The international policy community is increasingly recognising the untapped potential of administrative and social services to restore peace and stability. This multi-partner United Nations (UN) study seeks to determine whether the UN Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) should increase its support to administrative and social services, and if so, to what types of programming.
The paper reviews current thinking and practices among UN agencies, funds and programmes alongside some of their partners in the areas of administrative services and social services. It proposes a framework for understanding these contributions and begins to identify promising practices and directions. The study included a desk review and field research in Central Africa Republic (CAR), Kyrgyzstan, Uganda, Guinea-Bissau and Liberia.
The report argues that there is significant evidence to include administrative and social services amongst the menu of choices available to directly support peacebuilding in any given context. Finding the appropriate balance among the many peacebuilding priorities in any setting should ultimately be a country-driven exercise – one that is inclusive of a wide range of stakeholders at different levels, especially historically marginalised groups.
Key Findings:
- Public administration and social services – delivered in an effective and equitable manner – can contribute to peacebuilding. Specifically, they can: address grievances that underlie or trigger violent conflict; and offer a means for the state to reach out to society, to (re)build its legitimacy and systems of accountability
- Administrative and social services offered as peace dividends can: reduce social tensions through the provision of tangible, needed services, create incentives for non-violent behaviour and support statebuilding efforts at critical junctures in the peace process.
- Peacebuilding outcomes manifest differently in different contexts, yet tend to fall into at least one the following three areas: Resilience and social cohesion; State capacity and legitimacy; Conflict drivers and root causes. These should be viewed as cluster areas where there is growing convergence on groups of outcomes and indicators that can assist peacebuilding monitoring and evaluation.
- Administrative and social service related programming presents specific coordination and coherence challenges. Planning should take into consideration the following: (i) common context and conflict analyses should be developed according to the priorities that reflect what communities and society as a whole actually want; (ii) the time period of the initiative (i.e. “immediate aftermath” vs. “longer-term peacebuilding”) is less important than effective coordination and coherence, as well as the sequencing of functions and activities to support peacebuilding needs; (iii) transition strategies that clearly link peace consolidation to national ownership and capacity development in areas of public administration and social service delivery require greater attention; and (iv) the cases with the strongest peacebuilding outcomes employed more than one “theory of change approach.”
Recommendations:
- The PBF should include greater support to administrative and social services in its funding portfolio, where it can have a direct and positive impact on the sustainability of the peacebuilding process.
- The PBF should use its limited resources to support programmes that can have catalytic outcomes and impacts. In addition to training and capacity building initiatives that are strategic and sustainable, greater attention should be given to the “software” side of programming. Planning and process elements, for example, should be conflict-sensitive, inclusive, transparent, and sustainable. It is important to highlight programmes that widen the reach and impact of a promising practice in context sensitive ways.
