Towards Resilience: Advancing Collective Impact in Protracted Crises

Global crises are increasing in number, duration, and complexity. In places like Somalia and Northeast Nigeria, the recent COVID-19 outbreak promises to further decimate local economies, erode public trust, and upend social networks. Yet it is only the latest threat highlighting the limitations of international aid to achieve better outcomes for populations facing protracted humanitarian need. Advances in multi-year, flexible funding, and efforts to achieve collective impact by blending humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding assistance – the so-called “triple nexus” – are falling short because they do not address the fundamental incoherence of aid.

Our paper, Towards Resilience: Advancing Collective Impact in Protracted Crises, calls for humanitarian, peacebuilding and development action to align behind a resilience agenda to protect current and future well-being in conflict settings. This includes strengthening the capacity of institutions and communities to mitigate the drivers and effects of violence, alongside other risk factors such as climate events, economic disruptions, or disease outbreaks that exacerbate fragility.

Specifically, we call for collective action in the following three areas to drive resilience:

1. Rapid, real-time analysis of risk factors that drive and perpetuate fragility.
2. Support to local market and social systems to strengthen sources of resilience to the shocks and stresses defining protracted crises.
3. Short-term violence prevention paired with efforts to transform the structural drivers of conflict.