The Humanitarian Reset: A Nexus Opportunity
- Jul 9
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 12
REFLECTION No. 001
In response to the shift in the humanitarian landscape, the Humanitarian Reset initiative was launched by the ERC Tom Fletcher in March 2025, signalling significant introspection and reform, dealing with hard issues impacting the efficiency and efficacy of humanitarian assistance delivery. Of particular note is the shift to more localised leadership, with a focus on empowering local actors through inclusion in consultations and advisory mechanisms. The streamlining of country-level coordination mechanisms is part of this process, including the reduction of the clusters from 15 to eight. Source: [IASC]
However, the documentation online gives no indication of how the reset would embrace the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus concept. The Humanitarian Reset is an opportunity to also reset the decision-making processes that are needed for the HDP Nexus operationalisation to be sustainable and locally led. Herewith are a few considerations that could easily be implemented, particularly by the UN, as part of the reset:
UN Resident Coordinators/Humanitarian Coordinators and national authorities create high-level national nexus coordination mechanisms responsible for promoting the nexus at policy and strategic levels. This mechanism would be responsible for bringing together relevant national and local authorities, INGOs, donors, civil society representatives, and local, national and (if appropriate) regional actors, to promote shared responsibility for joint analysis, prioritisation, planning and decision-making. In coordination with sub-national clusters indicated in the IASC’s “Guidance Cluster Simplification and Adapting In-Country Coordination” (March 2026) Source: [IASC], these nexus coordination mechanisms would ensure collective action of all stakeholders across the three pillars. It would encourage regional, local and community-led initiatives, through support to local assessments, identification of local resources both for implementation and maintaining the results, and promotion of an inclusive process focusing on women, youth and marginalised elements of the area.
Conduct combined Humanitarian Country Team/UN Country Team meetings at key strategic planning moments to ensure complementarity and collective outcomes. This is being done in some environments but should be a more common practice. It would include intentional linkages between the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) and the Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) through more concrete collective outcomes and Strategic Objectives respectively, underpinned by collective planning and decision-making with all stakeholders.
Create more inclusive opportunities for civil society to participate in strategic discussions, decision making and implementation throughout the programme cycles of the HNRP and UNSDCF. They are more than key informants and beneficiaries – they are stakeholders whose voices need to be amplified and heard.
Eventually merge the HNRP and UNSDCF into a single process and document. While there have been strides, with the UNSDCF guidelines requiring evidence of complementarity with the HNRP, the ideal would be for a single strategic framework that shows the relationships and synergies between humanitarian, development and peace initiatives, over the short-, medium- and longer terms. This approach would be particularly advantageous for those countries that are not facing chronic humanitarian crisis but will be impacted by global challenges such as climate change, displacement and conflict. Through the UNSDCF and national strategic frameworks in particular, this would promote proactive prevention and mitigation measures against potential crises with shared assessments and monitoring of crisis and conflict indicators, sustainable analysis, and increased localisation. Strengthened preventive development initiatives would build resilience and national stakeholder capacities to manage emerging crises.
Donors adapt funding mechanisms into financing for durable solutions. Instead of having different “pockets” for humanitarian and development programming, create durable solutions or nexus financing mechanisms that encourage collective and integrated programming between humanitarian and development actors. In particular, the focus would be on supporting civil society and institutions at local and national levels. One caveat for the use of the funds would be a visible peace impact as part of the programming.
Recognise the foundational role of the peace pillar. Peace is a charged topic, with political and emotional implications. Breaking it down to “big P” (political peace process; peacekeeping, etc.) and “little P” (such as social cohesion) is not sufficient to build a shared understanding of what the peace pillar means in practice among humanitarian, development, peace, government, civil society and local actors. Taking this approach promotes rather than deconstructs silos. While recognising that there are some firewalls to be maintained, it is essential that peacebuilding is an integral impact of any intervention, in any context. First steps include conflict sensitivity, peace responsiveness, and inclusion of marginalised sectors of the population as central elements of any Nexus approach.
Create a common strategic narrative to promote the nexus thinking. Each entity has its own terminology, definitions of concepts, mandate and principles of engagement, all of which can present a barrier to working with others. Understanding each other is key to real collaborative thinking and collective action. Collective outcomes require collective thinking, and taking the time to understand each other’s parameters and capacities for engagement in nexus operationalisation is critical to moving the agenda forward. Coordination and collaboration can be facilitated by having a shared understanding of and narrative towards nexus operationalisation. It is not merging and it is not choosing one value set and terminology over another. It is coherence and communication.
Recognise the value of localisation in bringing about sustainable peace and building resilient communities and nations. Current modalities of humanitarian and development aid can be disempowering, keeping local stakeholders in a role of passive recipient rather than creator and decision-maker of what is to be done. The perception of national stakeholders’ capacity and roles in making change happen needs to shift from transactional implementers to recognising them as decision-makers and drivers of change.
The Humanitarian Reset is a critical step in creating a more inclusive and agile humanitarian ecosystem. But it needs to go further, to embrace the potentials offered by the HDP Nexus operationalisation. While some of these recommendations are being done in some contexts, they need to be internalised into all stakeholder institutions for there to be real impact. Trust-building will be as important as operationalising a new UN strategic narrative, with the inclusion of peace and capacity building in the coming years, and localisation as the key to making change happen.
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There are a number of excellent training programmes to help organisations and individuals understand the concepts underlying the HDP Nexus, but few move participants to the next steps of operationalisation. The Centre for HDP Nexus Solutions (C4NS) was created to address this gap: to provide support services to all levels of actors and stakeholders, promoting localisation as key to the success of any programming, regardless of whether it is labelled as humanitarian, development or peace. Services include assessments at the country and organisational levels, training of staff and stakeholders, support to strategic planning for durable solution and hands-on guidance to help teams translate Nexus ambition into concrete operational decisions. For more information, contact us at: connect@hdpnexus.org.
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