The Cumulative Impacts of Peace Programming

ADDING UP TO PEACE THE CUMULATIVE IMPACTS OF PEACE PROGRAMMING Diana Chigas and Peter Woodrow CDA Collaborative Learning Projects ADDING UP TO PEACE The Cumulative Impacts of Peace Initiatives Diana Chigas and Peter Woodrow CDA Collaborative Learning Projects April 2018 CDA improves the effectiveness of peacebuilding, development, and humani- tarian organizations and corporations working in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. Through its unique collaborative learning approach, CDA combines rigorous analysis and evidence-based methodologies to produce useful tools and guidance for practitioners and policymakers alike. In strengthening the work of its partners, CDA contributes to positive, systematic, and lasting change for people and communities, while also influencing policy and practice across the sectors in which it works. ISBN-13: 978-0-9882544-0-4 CDA Collaborative Learning Projects Inc. 186 Hampshire Street Cambridge MA 02139 USA www.cdacollaborative.org CDA is keen to hear how you are using our materials. Your feedback informs our ongoing learning and impact assessment processes. Email your feedback to [email protected] The finalization of this book was generously funded by Humanity United. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Humanity United or of CDA Collaborative Learning Projects. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike License (CC BY-SA 4.0) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 Suggested Citation: Chigas, Diana and Peter Woodrow. Adding Up to Peace: The Cumulative Impacts of Peace Programming. Cambridge, MA: CDA Collaborative Learning Projects, 2018. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction 1 PART I: THE ELEMENTS OF “ADDING UP” Chapter 1 What We Found—and Did Not Find 13 Chapter 2 Major Domains of Progress & Factor Trees 31 Chapter 3 The Role of Linkages in Adding Up 59 Chapter 4 How Outsiders Support or Impede the Adding Up Process 79 Chapter 5 The Role of Leadership in Adding Up 97 PART II: IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE Chapter 6 Challenges in the Peacebuilding Field 113 Chapter 7 A Framework for Collective Impact in Peacebuilding 121 Chapter 8 Striving for Shared Analysis Using Systems Thinking Tools 139 Chapter 9: Taking Action: Where Do We Go from Here? 153 Annex A: List of Cumulative Case Studies Annex B: Terms of Reference for Case Writers Annex C: List of Feedback Workshops Annex D: Bibliography Annex E: Index Acknowledgements This book represents a massive amount of work by many people over many years. Mary B. Anderson, Executive Director of CDA Collaborative Learning Projects when this effort started, helped to conceptualize the “cumulative” case studies and engaged in all of the early consultations and several staff analysis sessions. A number of other colleagues at CDA participated in various aspects of the project: organizing case studies, facilitating case writers’ travel and local contacts, editing draft cases, analyzing and coding case material, and helping to organize and run consultations and feedback workshops. Colleagues who provided crucial support in those ways included: Chloe Jaleel, Carrie O’Neal, Andrew Wei-Chih Yang, and Ethan Schechter. Some staff worked more intensively: Isabella Jean not only helped in the ways cited above, but also developed two of the case studies and did crucial work on case coding and analysis. Most of these staff members were also pressed into service writing Issue Papers containing preliminary findings that were then used in consultations and feedback workshops. We also owe a considerable debt to the case writers themselves (see list of cases and writers in Annex A), who took on a challenging assignment and performed well in and good spirits, in spite of the difficulty of assessing cumulative impacts in an entire country or conflict area in a limited amount of time. Most of the case writers also participated in consultations—and listened to feedback and questions to finalize the case studies. We would like to thank the “core group” of colleagues, who, for the first several years of the cumulative case effort, helped shape the inquiry. In some cases, they took on case research and writing, and often stayed extra days after consultations to take deeper dives on key topics: Sue Williams, Niall Fitzduff, Frederic Kama-Kama Tutu, Emma Leslie, Jos De La Haye, Graeme Simp- son, Cordula Reimann, Rob Ricigliano, Andy Carl, and Koenraad van Brabant. Almost 300 peace practitioners participated in the fifteen feedback workshops, which significantly expanded the breadth and depth of the information available and helped to refine and validate the findings. We also appreciate the numerous partner organizations who hosted those events all over the world. (See Annex C for a list of the feedback workshops.) In the final stages of manuscript development, Anita Ernstorfer and Andy Carl provided valuable feedback, leading to vital improvements. Our profound thanks, also, to our colleagues Sweta Velpillay, who kept us on track through the final steps of text editing, and Jasmine Walovitch, who organized the copyediting, indexing, formatting and online production of the book. