the nexus of conflict and climate have been done, emphasizing not only the interrelations of climate with different issues affecting the most marginalized communities and sectors, but also the urgency to adopt a nexus framework in responding to the climate emergency. 

But the world is not just divided into donors and recipients; there are emerging donors among developing states too. Such geopolitical flux further fragments and disorients the status quo. It is now more difficult for dominant powers to control the world, but this isn’t very positive either. Emerging donors have been imitating dominant states and have been wielding power on others. Will there ever be a truly equal and respectful dynamic among countries, regardless of their income status? 

As mentioned above, 25% of the world’s population live in 61 fragile contexts —that is 2.1 billion people living in a fractured society where basic services are not provided or worse, not present; where food, if not difficult to produce, is imported and expensive; where education and decent work are considered luxuries; where civil rights are hardly recognized, much less exercised. In fragile contexts, a free and independent civic space is something you have to fight for constantly. 

Policy options 

Responding in a fragile context is a long, winding road. It is a complex terrain with no one-size-fits-all solution. But the goal of the response is for the state and its people to exit fragility and prevent it from happening again. The mechanism? A parallel, simultaneous, intersecting process —the triple nexus as a framework and methodology, with special attention to conflict prevention and peace-building initiatives. 

The triple nexus (also known as HDP nexus) is an approach to development that aims to strengthen collaboration, coherence, and complementarity in the HDP sector. The approach seeks to capitalize on the comparative advantages of each pillar—to the extent of their relevance in the specific context—in order to reduce overall vulnerability and the number of unmet needs, strengthen risk management capacities and address root causes of conflict. The triple nexus discourse emerged as a response to interrelated situations of growing conflict and fragility in the world on the one hand, and of rising demands for humanitarian assistance and action on the other.

In 2019, OECD-DAC members signed the DAC Nexus Recommendation, a policy instrument that promotes the use of the nexus approach in responding in conflict-affected, fragile states. The Peace & Security Thematic Working Group of the DAC-CSO Reference Group released a report in 2024 on the uptake and implementation of the Recommendation while zooming in on areas within the three pillars that are insufficiently taken up, and those that need accelerated action from relevant HDP actors. 

Six years into implementation, the triple nexus is still not the go-to approach or tool among HDP actors, and there is also no dedicated funding for it. And yet, for civil society, the nexus approach is a way forward to prevent conflict and increase resilience. The States of Fragility 2025 made a case for the cost-effectiveness of conflict prevention. Why then is there very little push toward this? Similarly, why is this not a priority funding area for donors? 

The nexus approach is also a way forward to realize the locally-led development agenda. Particularly in politically-constrained environments, directing funds to local, non-state actors to carry out nexus programmes would be one solution. In other cases, increasing the country-allocable ODA would honor the national priorities of recipient countries. However,  this should be on top of the long-standing call for continued and sufficient ODA toward fragile and conflict-affected settings. 

Donors should really put into practice the Nexus Recommendation and truly work toward increased coordination, alignment, and synergy among the three pillars. The potential of the HDP nexus to contribute to development is immense as its essence is aligned with a people-centred approach that respects international human and women’s rights, principles, and standards.

Get involved 

If you are working on any of the HDP pillars and interested in the triple nexus approach, contact the Peace & Security Thematic Working Group through roaap_secretariat@realityofaid.org.

For more information, you may check www.dac-csoreferencegroup.com.