The Security and Development Nexus
About the Program
IPA’s Security-Development Nexus Program aims to contribute to a better understanding of the linkages between the various dimensions of violent conflicts in the contemporary era and the need for multi-dimensional strategies in conflict management. In the 1990s, the UN’s Agenda for Peace and Agenda for Development highlighted the necessity of linking security and development in order to achieve sustainable peace. More recently, the Report of the UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, released in December 2004, recognized that a better understanding of the intersection between development and security is now critical for responding effectively to potential threats to collective peace and security.
The Security-Development Nexus Program seeks to place its research and activities squarely within the ongoing debates in and around the United Nations on these most pressing issues and explores ways to translate evolving policy into effective strategies, programs and instruments.
The programs’ objectives are to:
- Improve understanding of the conceptual bases for linking security and development strategies in conflict management
- Extract policy relevant lessons from country-based studies on how coherent and mutually supportive security and development policies can be designed and implemented
- Evaluate the effectiveness of policy and programming responses in two key areas – rule of law and security sector reform – to generate practical recommendations on improving policies and practice in these sectors
- Generate intellectual exchange, policy analysis and policy development by convening academics, experts, policy makers and practitioners from the UN and the broader international community to examine and assess research findings throughout the course of the program
- Research proceeds along both thematic and geographic tracks, seeking to integrate cross-sectoral and cross-country insights and experiences. The program seeks to identify important innovations as well as existing gaps and to propose concrete strategies for more effective coordination of the work of agencies working in conflict-prone, conflict-torn and post-conflict areas.
To contribute to improved policy and practice, the program generates:
- Workshops, conferences, expert meetings, and policy fora, bringing together academic experts, policy-makers and practitioners
- Five edited volumes pulling together key findings, best practices and policy recommendations
- A series of state-of-the-art reviews, working papers, policy reports, evaluations and strategy papers
The program also collaborates with a broad range of partners both from within the UN system as well as other institutions working in this area, especially in those countries affected by conflict.
Acknowledgements
The IPA Security-Development Nexus Program gratefully acknowledges support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Governments of Australia, Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway, and the United Kingdom (DfID). This IPA program also benefits from core support to IPA from the Governments of Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland as well as the Ford Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.