Evaluating Peacebuilding Activities in Settings of Conflict and Fragility
Improving Learning for Results
Recognising a need for better, tailored approaches to learning and accountability in conflict settings, the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) launched an initiative to develop guidance on evaluating conflict prevention and peacebuilding activities. The objective of this process has been to help improve evaluation practice and thereby support the broader community of experts and implementing organisations to enhance the quality of conflict prevention and peacebuilding interventions. It also seeks to guide policy makers, field and desk officers, and country partners towards a better understanding of the role and utility of evaluations. The guidance presented in this book provides background on key policy issues affecting donor engagement in settings of conflict and fragility and introduces some of the challenges to evaluation particular to these settings. It then provides step-by-step guidance on the core steps in planning, carrying out and learning from evaluation, as well as some basic principles on programme design and management.
Conducting an evaluation in situations of conflict and fragility
Chapter 4 considers the business of conducting an evaluation. It begins with the inception phase, and then looks at how to identify theories of change and the implementation logic underpinning the activity being evaluated. The next step is the issue of gaps in baseline data and how and where to source data in order to plug the gaps. The chapter looks at the criteria evaluators should use, focusing in particular on the DAC criteria of relevance, effectiveness, impact, sustainability and efficiency. It then describes how to bring an evaluation to a close. The chapter looks at drawing conclusions and issuing recommendations and at the reports evaluators produce. The next step the chapter discusses is communicating the evaluation’s (positive or negative) results to stakeholders and disseminating the lessons learned. Finally, to close the loop, the chapter emphasises the importance of feeding findings back into programme design and management.
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