Aid discourse and challenges of the “Humanitarian

Since the Paris Declaration (2005) on the effectiveness of development aid, the injunction of aid’s optimization has seemed to be recurring in donors’ discourses. This should be seen in an international context of multiple and protracted crisis, as well as budgetary tensions around required resources’ mobilization. Such a situation has led to redesign strategies, with regard to their formulation and operationalization. Changes in aid vocabulary during the last decade through emerging terms such as “resilience”, “inclusivity”, “nexus” between humanitarian/development/peace and security, have expressed tendencies in relation with construction and communication of strategies within aid industry. Moreover, the iterative nature of some words contributes to the production of a normative effect in the scope of international aid. Promotion of integrated or global approach as a response to the crisis has conducted to associate in its operationalization different categories of actors, with divergent objectives and interests, diversified modus operandi, and distinct time frames. The Sahel region is considered as a priority for donors’ allocation of aid, in particular, the European Union and France; moreover, this area has become a geopolitical entity for foreign donors, since the food and nutrition crisis in the 1970s and the fight against terrorism after 9/11. Thus, the Sahel region has been seen as a wide territory of insecurity and threats at the gates of Europe.

This working paper aims at analyzing the process linked with the emergency, diffusion, and ownership of “Humanitarian / Development / Peace and Security” tryptic, regarding the Sahelian context, and with concrete illustrations about its operationalization in Chad.