Guidance on Evaluating Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Activities

Emerging lessons from the analytical work underpinning this guidance

The joint process of developing this guidance has begun to reveal some important lessons for donor agencies and others working in the conflict prevention and peacebuilding field. The following list of emerging lessons will be revised and updated once this working draft has been field tested.

1. Donors should promote the systematic use of evaluation for all conflict prevention and peacebuilding work, and require implementing partners, such as NGOs, to conduct evaluations. Evaluation can support learning and accountability as professionals in this area of development co‐operation strive to improve practice and results. Such learning is key to becoming more effective at building peace.
2. A clear need for a better strategic policy framework for conflict prevention and peacebuilding work has been demonstrated. There is a need to evaluate at the strategic level and to look at the interconnections between strategies, policies, programmes and projects. Policies and operations in this sensitive field need to be more effectively linked – a goal which could be achieved in part by working with practitioners and policy makers to update the existing DAC Guidelines on Helping Prevent Violent Conflict (including the 1998 Guidelines on Conflict, Peace and Development Co‐operation), in which donors recognised that work on these issues is a central part of development, extending beyond humanitarian assistance alone.
3. Evaluations should be facilitated through better programme design, even in the planning stages when, for instance, objectives should be clearly articulated to facilitate future assessment of results. There is a general need for further development in terms of planning, funding, management and implementation of activities that try to prevent conflict or build peace. In this field in general, there is a need to build tailored tools for learning and accountability to contribute to the professionalization of interventions, including the identification of best practices.
4. Coherent and co‐ordinated intervention and policy strategies are needed to make progress towards peace. Donors cannot rely solely on aid and must look at other policy instruments and their impacts on conflict and the chances for peace. Strategic engagement at various levels and across governments is essential.
5. Concepts and definitions of peacebuilding and conflict prevention require clarification. Evaluators should work with staff, policy makers, managers and stakeholders to determine and assess the concepts of peace their activity is operating on.
6. The results of conflict analysis need to be translated into action, used to influence the programming and evaluation processes and linked to other forms of analysis, such as governance assessments, power and drivers of change analysis, as well as early warning indicators. (Note: As field applications are conducted and as learning and practices evolve, this list may be refined.)
7. The use of mixed‐method approaches to evaluations is recommended due the complexity and multi‐faceted nature of interventions in this field.
8. Joint evaluations allow for more harmonised approaches that demonstrate how efforts of different donors add up. Involving country partners is also important for understanding how change occurs and is a key element of supporting the Paris Declaration.