Donors at the triple nexus: Lessons from Sweden

The need to connect humanitarian, development and peace approaches has long been understood. Without these connections, the incidences and impacts of crises cannot be sustainably reduced and many people in high-risk contexts will be ‘left behind’ in extreme poverty and vulnerability. Building connections has gained renewed recognition and momentum as a policy and practice agenda in recent years and become formalised as a priority for donors in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee (OECD DAC) recommendation on the humanitariandevelopment-peace ‘triple nexus’ in early 2019.

Sweden is among the donors which have been actively engaged both in global discussions on developing the triple nexus and in internal initiatives to put it into practice. Like other donors, implementation remains a work in progress – it is too soon after the OECD DAC recommendation to measure progress against it, but there is a clear level of commitment and momentum shown in the change. Sweden takes both a principled and pragmatic approach to implementation, preserving impartial humanitarian assistance while building connections to it. At a programme level, it is implementing a range of context-specific approaches; at the headquarters level, it is currently looking at ways to support systematic ways of working. From experience to date, five areas of learning emerge: