Peacebuilding and Development: Integrated Approaches to Evaluation

Abstract

Awareness is growing in both the peacebuilding and development communities about the need to better understand the influence and impact of their programmes and policies in a more systematic way, particularly in situations of violent conflict or post-conflict environments. The increasing recognition among international agencies, scholars and practitioners of the need to treat peacebuilding and development in an integrated way is, however, not sufficiently matched when it comes to evaluation. There is a lack of research and publications, and the few developed frameworks and research results are often not well known. At the same time there is a demand for integrated frameworks and approaches by practitioner organisations and, more generally, by many others interested in understanding and evaluating the effects their development work has on peacebuilding, and vice versa. This issue of JPD aims to motivate researchers and practitioners to invest in advancing evaluation of themes that link peacebuilding and development applications, and to share new frameworks, reflections and analysis of different experiences.