Political Participation

This report examines the extent to which RCTs have been used successfully to measure empowerment and accountability processes and programmes. Field experiments present immense opportunities, but the report cautions that they are more suited to measuring short-term results with short causal chains and less suitable for complex interventions....

Dear Colleagues/Experts,       The International Peace and Development Training Center (IPDTC) is inviting expert professionals, policy makers and practitioners for its upcoming Autumn Programs. The programmes are designed for UN agencies, governments and national and international organisations....

This report is an assessment by the Americas Program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) of the Plan de Consolidacion Integral de la Macarena (PCIM), a project that the government of Colombia is implementing in six municipalities.  First organized in August 2007, the PCIM is now a year and a half old, although it was not fully implemented until late that year....

Development and Training Services, Inc. (dTS) was contracted to conduct a mid-term evaluation of the Kenya Civil Society Strengthening Program (KCSSP). This grant-making and capacity-building program was designed to address the fragmentation, fractionalization and low constituent credibility constraining Kenya civil society from effectively playing its role in promoting political reforms and keeping government accountable to the citizens of Kenya....

In April 2006, violent clashes relating to artisinal mining resulted in four deaths. In response to this incident and the general increase in tensions and conflicts over resource access and trade, the former Vice-Governor of Katanga, His Excellency Chikex Diemu, requested assistance....

In 1995, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and The Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA) began working in partnership to manage the “Promoting Women in Development” (PROWID) grants program, funded by the Office of Women in Development at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)....

The 'Radio for Peacebuilding' project has three major components – development and adaptation of guidebooks on radio talk show production aimed at Peacebuilding into Urdu and Pashto, training and coaching provided to FM station producers and presenters to host radio talk shows on Peacebuilding and finally production of talk shows using the common ground approach....

The Pathways to Peace program (P2P) sought to structurally transform the way that youth participate in the civic and political arena so that they can make a substantial and positive contribution to the overall peace and democratic processes in Nepal....

The project ―Kosovo Youth for Democracy and Peace building‖ started in January 2010, when CCG in partnership with YMCA has been granted funding by the European Comission, to target Kosovo youth from 15 to 22 years of age, coming from different ethnic communities and various municipalities throughtout the country and create awareness of the basic principles of democracy and human rights, as embedded in international treaties as well as Kosovo‘s constitution....

In October 2008, Search for Common Ground (SFCG) signed a nine month project with USAID to help ensure that Guinea’s upcoming legislative elections are held in a credible, participatory and transparent manner accepted by all. This grant received two extensions due to the evolving political context and the delays in the election calendar and will end in April 2011....

As part of the multi-country Governance and Transparency Fund (GTF) program funded by UKAID, Search for Common Ground (SFCG) in Burundi implemented a three month project from June until September 2011 in support of its overall programmatic goal: to promote inclusive, effective and responsible participation in a process of social transformation toward a fair and equal society in Burundi. The goal was supported by the following key objective: Promote constructive exchange and dialogue between and among Burundian youth from different political parties and political leaders about governance issues, particularly political manipulation of youth and its resulting violence, with a view to encouraging peaceful cohabitation. ...

  The struggle against poverty is political and economic, but it is also a cultural struggle. Poverty is centrally related to voice, participation in public discourse, and access to the public sphere. This perspective requires a new approach from policymakers who need to understand poverty as a matter not only of economic factors, but also of voice and agency....

The program "Support for Kosovo‘s Young Leaders" (SKYL) is supported by USAID and implemented by Mercy Corps and three local NGO partners: Centar za Razvoj Zajednica (CRZ), Kosovo Center for International Cooperation (KCIC) and) Mundësia. The overall goal of this three-year program is to help young people from Kosovo‘s diverse communities become active participants in building a viable shared future for themselves and their commun ...

Currently Nepal is going through an extremely volatile and long peace process. A Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) was signed in 2006 but, as Stedman (1997) argues, the signing of an agreement, while in the best case scenarios prevents a return to the macro war, does not eliminate all overt violence, for example so-called ‘spoiler’ or dissident violence....

Search for Common Ground conducted a survey to assess the baseline for an upcoming initiative in Nepal, ‘The Peacebuilding Initiative (TPI)’. The TPI program, which promotes consensus building among a variety of stakeholders, is comprised of two main components, dialogue with key stakeholders, youth and woman as well as a media program....

The Children’s Voices, a UNICEF co-funded project, was established at the first national-level DDR working group, the Children Associated with Armed Forces and Armed Groups (CAAFAG) Working Group. The project aimed to provide a platform for children and youth’s voices in the transition to peace so as to prevent the further manipulation of youth to violence....

Search for Common Ground (SFCG), has been working in Nepal since February 2006, with support from the European Commission, UNICEF, the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the World Bank. Using media and community-based activities, SFCG aims to foster the participation of key sectors of the population in Nepal in the peacebuilding process, with a particular focus on youth. In this context, SFCG conducted two-year programmatic evaluation to assess the outcomes, successes and shortcomings of their youth in peace building and community decision making project activities. ...

Search for Common Ground (SFCG) in Guinea recently completed an 18-month project entitled Youth and Non-Violence in Guinea, whose overall goal was to promote the use of non-violent methods for resolving conflicts among youth in the cities of Kindia, Mamou and Kankan....

CRS began the Globally-Accepted Indicators (GAIN) Initiative in June 2008 to strengthen indicator practice across sectors. Globally-Accepted Indicators are those that CrS and the global development community generally consider to be appropriate and effective for project monitoring and evaluation....

This book is based on the proceedings of a workshop on Methods and experiences of Evaluating Democracy Support, organized by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), and held in April 2006. The main aim of the workshop was to explore ways in which existing methods and techniques of evaluating democracy support deal with the most important problems, such as the challenges of causality and attribution....