2022 marks the mid-point of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs were designed to be an ambitious but achievable "blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all".

In February 2019, the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) adopted its Recommendation on the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus and tasked the International Network on Conflict and Fragility (INCAF) with overseeing its operationalisation. This interim report, presented in advance of the monitoring report due in 2024, is a preliminary stocktaking exercise for the purpose of joint learning and as input for future events, including the high-level follow-up Partnership for Peace roundtable in May 2022. It analyses DAC and United Nations (UN) adherents’ efforts to align with the principles of the DAC Recommendation.

The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Recommendation on the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus is a unique, common standard aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of collective action in fragile and conflict-affected settings. In advance of the five-year review due by early 2024, this preliminary stocktaking exercise will facilitate joint learning, and feed the high-level Partnership for Peace roundtable in mid-2022.

The triple nexus approach rallies the broadest-ever coalition for change in fragile and conflict-affected settings. As such, implementing the DAC Recommendation on the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus can help steer the “paradigm shift” or system-wide change called for at the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016. For this to happen, however, adherents must seize and sustain the strategic momentum that has been building around the DAC Recommendation. This chapter first presents evidence of the momentum behind the nexus approach in general and the DAC Recommendation in particular. Next, it presents how adherents are translating the DAC Recommendation into their own institutions’ policies and strategic approaches. It goes on to show that, while the DAC Recommendation is emerging as a widely accepted common standard, there is a continued need to disseminate its principles to a wider audience among DAC and UN Adherents and beyond, ensuring jargon-free and practice-oriented messaging. Finally, since implementing the DAC Recommendation is not an end in itself, the chapter explores the work that lies ahead at strategic level to better define what success looks like.

The DAC Recommendation on the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus provides a common set of principles “to address risks and vulnerabilities, strengthen prevention efforts and reduce need in order to ensure that we reach the furthest behind”. This chapter reviews efforts that adherents have undertaken in alignment with the DAC Recommendation specifically and, more broadly, to implement related policy agendas and commitments since the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit. In the spirit of collective learning, it identifies key outstanding challenges, bottlenecks and opportunities for joint learning. The discussion largely follows the structure of the Recommendation and is organised around its 11 principles across the dimensions of better co-ordination, programming and financing.

This chapter outlines nine areas where adherents to the DAC Recommendation could focus strategic attention in the future based on the review of progress. These include adopting best-fit co-ordination for every context; implementing inclusive financing strategies; promoting nexus literacy and widening the cadre of nexus-specific profiles; empowering leadership for cost-effective co-ordination; enabling and incentivising behaviour through financing; integrating political engagement into the collective approach; improving prioritisation against the collective outcomes; investing in national and local capacities and systems; using the humanitarian-development-peace nexus as an integrator for other policy priorities; and enlarging the roundtable of stakeholders.