The missing piece in the humanitarian reset: Humanitarian diplomacy with armed groups
Martin Ejlskov Hansen, Albert Souza Mülli, and Ashley Jackson
May 2026
Humanitarians provide aid to IDPs from Idlib fleeing bombing, 11 March 2019 (Credit: Mohamed Bash/ Shutterstock)
When the UN launched the Humanitarian Reset in 2025, it was billed as the most significant reform effort in the aid system in a decade. Among other things, it called for stronger coherence between humanitarian action, development and peace; more outcomes‑focused responses; and “enhanced humanitarian diplomacy”. For donors under pressure to do more with less, it offered a compelling narrative: reform the system, connect the silos, and get better value for every humanitarian dollar.
In the months since, there have been many critiques of the Reset, including that it is long on ambitious promises and short on practical specifics. How, exactly, are humanitarians expected to do more with less as crises multiply? Humanitarian diplomacy has been highlighted as one key answer. But here too, the Reset and its proponents have been short on specifics.
What do we mean by humanitarian diplomacy?
There are varying definitions and interpretations of humanitarian diplomacy. The Centre on Armed Groups defines it broadly as the use of negotiation, dialogue and political engagement, at both frontline and high‑level, to secure and sustain access for humanitarian operations and to protect civilians. It is distinct from political diplomacy, though it can be undertaken by political actors. The objective of humanitarian diplomacy is not to end conflict, but to change the conditions under which people in need can reach aid and aid can reach them.
The challenge is that humanitarian diplomacy has rarely been defined clearly, resourced properly or linked to political tracks. It has been treated as a secondary function (typically ad hoc and bilateral, often dependent on the skills and networks of a few individuals) rather than as a strategic capability that donors can support and govern.
The 2025 funding shock, combined with the collapse of access norms in places like Gaza and the wider Middle East, Sudan and the Sahel, has made the cost of that neglect painfully visible. At the same time, more donors are referencing “humanitarian diplomacy” in strategies and speeches. Yet few spell out what they expect it to achieve, how they intend to fund it (especially as humanitarian budgets decline overall), or how it should relate to their peace and political portfolios.
How can humanitarian diplomacy with armed groups contribute to peace?
Centre Fellow Martin Hansen’s new research on southern Thailand and the Central African Republic takes this debate to the frontline level and provides much-needed empirical evidence on what works. It examines what frontline humanitarian diplomacy with armed groups actually looks like in practice, and what impact it has on broader conflict dynamics.
Across both cases, there were three key lessons:
1. Sustained, principled engagement with armed groups can create operational trust.
In Thailand, long‑term engagement with the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) around civilian protection norms contributed to a shift in tactics away from indiscriminate violence and towards greater restraint. In the Central African Republic, repeated local mediation with community‑based armed groups allowed humanitarian actors to negotiate safer access to enclaves and contested areas.
2. Trust‑building, combined with clear humanitarian red lines, can reduce violence and improve protection.
In both cases, engagement helped lower the risk of attacks on civilians and aid operations, and increased both real and perceived security for communities. There were many factors at play in each situation and the road to peace is rarely linear, but the evidence is clear that humanitarian diplomacy was an important lever in shaping behaviour and restraint.
3. Under the right conditions, this can open and support broader political dialogue.
In southern Thailand, behavioural change by the insurgents made it politically easier for parts of the state to justify dialogue. In the Central African Republic, local agreements sometimes provided the first building blocks for wider conversations about coexistence and return.
Both cases show that frontline humanitarian diplomacy can generate peace‑relevant outcomes without compromising humanitarian principles, provided explicit safeguards are in place.
What are the practical implications?
Declining funding for both humanitarian operations and peacebuilding makes the stakes clear. At the same time, investment in peacebuilding and prevention has been slashed, with major donors reducing their peace and security spending. If donors retreat into short‑term humanitarian aid while backing away from development and peace support in the most fragile settings, the most likely outcome is that demand for humanitarian funding will grow as crises deepen.
For humanitarian diplomacy, the implications are stark:
The functions most dependent on sustained, relational work (access negotiation, principled engagement with armed groups, conflict analysis). These are often the first to be cut. They do not show up neatly on delivery metrics, and they often require multi‑year investment to show full impact.
The sharp funding reductions to humanitarian and peace structurally incentivises short‑termism and squeezes out the bandwidth needed to work across silos or try new approaches. In the midst of geopolitical turmoil and unpredictable shockwaves, this is precisely when the operating environment demands the opposite.
As traditional peacebuilding budgets shrink, there is a real risk that humanitarian actors will be pulled into political or transactional roles, consciously or unconsciously, as diplomats look for new entry points. Without clear mandates and safeguards, this can erode neutrality and access.
If donors want the Humanitarian Reset to succeed, there needs to be a real effort to translate the sloganism around humanitarian diplomacy into evidence-based policy and programmes. It must be recognised and resourced as a core part of humanitarian work, and protected from wider politics.
What are the risks?
Much of the hesitation around linking humanitarian work with peace and political diplomacy comes from legitimate concerns: that it will blur the lines between aid and politics, and compromise the neutrality and independence upon which humanitarian access depends. The firewall between humanitarian and political action exists for good reasons.
The point is not that humanitarians should become peace negotiators, or that peacebuilders should start running food distributions. Humanitarians and peacebuilders have different mandates and comparative advantages. But donors need to be more strategic and politically savvy about leveraging those. The central point is that:
Humanitarian practitioners are already engaging armed groups in ways that shape conflict dynamics;
those engagements are rarely analysed, documented or supported as such; and
there are principled ways to improve information flow and complementarity between humanitarian and peace actors without turning one into the other.
For humanitarian donors, this means:
Building in explicit theories of change for how frontline humanitarian engagement can contribute to specific peace objectives (such as violence reduction and confidence building);
encouraging more open communication and exchange between humanitarians and peacebuilders; and
providing institutional backing for staff when they draw the line against instrumentalisation.
What should donors do differently?
For donors who want the Reset to be more than an institutional re‑branding, humanitarian diplomacy with armed groups is a reasonable starting point. Three shifts would make it more practical and concrete:
1. Name and fund humanitarian diplomacy as a function.
Recognise negotiation and relationship‑building with armed groups as core programme components, not overheads. Support conflict analysis and staff time devoted to this work, and expect partners to articulate how their access strategies may affect violence and restraint.
2. Build feedback loops between frontline negotiations and high‑level diplomacy.
Ensure that country‑level political strategies are informed by what humanitarian actors are learning in their daily engagement with armed groups. At the same time, donors must ensure this analysis is not used in ways that compromise humanitarian actors’ neutrality or safety.
3. Design portfolios where access, diplomacy and peace are connected problems with connected solutions.
Support complementary roles. Humanitarians focus on behaviour change and protection. Peacebuilders focus on political settlement and institutional reform. Both sides share their plans, analysis and lessons, with explicit safeguards to prevent negative impacts.
While humanitarians have long intuitively known that humanitarian engagement with armed groups contributes to wider positive outcomes, there are many unanswered questions and empirical gaps. The Centre on Armed Groups is exploring these through its work on humanitarian diplomacy, including how to incentivise restraint by armed groups, and how frontline diplomacy can be better linked to national and international efforts to prevent and resolve conflict.