Members of the Network for Peacebuilding Evaluation reflect upon lessons learned from the Alliance for Peacebuilding 2014 Annual Conference
This May, the Alliance for Peacebuilding brought over 400 peacebuilders and international development professionals together in Washington D.C. to engage in a lively and thought provoking discussion on new frontiers in peacebuilding.
The Conference touched upon a number of critical issues in peacebuilding ranging from exploring new approaches to complexity to how the technology revolution is changing the practice of peacebuilding. One theme however, that repeatedly emerged throughout the conference was how can the peacebuilding community effectively communicate the importance and effectiveness of its work to both the public, as well as to those in corridors of power?
Bob Berg, Emeritus Member of the Board of the Alliance for Peacebuilding summed it up best when asked the question, “Has the case been made for the added value of our efforts in the peacebuilding community? Do we know how effective we have been?”
The answer to that unfortunately was a resounding no. As Melanie Kawano-Chiu, Director of Evaluation and Learning at Alliance for Peacebuilding and the Peacebuilding Evaluation Consortium (PEC) noted, the biggest challenge we still face is to explain the impact of peacebuilding:
“The link between the evidence we are gathering through evaluations and monitoring, and the stories we tell is a weak one. We need to collectively reflect on what the field can do and what has been done if we want a compelling story about the impact of peacebuilding.”
Members of the Network for Peacebuilding Evaluation suggested various next steps the peacebuilding evaluation community needs to take to get there.
Tom Bamat of Catholic Relief Services suggested that the peacebuilding community needs to work harder on developing the most appropriate methods for getting at sustained results of peacebuilding work, and evaluating integrated peacebuilding initiatives where we combine peacebuilding with humanitarian response or development projects.
Nick Oatley at Partners for Democratic Change commented:
“The field still needs a quantum shift in openness and sharing of evaluative materials; further reflections on evidence and what we know about the impacts of our efforts; a collective effort to identify the gaps in our knowledge and how these could be filled”.
Debbie Trent, Adjunct Faculty at American University also reminded us of the need for the peacebuilding evaluation community to work with a broader group of actors, in particular to closely engage with local stakeholders.
During the panel on peacebuilding evaluation, Peter Woodrow, Executive Director of CDA and Steering Committee member of the Network for Peacebuilding Evaluation also made a point of drawing from the learning of the Conference’s complexity sessions, and how we need to stop looking at peacebuilding as a “finite game”, which often causes us to ignore the key drivers of conflict. He also encouraged the use of an adaptive change model of M&E rather than “working for the indicator”, and the need to think harder and more clearly about the kind of evidence we need to answer the question that Bob posed at the beginning of the conference.
Despite the incredible challenges still faced by the peacebuilding evaluation field, we were also heartened to see the progress that we have made. Nick Oatley noted that it was clear that the peacebuilding evaluation community was maturing every year and the level of collaborative activity around DM&E in our field was on the rise.
We hope these reflections above will encourage you to apply to be a member of the Network for Peacebuilding Evaluation, and to share your evaluation reports, and your learnings via our weekly Thursday Talks, discussion forums and blog posts.
To learn more about how you can partner with DME for Peace, please e-mail us at [email protected].
Recommended Reading
Gaps in Peacebuilding Evaluation Practice
Proof of Concept – Learning from Nine Examples of Peacebuilding Evaluation
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