Mine Action and Triple Nexus Implementation: A study case of the Colombian Final Peace Agreement

Sammanfattning: The policy debate and definition of the Triple Nexus have been largely led by the United Nations, multilateral organizations, and donors. Since the Triple Nexus concept’s proposal, the international community has struggled with operationalizing this approach. In that sense, bottom-up and grounded approaches to the nexus are needed to complement the discussion and investigate the nexus's feasibility and implications for a specific context. This thesis seeks to obtain a better understanding of the relationship between the three elements of the Triple Nexus (humanitarian-development-peace) and contribute to filling the knowledge gap of bottom-up experiences that merge humanitarian and peace actions by documenting the Colombian experience within the mine action sector. To this end, the research has a qualitative strategy and a study case research design that facilitates contextual analysis and the inclusion of mine action practitioners' perceptions.   Hence, this research delves into the socio-political context of the peace negotiation process and the Final Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the non-state actor FARC-EP, arguing that the 2016 Final Peace Agreement created a favorable momentum for implementing the nexus approach and provided the basis for the expansion of mine action activities.  Through the case study, the research ponders the perceptions and premises expressed by key informants along with academic reflections on the Triple Nexus, concluding that the overall balance of the initial traces of nexus implementation in the mine action sector is rather positive. The benefit of the nexus for the Colombian context was pointed out along with the possibilities for sectoral growth under this approach. Contrary to what was identified as a major risk and concern in the literature review, the risk of compromising humanitarian principles of neutrality, independence, humanity, and impartiality did not appear as a major concern in conversations with practitioners. The interviewees listed security concerns, coordination difficulties with government entities, financing restrictions, and operational challenges. This suggests that the problems for Triple Nexus implementation discussed in the literature are of a different nature than the problems found in the case study.