Envisioning Success: Building Blocks for Strategic and Comprehensive Peacebuilding Impact Evaluation

Abstract

Linking peacebuilding and development is an emerging area of specialisation. Changes in the political, social, and economic contexts, the intangible dimensions of attitudinal and relational change, and the need to take a long-term perspective in order to capture the effects of programming all pose substantial challenges to peacebuilding programming for development agencies. This article provides a series of guiding questions for evaluation which can also be used in the planning and monitoring stages of a peacebuilding or conflictsensitive development programming. 1 Drawing upon the work of scholars and practitioners working in the fields of development and peacebuilding, the article presents a process to generate strategic building blocks for a comprehensive approach to evaluating peacebuilding programming. The Challenges of Evaluating Peacebuilding In recent years the international community has devoted significant attention and resources to 'peacebuilding' in post-settlement societies. United Nations agencies, the World Bank, national and international non-governmental organisations, and donor agencies now use the language of peacebuilding to describe their work. Peacebuilding covers a wide and amorphous set of activities at different stages of conflict, leading some to wonder what it actually is. To complicate matters, the literature on peacebuilding offers differing interpretations of the concept. The variation usually centres on the stage at which peacebuilding occurs and the range of actions it comprises. A sampling of three definitions by Evans (1993:9), Lederach (1997:20) and Boutros-Ghali (1992:11) illustrates these distinctions. Evans' and Lederach's definitions include efforts before and after an outbreak of conflict, whereas Boutros-Ghali's definition focuses on actions following the outbreak of violent conflict, emphasising the post-accord nature of peacebuilding. One definition refers to peacebuilding as strategy (Evans), another as action (Boutros-Ghali), and the third as processes, approaches, and stages (Lederach); the latter being the most comprehensive in scope. We define peacebuilding broadly in this article to refer to actions taken to prevent violent conflict from erupting and efforts taken to end violent conflict and subsequently to transform relationships, interactions, and structures after the violence subsides. 2 Peacebuilding activities can be undertaken on many 'tracks' (Diamond & McDonald 1996) and in many sectors, whether by development agencies, community-based organisations, the media, business or political leaders. The goal is to create, support, or enhance healthy and sustainable interactions, relationships, and structures that are tolerant, respectful,

Towards Better Policy and Programme Work in Conflict Zones: Introducing the ‘Aid for Peace’ Approach

“…To identify prevailing peacebuilding deficiencies, one has to define the kind of peace one wants to achieve, specify the conditions that enhance the peacebuilding process, and compare current reality with this envisaged peace situation. Without a transparent definition and vision of the peace one wants to build, it is difficult to conduct an effective analysis of the peacebuilding deficiencies and needs in order to be able to define strategies for interventions (Boulding 2000;Dugan 2000, Fast andNeufeldt 2005). In most cases, both intervening and local actors in the conflict countries assume that everybody knows what peace they all want, and the definition and vision are often only implicit.…”

“…A set of standard indicators already exists in the field of development cooperation. Peace research is just beginning to reflect about providing a set of general indicators (Church & Shouldice 2002Anderson & Olson 2003;Smith 2003, Fast andNeufeldt 2005).…”

Peacebuilding: A Task for Development Cooperation

“…A number of proposals and frameworks meanwhile exist how to do peacebuilding evaluations (Fast/Neufeld 2005;Paffenholz 2005bPaffenholz , 2005cPaffenholz/Reychler 2005).This discourse has not entered academic peace research but is mainly led by the interested research/practitioner community.…”

“…Without a clear and transparent definition of and vision for the peace one wants to build, it is very difficult to do a serious analysis of the peacebuilding deficiencies and thus define strategies and activities for interventions. In most cases, both intervening actors as well as local actors in the conflict countries assume that everybody knows what peace is all about and therefore the definition of and the vision for peace are often left implicit (Boulding 2001;Fast/Neufeld 2005). For development sector analysis we can first identify the deficiencies in the peacebuilding process (e.g.…”

“…Result chains and indicators facilitate the monitoring and evaluation of the effects of the intervention (Kusek/Rist 2004). Peace research is just at the beginning in providing a set of general indicators (Smith 2003;Fast/Neufeld 2005).…”