Richard Sandison will bring a practical perspective on implementing various nexus approaches in specific refugee settings, based on his experiences in Malawi and Tanzania. Sandison will discuss the challenges in implementing a nexus approach in Malawi, look at the linkages between informal and formal CP systems and first-hand experience in implementing the CRRF in Uganda and how it is aligned (or not aligned) with the nexus.

Bram Jansen will bring an academic perspective, based on his anthropological fieldwork in South Sudan and Kenya. Jansen would like to explore the idea of refugee camps as ‘drivers for development’. Jansen will share examples of development interventions in camp contexts, but also of more organic processes of change that have emerged in protracted refugee contexts. A specific topic of interest of Jansen is the expansion of humanitarian governance into wider refugee hosting regions and the opportunities and challenges this brings on a practical as well as a more theoretical level.

Together with practitioners, policy makers, and academics we would like to discuss several cases to explore how the nexus idea materializes and what challenges and concerns emerge from this.