Remaking the case for linking relief, rehabilitation and development: How LRRD can become a practically useful concept for assistance in difficult places

Policymakers and aid actors have been grappling for decades with questions of how to better support vulnerable people affected by protracted or recurrent crises, and how to create a more seamless fit between short-term life-saving interventions and long-term efforts to reduce chronic poverty or vulnerability. The idea of linking relief and development, andlater ‘linking relief, rehabilitation and development’ (LRRD), seems intuitively simple, but there has been much debate about how it should be defined conceptually, how to put it into practice and the implications this has for the aid architecture. While understanding of LRRD has become increasingly sophisticated, evidenced by the growing amount of literature on the topic,1 the concept has been put into practice only to a very limited extent. With the current shift of attention towards ‘resilience’, there has however been renewed interest in the concept of LRRD. Many see the current focus and political interest that the concept of resilience commands as the best opportunity yet to operationalise the links between relief and development.