Description
Spearheaded by the World Bank and supported by various donors and development financiers, the Humanitarian-Development Nexus (HDN) presents a win-win scenario for ensuring refugees’ access to basic services and adequate livelihoods while addressing host countries’ development needs and challenges. Though not necessarily a new concept, HDN has been particularly advanced and celebrated since 2015 in Jordan and Lebanon, two of the highest proportional recipients of refugees worldwide. By supplementing humanitarian efforts with development planning and funding, it is framed as a more sustainable and long-term solution to the Syrian conflict’s fallouts and refugee influx in both countries, particularly given the protracted nature of the crisis. In this paper, I problematize this hype around HDN as a paradigm shift in refugee governance and development thinking. I question the extent to which it actually breaks from previous development frameworks and highlight the power relations and politics underlying this shift in discourse. Drawing on policy documents and statements by relevant development actors, and primary fieldwork in both Jordan and Lebanon, I argue that the shift HDN supposedly introduces is predominantly discursive, with little change to refugees’ conditions or development practice on the ground. Situating HDN narratives and projects in global capitalism, I illustrate how they have utilized the refugee crisis to advance, intensify and legitimize neoliberal frameworks in both countries in the post-2011 political climate, with a specific emphasis on opening their public infrastructures up to private investment and accumulation.
