Fragile states: Perspectives from
evaluations
AFDB Evaluation Week, 5th December 2012.
Presentation by Beate Bull
Evaluation Department, Norwegian Agency for Development
Cooperation, Norad.
Norwegian development aid budget
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Perspectives from peacebuilding /fragile states
evaluations based on:
•
Evaluations done for and by the Norwegian development cooperation
Agency, and reviewing others
•
A meta-review of evaluations of support to state building
by Gravingholt, J. og
Leininger, J. 2012
•
OECD/DAC Guidance on evaluating peacebuilding activities in settings
of conflict and fragility
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Norad Evaluation Department’s Annual Reports (2011,2010,2009)
“Evaluation of Norwegian Development Cooperation with Afghanistan 2001-2011”, (2012),
http://www.norad.no/no/s%C3%B8k?q=aiding+the+peace;
-
«Pawns of Peace. Evaluation of Norwegian peace efforts on Sri Lanka 1997-2009 (2011)”,
http://www.norad.no/no/resultater/publikasjoner/evalueringer/publikasjon?key=386346(2011)
-
“Aiding the Peace”: A Multi-donor Evaluation of Support to Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Activities in
Southern Sudan 2005-2010. ITAD Ltd., United Kingdom. http://www.norad.no/no/s%C3%B8k?q=aiding+the+peace
-
“Evaluation of the Danish education support to Afghanistan 2003-2010», 2012, http://um.dk/en/danidaen/results/eval/afgh/
-
“Assessing the Impact of Development Cooperation in North East Afghanistan 2005 – 2009.” 2010. Final Report. BMZ.
Böhnke, J. R., J. Koehler, and Ch. Zuercher.
-
“Evaluation of the Danish engagement in and around Somalia 2006-10”, 2011
http://www.netpublikationer.dk/um/11094/
-
“Evaluation of UNDP support to conflict-affected countries in the context of UN Peace Operations”, Draft final (not
to be quoted), Evaluation Office, UNDP, Forthcoming January 2013.
-
Evaluation of Norwegian Peace efforts in Haiti 1998-2009 (2009).
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Findings across the evaluations
1) That there are weaknesses in the analysis of the
situation and of the conflict in both the planning and
implementation phase –
– Implications:
- limit relevance of the intervention/support/
- limit the evaluation’s possibility to say something bout
about relevance (Afghanistan/ South Sudan)
- reduces the likelihood of appropiate conflict analysis being
conducted
- More…
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Findings from the evaluations cont.
•
2) Not enough resources are set aside to follow up and assess
progress, during implementation (South Sudan, Afhganistan, Haiti
and Sri Lanka).
– At times, the staffing in embassies were far from adequate
(Afganistan- in particular, South Sudan, Haiti)
Implications:
– Not enough resources to quality assure programmes – are they on
the right track (that we do what we say we shall do):
(Afghanistan-50 % of scools not adapted to girls needs
(latrines/protective walls)).
– The danger of aid not being relevant/not adapted to changing
context (are we doing the right thing?) or maybe contribute to
aggraving the conflict(s)
– Not enough resources to monitor how or whether aid becomes a
stake in the conflict
– Corruption
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Findings from evaluations cont.
• 3) Too much emphasis from donors are put on
harmonisation and coordination at the capital level in
the partner country at the cost of sharing knowledge
about local context, adapting activities to local conditions
an presence in the field.
• Example: South Sudan: Donor Coordination meetings did
not revolve around sharing conflict analyses, and discussing
how to coordinate aid to address local conflicts, but bigger
diplomatic issues: referendum 2010.
• Example: Afghanistan: the Norwegian funding to the ARTF
remained remarkably consistent over the years despite
important changes in the context
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Some key challenges to peacebuilding
evaluations
• The threat of violent conflict
• The reality is often complex,
stakes are high, everything becomes
political,– ‘all voices
to be heard’? How to be
perceived as impartial and
balanced-key to the credibility of
the evaluation?
• Evaluations can do harm
(evaluators leave, others stay behind)
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How to deal with a challenging context…
• How to conduct conflict analysis
• How to conduct conflict sensitive
evaluations (do no harm)
• How to analyse theories
of change and their underlying
assumptions
• Surprises that are expected
and those unexpected
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Examples of findings using conflict analysis in
evaluations
•
The evaluation of peacekeeping efforts in the Democratic Republic
of Congo, 2011. The evaluation uses a conflict analysis to assess the
peace efforts, and finds that two important drivers of conflict were
neglected by the donors: the land conflicts and the mineral
exploitations.
•
South Sudan: the multi-donor evaluation of conflict prevention and
peace building activities 2005-2010, found that disarmement
initiatives, not using a conflict analysis and thereby a do no harm
approach as a basis for programming, led to - at least in one instance
- a disarmed local community being subject to armed cattle raids from
neighbouring community
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Findings from a (2012) meta review of evaluations of
support to state building in fragile states:
Few evaluations
are concerned
with:
- explicating a
theory of change;
- constructing a
credible
counterfactual;
- and making use
of quantitative
methods where
possible.
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Which leads to:
- An inbuilt tendency
to reproduce the
conventional
wisdom
- instead of testing
implicitly assumed
causality chains
- or exploring what
the alternatives
would have been.
What do the evaluations of peacebuilding-field
look at?
•
Peace building evaluations conducted by many donors and mulitlateral
organisations seem to have focused on understanding and mapping
the terrain and their own internal organisation,
• They are concerned with:
– Coordination between different actors, planning,
– whether a conflict analysis is used or not for programming (most
often it is not),
– types of interventions, (socio-economic, humanitarian, peace
building, governance)
– conflict sensitivity,
– Inputs, activities, and outputs
Rather than
•
results, what works and what does not work (what do we base our
knowledge on/ what assumptions do we base the interventions on=are
we
doing the right thing)
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‫ش ْك ًرا‬
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