The Peer-2-Peer organized a closed-door dialogue on “Reducing Humanitarian Needs in Fragile Contexts: Development and Humanitarian Collaboration” on 24 April 2021. The session was facilitated by Ms. Valerie Guernieri, Assistant Executive Director, World Food Program (WFP) and co-Chair of the IASC’s Operational Policy and Advocacy Group (OPAG) with the participation of Mr. Xavier Devictor, Practice Manager in the Fragility, Conflict and Violence Group, World Bank. The purpose of the dialogue was to learn about the challenges faced by HCs, in translating commitments to action on the ground, in their operations. 10 Humanitarian Coordinators attended the discussion along with resource persons from OCHA and DCO.
The following key points were highlighted:
- Committed national leadership, supported by multi-year development funding; a strong knowledge/data base to determine priorities; and adequate implementation capacity, is critical to development action
- Importance of dedicated coordination and analytical capacity to facilitate and support humanitarian-development collaboration
- Localized/community-based development investments more effective in highly complex and protracted humanitarian environments where there are risks to principled humanitarian action
- Importance of communicating on the need for resources for both humanitarian and development: one does not and cannot replace the other.
- The prevention angle (averting a humanitarian situation from becoming a protracted one) offers particular opportunities for humanitarian – development collaboration.
- Importance of collecting evidence on the impact of efforts important to course-correct actions (ex. evidence of impact at the local level vs. at the national level will inform efforts)
