I collected data from five conflict prevention initiatives working in Sudan. I was lucky to have participants from different categories of conflict prevention initiative – an intergovernmental organisation, two international NGOs, a local NGO, and a multinational. This allowed me to compare results from organisations with different levels of local representation.

I came up with several key learning points, with both practical and theoretical implications.

Discussing peace programmes in Sudan. Photo credit: NonviolentPeaceForce.org

So, can conflict prevention initiatives prove their worth?

To do this successfully, initiatives must deal with the ‘attribution gap’- the difficulty of pinpointing the reason for success or failure of peace programmes. They do this by breaking down impact measurement into manageable chunks, in recognition of the grey areas of success and failure in the peacebuilding field (for example, whether communities were better informed about how reconciliation would impact their livelihoods).

In addition, I found the following key learning points.

Key learning points

1) Evaluation as evidence for influencing

Evaluation is one way of building evidence to influence donors and international organisations. Evaluation documentation was on the whole intended for viewing by donors, often in the donors’ prescribed formatting.

2) Wider roles of peacebuilding evaluation

As well as donors, participants listed numerous stakeholders, most significantly the intended beneficiaries and internal management. The role of evaluation vis-à-vis these stakeholders went beyond simply proving worth. Participants stressed the learning function of evaluation, ultimately aimed at improving the prospects for initiatives to contribute to peace.

3)  Importance of local representation

The research supports Peace Direct’s emphasis on locally led conflict resolution. The level of local representation was found to be an important factor in initiatives’ ability to work and demonstrate their value. Perhaps the most remarkable result was the fact that the local NGO research participant could continue its work in the face of violent conflict, unlike the intergovernmental organisation.

4) Accountability tension

Initiatives are accountable to a number of stakeholders. Consequently, there are potential or actual tensions between initiatives’ accountabilities (e.g. to donor vs to beneficiaries). The results indicated that the ‘accountability tension’ concept is intrinsic to peacebuilding evaluation, but that it can be negotiated successfully.

5) Theoretical implications

1. The results supported common criticisms (such as Duffield’s) of liberal peacebuilding in two ways. Firstly, peacebuilding evaluation was found to support a system based on Western cultural values. Secondly, research participants backed evaluation methodologies that were culturally sensitive to local cultures, such as participatory evaluation.
2. The results supported established work on the connections between different levels of conflict (i.e. between what Stathis Kalivas calls micro and macro levels), and showed that these connections between different levels of conflict are also relevant for conflict prevention work.
3. By combining (i) and (ii), the results illustrate how peacebuilding contributes to the dissemination of the Western cultural paradigm: peacebuilding evaluations demonstrate the value of interventions, using theories of change that demonstrate the transfer between micro and macro levels of conflict prevention.

6) Future guidance on peacebuilding evaluation

The results support the adoption of universal guidance on peacebuilding evaluation across the peacebuilding field.  Such guidance should be non-prescriptive, culturally sensitive, and acknowledge the accountability tension. I found that the OECD’s guidance on peacebuilding evaluation (currently under consultation) represents a problematic option for this as it runs the risk of being viewed with suspicion, given it is produced by a donors’ body. Instead, I suggest that guidance should be developed through a field wide process, as per the recent USIP and Alliance for Peacebuilding reports.

Implications for practitioners

1) Practitioners can use evaluations to address donors’ interests, building an evidence base for influencing them.

2) It is important to recognise that evaluators face a challenge to ensure that their accountability to donors does not come at the expense of internal values or intended beneficiaries.

3) The research results provide backing for the Peace Direct emphasis on the local. They do this firstly by identifying a need for locally led programmes (as the locally led programme was able to continue despite violent conflict), and secondly by highlighting the benefits of imbuing programmes with the target community’s knowledge and understanding.

4) When planning evaluations, it is essential to recognise that every programme represents a unique evaluation scenario. The most suitable evaluation approach should be selected by considering guidance such as the OECD or Mercy Corps resources, remembering to use participatory evaluation where possible.

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Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is in widespread use today in conflict and crisis mitigation and response. There is technology available to collect, communicate, visualise and analyse information. In practice, the use of various forms of ICT in peacebuilding efforts include radio stations that train young journalists for conflict-resolution in the cross-border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan (PACT Radio), the assessment of the quality of the 2007 electoral process in Sierra Leone through trained citizen monitors who texted their observations on the day via SMS to a central system (National Election Watch) and citizen mapping applications such as MapKibera.

Conflicts and crises are complex situations that have their own continuously changing dynamics, where unpredictable things can happen. In the real world, many factors interact with each other such as physical, hierarchical, cultural, religious, environmental and geopolitical ones. These, often intangible factors, make it difficult for those who work in crisis and conflict situations to give a straightforward answer to the question of what is ‘right’, of what is feasible and fitting to do, in any given conflict or crisis situation. Finding out what is really appropriate in the specific context, what is needed given the local realities, is often neglected. I think there are different reasons for this: sometimes it is because the complexity of a situation is not captured and grasped adequately, sometimes because of a lack of ways of working to engage with the given reality, and sometimes simply because it is not possible to achieve what is needed with available resources. Ready-made ‘solutions’ for conflict and crisis scenarios, that were created using limiting assumptions, often do not acknowledge realities on the ground.

Taking this into account, the ICT in Conflict & Disaster Response and Peacebuilding crowdmap provides a platform for collating information on who is doing what in the field of ICT in Crisis and Peacebuilding, for the purpose of sharing experiences and learning from each other. In practice, the platform consists of a map on which participants can record their activities and which can be browsed for entries.

The map captures the large variety of activities carried out in projects, programmes and initiatives at various levels of society and decision-making. Submissions to the map are made by people who operate in the field. Their work ranges from the establishment of ICT-aided public policies to actual technological solutions for information capture or management employed in local peacebuilding contexts.

What makes this resource unique is the cross-disciplinary coverage of ICT–related activities by participating entities. It provides the possibility, especially for those people operating ‘on the ground’, to help build up the resource and to submit information on their work.

The map helps to create awareness about the variety of activities carried out in very diverse contexts, and invites practitioners to share experiences so that the benefits obtained by learning from others will eventually reach those affected by conflict and crisis.

This article was written with contributions from Laura Morris, an independent researcher in crisis communication. Christine and Laura can be contacted at ictinemergency@gmail.com

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