AIN's Mohan Rai talked with Bhasker Kafle, Senior Program Officer with International Alert in Nepal, who is currently leading the six member Research Team. Excerpts of the interview:
Why this research had to be done?
One of the challenges of peace building initiatives is that the impact is intangible. And it takes a very long time to have an impact. There was also no monitoring and evaluation tool specific to peace building. There was a need felt to have a proper monitoring and evaluation to show the impact and to strengthen the effectiveness of peace building initiative.
How was it done?
We started with exploration of what is out there and how peace building organizations are working and how they are doing their monitoring and evaluation. This research is being done in three countries: Nepal Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo.
In Nepal, CARE Nepal and International Alert news_identified organizations, who came in as research team. We selected four organizations: Alliance for Peace, Search for Common Ground, Youth Action Nepal and Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction. These organizations came together and they themselves dnews_id the base study. The research team of the three countries met in London in 2009 in February with the steering committee of the project. The steering committee comprises leading international figures and scholars in peace building such as Mark Rogers and Hans Giessmann. After discussion with them, we developed a methodology.
In the first phase, we wanted to explore and understand peace building initiatives. We developed a methodology and undertook the research. In the second phase, we wanted to pilot a framework for monitoring and evaluation for peace building initiatives. The third phase is about disseminating the findings, which we are going to do.
What is Theory of Change (ToC)?
ToC can be defined as the logic behind peace building initiatives. Organizations use a myriad of approaches and strategies for peace building. In many instances, organizations work on the basis of prior experience and even intuition. They cannot articulate why they are doing it with what effect. Others might have a logic but might not articulate it. For example, if an organization uses football for peace building, it has a logic as to how football can contribute to peace building. But it does not articulate that logic.
Every organization could have their own little theories of change. The logic is contextual and not universal. But if certain logic is proved true for one context, other organizations working in the same context can replicate it. ToC is also a tool to understand the peace building initiatives.
What kind of theory dnews_id you come up with?
In Nepal, most projects that were selected (except the Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction) are around youth. Probably the theory is that youth can make or break conflict. It sanews_id that if young people deny going to war there is no war.
For each organization theories were chosen in hierarchy and one theory each was chosen for testing for every organization. There was one common framework for all organizations but indivnews_idual methodologies were employed for each organization under study based on ToC. So all together seven ToCs were tested. Others ToCs were refined, which helped the project do better. The findings were brought together and analyzed.
What are the key findings?
We news_identified certain factors that facilitate change such as dialogue, networking, advocacy etc. Most projects have component of training and advocacy. They also promote dialogues to discuss certain conflicting issues or issues that are important. Networking and collaboration was also found to be important factor.
The analysis was done at four levels of change: indivnews_idual, behavioral, structural, and cultural. Some organizations are working on indivnews_idual level, others at behavioral, structural and cultural levels. Though they work at different levels of change but the factors and methodologies were similar. These methodologies have helped facilitate change at all levels.
Youth was news_identified as major stakeholders to be engaged with in peace building initiatives. It was found that it was crucial to work with local partners for sustainability and ownership.
Dnews_id you try to anyway measure the impact of these organizations?
As I sanews_id before, it is quite difficult to show the impact. We can measure the impact if we are clear about how our work will contribute to peace building. We dnews_id not measure the impact of the projects that we studied as they were still ongoing. Rather we wanted to look at how they were running the project.
What are the recommendations?
There are recommendations for different actors.
For the peace building community, it is recommended that TOCs must be news_identified in the project design phase itself and proper context analysis should be conducted so that they can be monitored, evaluated and adjusted as the program is implemented as well as reviewed and evaluated.
Amplifying the impact of the program requires integrated or collaborative approaches between different civil society organizations, where cross monitoring mechanisms are implanted and best practices are shared and transferred. Furthermore, when one single organization cannot impact all levels of change, a culture of cooperation and synergy amongst the peace building organizations would be effective and, therefore, needs to exist in order to contribute to peace writ large.
Recommendation to the Donor and the International Community are that there must be effective two-way communication and flexibility between donor agencies and grant recipients. Peace building project implementation requires flexibility during implementation because of the constantly changing contexts in the conflict and post-conflict environment.
They should also continue to build an emerging common strategy for post-conflict reconstruction and peace building in Nepal in order to better coordinate efforts. Such coordination would help to avonews_id duplication whilst ensuring that all geographical areas and groups are consnews_idered in the projects.
Recommendation to the Government Agencies are that the government should seek to financially strengthen the Local Peace Committees (LPCs), forge greater synergy between LPCs and other local administration mechanisms, and refrain from politicization of LPCs to ensure their effectiveness. The government should set up an NGO liaison desk in order to gain better understanding of national and local level peace building efforts and to contribute to the agenda for donor support and coordination on issues of peace building and development.