Our project examines the three main legal aspects of the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, broadly pertaining to actors, legal regimes, and accountability.
Work Package 1: Actors
Complex situations of conflict and fragility attract a broad spectrum of actors, which have different ‘constitutional’ frameworks, i.e. mandates, principles, and legal relations and sources. These differences play a significant role in the creation of the humanitarian-development divide. WP1 will chart the institutions operating in the humanitarian and development sectors and unpack their ‘constitutional’ frameworks, with a view to determining the legal and institutional drivers of the humanitarian-development divide and whether/how they can be mitigated.
Work Package 2: Legal regimes
Protracted armed conflicts implicate a number of legal frameworks, including international humanitarian law, international development law, international economic and investment law, international refugee/IDP law, international human rights law, international environmental law, international criminal law, and the law applicable to peacebuilding. Navigating such complexity requires an interpretative evolution of the law, centring around the common objectives of humanitarian and development assistance. WP2 focuses on legal regime interactions within the pluriverse of legal frameworks applicable to protracted armed conflicts to understand whether and how the fragmentation of the applicable international law hinders and/or facilitates the cooperation between the humanitarian and development sectors.
Work Package 3: Accountability
The existing accountability regimes are sector-specific and fail to provide adequate guarantees of accountability to affected communities in ever increasing international aid interventions. WP investigates whether the accountability regimes within the humanitarian and development sectors remain credible and adequate in contemporary contexts of protracted armed conflicts. It further provides a unique perspective by its analysis of the necessity and viability of joint accountability standards and mechanisms for integrated humanitarian-development assistance.