Introduction
This Spotlight on South Sudan is part of a larger study on the implementation of the humanitarian– development–peace (HDP) nexus approach, which aims to make humanitarian and development interventions more sustainable in conflict-affected and fragile contexts and to combine them with a peacebuilding component. The Spotlight highlights the specific opportunities and challenges of the HDP nexus in South Sudan and emphasises the need to rethink how localisation in the HDP approach can work from a decolonial perspective.
Our Discussion Paper (Müller-Koné et al., 2024) uses a decolonial perspective to assess how the HDP nexus is implemented, focussing in particular on Mali, Iraq, and South Sudan. A 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 (NGOs) 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. 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?
Our key findings for South Sudan show that, first, the HDP nexus in South Sudan has emerged in a topdown and largely state-centric manner. Although humanitarian actors have not critically scrutinised its introduction as they did in Mali, for example, working with the national government raises questions of accountability. Second, localisation efforts remain limited. Although progress has been made, the shift of funds from international to national NGOs or local civil society organisations remains marginal. Third, while localisation can mean different things, in practice, it often refers to a more equitable distribution of funds between international and local actors. However, a mere transfer of funds does not necessarily overcome power imbalances in the system but runs the risk of simply reproducing them, with Western donors and debates in high-level international fora continuing to determine the direction of the support (H, D, and/or P) and the flow of money. Instead, this Spotlight Paper argues that more ‘local led’ or community-led initiatives are needed for an effective implementation of the HDP nexus (Kuloba-Warria & Tomlinson, 2023, pp. 23-24).
After outlining the methodology that underpins this Paper and our research in Iraq, Mali and South Sudan (cf. Haidara, 2024; Meininghaus 2024) (2), I describe how the HDP nexus emerged as a top-down process in South Sudan and the dilemma of cooperation in a context of armed conflict (3). This is followed by a critical reflection on localisation within the UN-led implementation of the HDP nexus (4) as well as in other programmes initiated by international and national or local organisations (5). The concluding remarks compare the key findings of the South Sudan Spotlight with those of the Iraq and Mali Spotlights.