Analysis of past research reveals that until the 1980s, relief and development were perceived as strictly distinct scopes of aid provision carried out in sequence and separate from each other. Over the past decade, the intensity, cost, and duration of humanitarian assistance provision have grown dramatically, mainly resulting from the protracted nature of recent crises (OCHA, 2017). Within this period, the duration of United Nations inter-agency humanitarian programs increased to an average of seven years, while average budget size increased by about four hundred percent, thus prompting the need for the long-overdue discussion around better connectivity between humanitarian and development efforts within the UN system (OCHA, 2017).
Albeit the idea of ‘linking relief, rehabilitation and development’ has been around in the development sector since the 1980s, for decades there did not seem to be a shared understanding of what the concept means or its practical relevance. However, from reviewing several pieces of literature on this concept, it can be deduced that the generally associated idea is structuring humanitarian and development interventions in a way that gradually reduces reliance on humanitarian aid and promotes developmental ideals pre, during and post emergencies. The potential of this concept is captured in a quote by Buchanan-Smith and Maxwell (1994), where they wrote “The basic idea is simple and sensible, emergencies are costly in terms of human life and resources. They are disruptive to development. They demand a long period of rehabilitation. And they have spawned bureaucratic structures, lines of communication and organizational cultures which duplicate development institutions and sometimes cut across them. By the same token, development policy and administration are often insensitive to the risk of drought and to the importance of protecting vulnerable households against risk. If relief and development can be ‘linked’, so the theory goes, these deficiencies can be overcome. Better ‘development’ can reduce the need for emergency relief; better ‘relief’ can contribute to development; and better ‘rehabilitation’ can ease any remaining transition between the two” (Buchanan‐Smith & Maxwell, 1994).
With the developing world increasingly exposed to extreme climatic shocks and stresses, an increasing number of international development agencies have now embraced resilience building as a critical long-term objective for their projects and Rome Based Agencies are not left out. Rome is fundamental to the United Nations’ development programmes, humanitarian aid, resilience assistance, service provision, knowledge management, and financing in the areas of agriculture, food security and transformative rural development. The shared focus of Rome-based Agencies (RBAs), including IFAD, FAO, and WFP is to strengthen the resilience of rural poor, vulnerable and food-insecure people’s livelihoods and production systems.
This ties in with the overall achievement of sustainable development goals 2 (Zero Hunger) and 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) which both aim to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture” and “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”, respectively. Each of the RBAs has a well-defined mandate and modus operandi through which it has established its strengths, however, it is precisely these differences in mandates and operational modalities that, when combined, offer better opportunities for improving the resilience of food-insecure individuals, households, communities and population groups, including acting upon the systems and institutions on which food security depends.
In 2015, the RBAs developed a joint conceptual framework, “Strengthening Resilience for Food Security and Nutrition”, to increase and improve their work together and with partners on strengthening the resilience of the most food-insecure people. The global conceptual framework of Rome-based Agencies for increasing resilience aims to strengthen the absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities of populations and organisations.