Introduction
This Spotlight on Mali is part of a larger study on the implementation of the humanitarian–development– peace (HDP) nexus approach. It sheds light on the specific context of Mali and why the HDP approach has been highly contested in this context. The HDP approach aims to make humanitarian and development interventions more sustainable in conflict-affected and fragile contexts and to combine them with a peacebuilding component. Focussing on a decolonial perspective, the Spotlight highlights the specific context of how the HDP nexus was designed and implemented in Mali.
The larger study (Müller-Koné et al., 2024) uses a decolonial perspective to assess how the HDP nexus is implemented, with a particular focus on Mali, Iraq, and South Sudan. This decolonial perspective draws attention to power imbalances and structural racism that can be traced back to the colonial era and that continue to permeate the international humanitarian system, most visible in the dominance of international (non-)governmental organisations that shape the aid structure (Aloudat & Khan, 2022; Schirch, 2022).
This dominance is particularly relevant for the HDP nexus: The HDP nexus debate emerged around the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit as part of the “New Way of Working”, which aimed to better integrate ‘local’ governmental and non-governmental aid actors into the humanitarian system. Through joint analysis and direct access to funding for these local actors, international aid organisations are to work towards ‘collective outcomes’ and ‘localisation’ in a bottom-up approach. In contrast to this, we argue in our main study that the way the HDP nexus is currently implemented fails to address the power asymmetries and structural inequalities in the international aid system that lie behind abstract concepts such as localisation and collective outcomes (Müller-Koné et al. 2024).
Beyond a bottom-up approach, we call for a decolonial rethinking that analyses and acknowledges how colonial legacies affect funding flows, the distribution of staff and decision-making power, as well as norms and attitudes within the aid sector. A decolonial approach prioritises the needs and visions of local populations as a “more holistic approach to supporting genuinely locally owned civil society efforts” (Mathews, 2022), more equitable “local led” or “community led” partnerships (Doan & Fifield, 2020; Kuloba-Warria & Tomlinson, 2023, pp. 23–24) while recognising that ‘the local’ is a space of diverse and competing actors (Schirch, 2022, p. 17).
The question guiding the overall study is: How can the HDP nexus be implemented from the bottom up from a decolonial perspective?
Mali is experiencing a multidimensional crisis, with an escalation of armed conflict since 2012. When we look at the crises in Mali, we see an overlap of challenges related to: (1) the resurgence of conflict; (2) humanitarian crises, which become increasingly critical as a result of conflict; and (3) governance problems, which are often one of the main bases of the overall problem and are exploited by certain armed groups. The need to integrate the 'peace' component into the double nexus is based on the idea that all actions should be conflict sensitive and that the involvement of all stakeholders is necessary to build peaceful societies (Ferris, 2020). In a country such as Mali, which is a crisis area, the HDP nexus seems highly relevant because of its vocation to forge political and operational alignment between peacebuilding efforts, development, and humanitarian action.
Humanitarian actors strongly resisted the adoption of the HDP approach in Mali despite its relevance in a context of ongoing armed conflict. The first actors that started implementing the HDP nexus were military missions, such as Barkhane for France, through its so-called 3D strategy (defence, diplomacy and development)1 and MINUSMA for the United Nations, through their Quick Impacts projects.2 Humanitarian organisations, therefore, feared that adopting an HDP approach would lead to confusion between humanitarian action and peacekeeping. This also took place in a climate of high tension between these military structures and certain parts of the population who resented their presence, often going so far as to describe it as a neo-colonial approach. This has led to repeated demonstrations against the international military presence in Mali, organised by civil society organisations such as the "Yèrèwolo debout sur les remparts" movement. The confusion of roles feared by humanitarian actors, therefore, seemed well founded. This spotlight is structured as follows: After outlining the methodology that underpins this Paper and our research in Iraq and South Sudan (cf. Meininghaus, 2024; Kemmerling 2024), I explain the emergence of the HDP approach in Mali, the socio-political context and the main framework documents on the HDP nexus for implementing the HDP nexus in Mali. I then assess the implementation by UN and non-UN agencies in the Malian context and conclude with a comparative look at HDP implementation in Mali, Iraq and South Sudan.