From Peace Agreement to Sustainable Peace: Building with the Nexus

In recent decades, peace mediation has been subject to significant normative and operational evolution. In this vein, peace agreements have frequently struggled to move from signing to implementation. In addition to the increasing trend leaning into the practice of transactional mediation; driven by four main gaps: structural weaknesses in the design of the peace process and linking it to post-conflict processes of reconstruction and recovery, the exclusion of key stakeholders, a lack of complementarity between multi-track mediation processes, and the need for adequate financing necessary for operationalization. 

This has resulted in stagnated peace agreements across various contexts including the DRC, Sahel, Sudan, and South Sudan. A potential pathway to address these challenges is the integration of the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus (HDPN) into peace processes, especially in its design and implementation phase. This enables inclusive stakeholder engagement that translates national agreements to the community level, by moving beyond the cessation of hostilities towards transformative peace that addresses the root causes of conflicts. 

Despite these perceived benefits, various obstacles affect the adoption and implementation of the nexus approach in operationalizing peace agreements, including but not limited to political will, the global, regional and local infrastructure governing local organizations and communities’ engagement in peace processes, and the shrinking funding pool for peace support on the multilateral level. 

Against this backdrop, this panel discussion will explore why peace processes stall, the processes through which peace agreements can be implemented, and how the use of the HDPN approach from the onset can help achieve durable peace.