{"id":7982,"date":"2026-09-29T08:24:32","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T08:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/?p=7982"},"modified":"2026-09-29T08:24:32","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T08:24:32","slug":"making-the-case-for-peacebuilding-from-measuring-results-to-capturing-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/7982\/making-the-case-for-peacebuilding-from-measuring-results-to-capturing-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Making the Case for Peacebuilding \u2014 From Measuring Results to Capturing Change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As support for non-violent approaches to conflict resolution comes under pressure, skepticism towards multilateralism grows, and cuts to international aid budgets multiply, peacebuilding organizations face increasing demands to demonstrate the value of their work. This contribution explores how adaptive monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) can help organizations not only improve peacebuilding practice, but also better capture and communicate the changes they contribute to.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With 2025 marked by a historical decline of 23.1% in Official Development Assistance1<\/sup> and dwindling political support for peacebuilding, practitioners are wondering how to make the case for their work. Demands to demonstrate the impact of aid in general, and of peacebuilding in particular, are nothing new. Following the 2011 publication of the UK Department for International Development’s report DFID’s Approach to Value for Money, donors have increasingly adopted results-based management systems and asked implementing organizations to report against often complex logical frameworks, as well as to take part in evaluations assessing the efficiency, effectiveness, and impact of their interventions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, for peacebuilding interventions, making such claims is no easy feat. Although the sector has invested in producing rigorous evidence on its impact, for instance through Randomized Control Trials, complex outcomes such as peace or violence prevention are not easily captured based on quantitative metrics. Furthermore, the linear change models used in results-based management, which assume a progression from activities to outputs, outcomes, and impacts, fail to capture how social change unfolds in complex systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recognizing this complexity has contributed to growing interest in the Humanitarian-Development-Peace (HDP) Nexus, which acknowledges that none of these three sectors alone can address protracted crises worldwide. While progress has been made in implementing the HDP Nexus, MEL systems remain largely siloed and continue to prioritize quantitative reporting.2<\/sup> As a result, they struggle to capture the added value of working across the humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding sectors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

swisspeace\u2019s upcoming paper, \u201cFrom Measuring Results to Understanding Change: Adaptive MEL in Complexity,\u201d draws on scholarship, expert interviews, and practical experience to explore how more adaptive MEL can help organizations better understand complex change. Methods such as Outcome Harvesting, for instance, move beyond simply measuring predefined results. Instead, they can help capture complex outcomes and better align interventions with locally defined visions of success, while supporting continuous learning and adaptation to improve peacebuilding work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

swisspeace has worked with partners committed to better understanding their contribution to peace and social cohesion in contexts such as Cameroon, Syria, and Afghanistan, based on methods such as Outcome Harvesting. Rather than starting from a rigid, predefined plan and asking whether it was achieved, this approach focuses on change and asks: \u201cWhat has changed, and how have we contributed to these changes?\u201d Such approaches better capture change processes, which, especially in fragile and conflict-affected contexts, are rarely linear, predictable, or attributable to a single intervention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Approaches like Outcome Harvesting also allow us to capture unexpected outcomes and, therefore, go beyond top-down, predefined definitions of peace. Peace is context-specific, yet it is rarely defined by the communities for whom organizations seek to promote peace. Indeed, donor and implementing organizations alike tend to rely on their own predetermined indicators or strategies to define what success looks like. Comparatively, adaptive MEL create more space for contextualized definitions of change. One such example is the Everyday Peace Indicators, a participatory research initiative that works with communities to develop indicators that reflect their local understandings of peace. Their work reveals that what communities themselves consider as indicators of positive change are often things that no top-down logical framework would have considered, from variations in cattle grazing3<\/sup> to reduced waste on the street.4<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond providing a richer understanding of change, adaptive MEL approaches also support learning and improvement. Indeed, while traditional, primarily quantitative approaches focus on the sole \u201cwhat have we achieved\u201d question, adaptive MEL asks instead \u201cWhat has worked well? What hasn’t? Why have we achieved that change? How?\u201d. These are the questions that enable us to learn from our successes and failures and move forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there is now a shared understanding in the sector that peacebuilding requires more flexible and context-sensitive ways of doing MEL, the financial, human, and time resources required to do so are often limited. Many organizations also consider it feasible to adopt such approaches at the project level but find it more complicated to draw conclusions about their contribution to peace at the organizational level. Five numbers simply sum up; qualitative evidence is much harder to produce, synthesize, and communicate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, stronger evidence alone may not be enough to secure support for peacebuilding. Indeed, as highlighted in a recent ODI Global report,5<\/sup> funding decisions are increasingly based on political decision-making rather than evidence, and more explicitly framed in the light of donor countries\u2019 own national priorities. As such, at a time when public resources are being directed towards militarized security and when multilateralism is increasingly challenged, organizations do not need another 50-page evaluation report or another set of indicators to make the case for their work. Instead, they need credible and accessible sector-level narratives that show how peacebuilding contributes to safer, more resilient societies, both locally and globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[1] Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). A historic decline in foreign aid: Preliminary 2025 ODA data. 9 April 2026. https:\/\/www.oecd.org\/en\/data\/insights\/data-explainers\/2026\/04\/a-historic-decline-in-foreign-aid-preliminary-2025-oda-data.html<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2] Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Task Force 4. Mapping Good Practice in the Implementation of Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus Approaches. Synthesis Report. September 2024. https:\/\/interagencystandingcommittee.org\/iasc-task-force-4-humanitarian-development-collaboration-and-its-linkages-peace\/iasc-second-mapping-good-practice-implementation-humanitarian-development-peace-nexus-approaches<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3] Firchow, P., & Ginty, R. M. (2017). Measuring Peace: Comparability, Commensurability, and Complementarity Using Bottom-Up Indicators. International Studies Review, 19(1), 6\u201327. http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/26407934<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4] Dixon, P. (2020). TRASH IS PILING UP IN RURAL COLOMBIA\u2014THAT\u2019S A BAD SIGN FOR PEACE. Political Violence at a Glance. https:\/\/politicalviolenceataglance.org\/2020\/07\/02\/trash-is-piling-up-in-rural-colombia-thats-a-bad-sign-for-peace\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5] Kumar et al. The case for development 2025: exploring new narrative for aid in the context of the EU\u2019s new strategic agenda. ODI Global. July 2025. https:\/\/odi.org\/en\/publications\/the-case-for-development-in-2025-exploring-new-narratives-for-aid-in-the-context-of-the-eus-new-strategic-agenda\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As support for non-violent approaches to conflict resolution comes under pressure, skepticism towards multilateralism grows, and cuts to international aid budgets multiply, peacebuilding organizations face increasing demands to demonstrate the value of their work. This contribution explores how adaptive monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) can help organizations not only improve peacebuilding practice, but also better … Making the Case for Peacebuilding \u2014 From Measuring Results to Capturing Change<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"issue":[559],"acf":[],"author_meta":{"display_name":"\u00e0 propos","author_link":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/author\/apropos\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/2swisspeaceWB194-600x331.jpg","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Focus<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Focus<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":0,"relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 15 hours ago","modified":"Updated 15 hours ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on September 29, 2026","modified":"Updated on September 29, 2026"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on September 29, 2026 8:24 am","modified":"Updated on September 29, 2026 8:24 am"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7982"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7982"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8208,"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7982\/revisions\/8208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7982"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koff.swisspeace.ch\/apropos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=7982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}