Addressing the security-development nexus

Abstract

Since the end of the Cold War, the interface between development and security policies has gained increasing prominence in international aid strategies. With state fragility, governance failures and violence hampering socioeconomic development in many of the world’s poorest countries, development actors have become more and more focused on good governance and institution-building. Strengthening the capacities of recipient countries to sustain long-term economic development thus became seen as a critical link between assistance programs and long-term development goals. In the same vein, physical security became a key concern for development actors, and post-conflict peace operations started seeing economic development as a tool to build sustainable peace. As the former head of the International Peace Academy puts it, “since the end of the Cold War, it has become commonplace to assert that peace and development are intimately linked and that the United Nations and other international actors need to address these twin goals through concerted and integrated policies and programs” (Tschirgi 2003: 1). In other words, the 1990s have witnessed the emergence of the security-development nexus as a key paradigm for global assistance strategies.