1.7 Humanitarian Development and Peace Nexus (Triple Nexus)

Climate change, fragility, conflict and water insecurity are rapidly increasing the number and magnitude of protracted and recurrent crises globally. By 2030 more than 100 million people will slip into extreme poverty driven by climate change (Jafino et al. 2020). By 2050 40% of the world is expected to live in water stressed environments (UN Water 2020).  

In contexts where people are highly exposed to protracted crises – and where governments are unable to guarantee the human right to sanitation – collaboration between humanitarian, development and peace pillars is the key to building resilience, conflict sensitivity and peacebuilding capacities within sanitation systems. These capacities are a prerequisite for: addressing and reducing sanitation humanitarian needs over the long term; achieving the sustainable development of sanitation services; and contributing to both minimising harm (do no harm) and building peaceful societies (do more good). Collaboration between silos is feasible. There are several principles that humanitarian and development actors share, thus providing a strong foundation for collaboration based on comparative strength, effective coordination and coherence across all programming phases.  

The HDP nexus is “a means to addressing and reducing people’s unmet needs, risks and vulnerabilities, increasing their resilience, addressing the root causes of conflict and building peace” (Development Initiatives, 2019) Implementing the nexus approach is particularly relevant in contexts prone to protracted (e.g., long term conflict, water insecurity etc.) and recurrent (e.g., floods, drought etc.) crises (IASC 2020a). In such contexts, humanitarian, development and peace pillars collaborate to provide the required stability to implement long-term programmes.  

Worldwide, fragility is expected to increase, driven by rising conflict and megatrends such as climate change, urbanisation, instability, and demographic change. Without resilient sanitation systems, the humanitarian needs in the sector are likely to continue to grow. In 2023 over 90% of all humanitarian funding was spent in protracted crisis contexts. Global sanitation humanitarian appeals remain largely unmet and their funding rate even dropped in recent years.  

Systematic application of the HDP nexus is crucial in contexts of protracted and recurrent crisis to achieve more durable and sustainable sanitation solutions that are more cost-effective in the medium to long term. This can contribute to prevent conflicts over water resources and other ecosystem services, improve public health and health care, promote educational opportunities and advance equality by addressing the different needs and vulnerabilities, including of all gender groups and people with disabilities. 

The objective of the HDP nexus in sanitation is to minimise negative impacts of shocks and maximise sanitation systems performance over the long term, especially in fragile environments. The diagram below shows the reliance of the WASH system performance on the existence of resilience capacities in a particular context, especially when confronted with stressors such as climate change or weak institutions and shocks such as conflict or natural disasters (adapted from OECD 2014). 

Resilience capacities allow to plan, anticipate and prepare for shocks and enable effective absorption and recovery when a shock occurs. “Anticipative and absorptive capacities” try to minimise the negative impact of shocks on the sanitation systems performance (in pink). At the same time every shock is an opportunity to learn and adapt or even prevent future shocks through risk mitigation. “Preventive and adaptive capacities” therefore aim to maximise the performance of sanitation systems (in green).  

To build resilience capacities it is key to adopt a risk informed and context specific way of working as a minimum requirement. It begins with an analysis of the local context to understand the multiple and interconnected dimensions of risk, including conflict (UNICEF 2018). This analysis then provides the evidence and direction for building risk-informed capacities such as resilience. 

The HDP nexus promotes transitioning from temporary and communal facilities to permanent and area-wide sanitation systems serving households, encompassing the whole spectrum of on-site, decentralized and piped-sewage solutions. Only area-wide safely managed systems and related hygiene behaviours enable the comprehensive health impacts of sanitation. Only inclusive, gender-sensitive household solutions can meet the dignity, privacy and safety needs of all vulnerable groups. While the focus in the early stages of an emergency is on containing human excreta, the priorities in the recovery or long-term response shift to higher service levels, safely managed sanitation and environmental sustainability along the sanitation system chain Environmental considerations include the protection of water resources and relevant ecosystems as well as the re-use of treated urine, faeces and waste-water in agriculture.  

In fragile and conflict affected contexts also conflict sensitivity and peacebuilding capacities need to be integrated in the sanitation systems. Conflict sensitivity capacity is the ability of actors to understand its operating context (i.e., through conflict analysis), the interaction between its interventions and the context, and act upon this understanding to avoid negative impacts (“do no harm”) and maximise positive impacts on conflict factors like water resources (IASC 2020b). Building preventative and adaptive capacity from a peacebuilding perspective is about ensuring processes and mechanisms are integrated within the WASH system to promote collaboration, inclusion, and accountability (Tearfund & UK AID 2014). These can be small steps, such as introducing a feedback mechanism to link the community and the service provider, or participatory negotiations between different groups to manage water resources or protect relevant ecosystems, or strengthening the individual capacities of women and indigenous groups to participate in the management.  

To achieve the intermediate collective outcomes, it is recommended to adopt a systems approach and integrate resilience, conflict sensitivity and peacebuilding capacities across five key building blocks of the WASH / sanitation systems: 

1. Resilient WASH service providers, infrastructure and water resources 
2. Resilient community WASH behaviour 
3. WASH policies, laws, guidance and standards linked 
4. Coordination, planning, information management linked 
5. Flexible and sustainable financing

The Joint Operational Framework provides further sample sub-outputs, which give a more detailed information on how the five building blocks can be strengthened in a systematic way. 

In summary, there are three main programmatic approaches to the nexus:  

• Risk informed  
• Conflict sensitivity and peacebuilding 
• Systems strengthening 

In addition to the programmatic approaches, the “Joint Operational Framework: Building WASH Resilience, Conflict Sensitivity and Peacebuilding” proposes the following operational principles for addressing the Nexus in challenging environments: