Holistic effort

Over time, these fields have evolved with distinct roles and mandates. Peace efforts aim to prevent conflicts or help societies recover from them. Humanitarian aid focuses on saving lives, alleviating suffering, and maintaining human dignity in crises, while development cooperation addresses the root causes of vulnerability and lays the foundation for sustainable development.

Experience from prolonged complex crises, such as in Somalia, Afghanistan, and South Sudan, has shown that short-term approaches and lack of coordination among different actors are both costly and have many negative consequences.

This has led to increasing international attention on the need to bridge these areas of work. Norway has also committed to working more "holistically" across the three main categories, a concept internationally known as the "HDP Nexus" (humanitarian, development, and peace). By "nexus" or holistic efforts, we mean that humanitarian aid, long-term development cooperation, and peace efforts must work effectively together to meet people's basic needs both in the short and long term. This approach involves addressing immediate needs while simultaneously working on the root causes of crises and conflicts, and building preparedness and resilience against future crises. Today, climate vulnerability is a factor affecting many countries experiencing prolonged humanitarian crises, interacting with other causes of conflict and crisis. Therefore, climate adaptation must be seen as an important part of a holistic effort.

In practice, holistic efforts require adjustments in the financing of aid efforts, how initiatives are planned and designed, and how coordination is achieved with other actors, particularly national and local actors and authorities. For example, it is important to plan all forms of effort with a long-term perspective and always seek to prevent crises rather than "repair" them afterward. It is crucial to demonstrate conflict sensitivity and flexibility in response to complex crises and for actors within the different areas to work towards common goals. A prerequisite for this is that financing is flexible and long-term, allowing the various actors and efforts to adjust and complement each other quickly if the situation on the ground changes.

Holistic efforts have proven difficult to implement in practice, as international aid has long operated in "silos," reinforced by different management systems and separate budget and financing sources. Additionally, it has been challenging to bridge the humanitarian aid's emphasis on principled and neutral interventions (based on the fundamental principles of the Red Cross movement and international humanitarian law) with the development cooperation and peace efforts' focus on collaboration with local actors, including different political groups. Going forward, it will be crucial to find effective solutions to manage the distinct nature of these areas while seeking complementarity across them.

Norad takes three steps to strengthen the approach to holistic efforts:

1. The tools (financing) and management of humanitarian and long-term aid are consolidated in Norad, providing an overview and enabling better-coordinated investments.
2. Flexibility in both humanitarian and long-term aid is increased through strategic partnerships and "plus partnerships."
3. Norad has developed principles and measures for locally led development, strengthening its technical capacity and competence in vulnerability and prevention.

We are increasing the focus on knowledge and learning together with our partners. Partners should experience:

• Reduced bureaucratic barriers to better coordinate efforts, including greater flexibility.
• Long-term financing.
• A shift towards increased funding for development and prevention, especially in countries with prolonged crises.

Contact

For more information, please contact the Department for Humanitarian Assistance and Comprehensive Response