Peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations are tasked with increasingly complex and ambitious mandates, demanding integration and system-wide coherence, and resulting in the development of many sophisticated monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems. What are the critical challenges for M&E practitioners, and how can they strengthen research and practice? Peace operation M&E is promoting a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing in governments, research institutions, and regional and international organisations. However, much more could be achieved with a common vocabulary and approach, and a higher profile for M&E.
The M&E of peace operations is important because organisations need to be able to adapt to fluid environments, learn from mistakes, and adjust course: both real-time monitoring and long-term impact evaluation are required. Further, in an era of scarce economic resources, those responsible for funding peace missions demand more information on cost-effectiveness. Clearer definitions of a ‘successful’ operation and the minimising of negative impact on host populations are needed. Currently, however, peace operation M&E remains fragmented and uncoordinated.
The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and the International Peace Institute (IPI) hosted a workshop examining case studies representing real-time, mid-term and end-of-phase M&E systems located in Afghanistan, Burundi, Liberia, Chad/Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Haiti. Key findings included the following:
- Contribution versus attribution: It is difficult to make causal linkages between particular inputs, outputs, outcomes and impact because of the challenges of isolating the effect of one activity from other factors that may have led to a particular result.
- Quantitative versus qualitative methods: These processes should be used in complementary ways so as to maximise their respective advantages relative to their context.
- Evaluating disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration programmes (DDR): Sustainable DDR evaluation necessitates evaluation across a variety of other sectors, requiring the consideration of the surrounding political dynamics.
- System-wide evaluations: Careful attention must be focused on which elements may be missing from these broad evaluations. A further challenge is different actors’ varied timeframes, planning assumptions, worldviews and organisational cultures.
- Process and use of evaluations: Identifying benchmarks and indicators can forge common understandings about outcomes to be achieved, but in practice, reconciling competing perspectives is very difficult. As M&E systems still lack a common vocabulary and approach, those formulating M&E approaches should also be involved in applying them, and in mitigating potential analytical and methodological misunderstandings during implementation.
Organisational learning can help to strengthen M&E approaches. For example: (1) more effective knowledge-sharing among organisations can help avoid duplication and improve coordination; and (2) accepting and applying lessons from the negative findings of M&E processes can make organisations less risk-averse. Further recommendations include:
- Develop and use context-specific M&E systems
- Develop a web-based database on lessons-learned in the M&E of peace operations that is easily accessible to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers
- Build a network of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers for the discussion and debate of peace operation M&E related issues
- Seek to discuss M&E in high profile decision-making forums in order to highlight its critical importance
- Consider M&E systems a necessary component of all peace operations, and develop mechanisms to ensure that the results of M&E analyses are incorporated into decision-making processes
- Integrate M&E into peace operation planning processes to help actors share knowledge and reach consensus where possible, minimising the chances that strategic incoherence will undermine intervention.