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the generous support of several donors. These include AusAID (now the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade); the Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation at USAID; the UK Department for International Development; the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency; and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And, last but certainly not least, our colleagues at Humanity United, Elise Ford and Carrie DuLaney, not only provided funding to enable finalization of the book but also insisted that this book be made available to the peacebuilding field and the public. Thank you for making that final push! Diana Chigas Peter Woodrow Cambridge, MA December 2017 INTRODUCTION The Reflecting on Peace Practice Project (RPP) was launched in 1999 to answer the question: What works—and what doesn’t work—in peacebuilding? The first phase of RPP lasted from 1999 through 2002 and resulted in the publication of Confronting War (2003),1 based on twenty-six case studies and multiple consultations and feedback workshops focused mainly on single-program efforts in a range of conflict zones. The second phase of RPP concentrated on disseminating lessons from the first phase, mainly through developing training materials and delivery of workshops, especially in East/Central Africa, West Africa, and the Balkans. The authors of this book were engaged for that second phase effort and were asked to address a small number of outstanding questions raised but not answered during the first phase. These included the question that was the primary inquiry for the “cumulative impact” case studies conducted for this book: How do numerous peace efforts add up to produce progress towards peace over time? Other questions included a conundrum regarding conflict analysis, discussed at length in later chapters. We were also asked to expand on the notion of “linkages,” which were identified during the first phase as making important positive contributions to peace efforts., but with little substantive detail. The question about linkages was also incorporated into the cumulative impact case studies. Why the Cumulative Impact Case Studies? Towards the end of the first phase of RPP, participants in a final consultation identified a need to better understand how multiple peacebuilding initiatives in the same conflict zone2 interacted and added up—looking beyond the effectiveness of individual projects or programs, which was the focus of the twenty-six original cases. This became one of several questions for further exploration during the RPP phase that started in 2003. 1 Mary B. Anderson and Lara Olsen, Confronting War: Critical Lessons for Peace Practitioners, Collaborative for Development Action, 2003. Available at www.cdacollaborative.org. Referred to hereafter as simply Confronting War. 2 A “conflict zone” can be an entire country or a smaller geographic area within a country—or a cross-border area. For instance, several of the cases involve particular provinces, such as Aceh in Indonesia and Mindanao in the Philippines. 1 ADDING UP TO PEACE Peace Writ Large is a term introduced in Confronting War to describe changes at the macro level of society, comprising two basic goals which RPP found the wide array of programs examined in the first phase aimed to achieve: • Stopping violence and destructive conflict by working to end war and violence • Building just and sustainable peace by addressing the political economic and social grievances driving conflict and forming the foundations for sustainable peace. Confronting War, p. 12 As a result, RPP staff began to explore systematically how multiple peace efforts in the same conflict zone have cumulative impacts, and how they “add up”—or don’t add up—to producing significant progress towards Peace Writ Large (the larger soci- etal-level peace, a term introduced in Confronting War). This effort aimed to identify how cumulative impacts in peace practice operate at all levels, in order to provide practical lessons that would assist policymakers, donors, and practitioners to develop more effective strategies for greater progress towards peace. Confronting War identified factors that inhibited programs from adding up to an impact on the overall conflict situation. For instance, RPP found that the effectiveness of peace initiatives depends in large part on their ability to address the driving factors of conflict and to translate or link individual/personal change (such as, attitudes, skills, or relationships) to socio-political change (institutional or structural change, or changes in group behavior, norms and attitudes). In addition, effectiveness was associated with efforts to link “key” people (those with power and influence over the conflict) with wider constituencies in the population. This often involved connecting efforts at dif- ferent levels, sectors and groups of actors. However, there was little practical evidence at that stage about what constitutes an effective linkage.

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