In late October 2010, USIP's Virginia Bouvier traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, where nearly two dozen members of Mediation Support Network (MSN) organizations gathered at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (CHD) headquarters to discuss “Assessing Good Mediation and Mediation Support Practice — Outcome and Impact.” The meetings were conducted under Chatham House Rules, and all remarks from the MSN sessions were off-the-record and not for attribution.
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Posted: January 26, 2011
In late October 2010, I traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, where nearly two dozen members of Mediation Support Network (MSN) organizations gathered at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (CHD) headquarters. From October 25-26, with the facilitation and hospitality of the CHD, we tried to ignore the picturesque Lake Geneva and the howling “bise noire” to focus discussion on the topic “Assessing Good Mediation and Mediation Support Practice — Outcome and Impact.” The meetings were conducted under Chatham House Rules, and all remarks from the MSN sessions were off-the-record and not for attribution.
The topic of evaluation is one that increasingly preoccupies conflict resolution practitioners and funders alike. Donors, governments, partners, and the broader public are increasingly interested in results (i.e., impact, outcomes, and outputs)—both for reasons of accountability and in order to draw lessons that can help improve future practice. Assessments of peacebuilding projects have become increasingly common in the last decade, although systematization of lessons, systematic communication of results, and the creation of effective feedback loops to improve practice have not kept pace.
The MSN meetings in Geneva focused on evaluating a particular slice of peacemaking and peacebuilding efforts—those related to mediation and mediation support best practices. There is a growing demand for accountability for activities, as well as a desire to find ways to document, measure, assess, and improve this work.
An opening keynote speaker for the MSN meetings addressed the challenges in evaluating the promotion of peace and human rights, and underscored the need to develop and utilize evaluation tools, to communicate lessons from assessments, and to incorporate the findings of these evaluations into ongoing learning, and to improve practice. In particular, she observed that:
- Coaching staff on how to do evaluations is important (and often labor-intensive, since most of those in the field lack relevant training);
- External and internal evaluations are both important;
- Qualitative and quantitative benchmarks should be identified against which success can be measured;
- Regular internal (self) evaluation of projects should be carried out independently of the partner or grantee’s evaluation and against one’s own strategic goals, and should assess whether funders have done what they planned to do and with what results;
- In order to evaluate the impact of funding, funders/donors should first develop a tool as part of the initial design that enables them to articulate a strategy, goals, and the explicit impact anticipated (i.e., changes in behavior of people, organizations, institutions; agreements between parties; mechanisms for dealing with particular issues; better coordination among stakeholders; etc.).
Following the keynote address and discussion, MSN members spent the following two days at workshops designed to address the challenges of particular aspects of mediation support work. The first workshop was spent evaluating publications and written materials produced for mediators and their staff.
Representatives from Conciliation Resources (London), U.N. Mediation Support Unit (NY), Crisis Managment Initiative (Helsinki and Brussels), Accord (South Africa), Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (Geneva), and the Mediation Support Project (Zurich) attended the session, at which I presented a case study of USIP’s Peacemaker’s Toolkit -- a series of "best practices" handbooks on key aspects of mediation and peacemaking designed for experienced mediation practitioners, negotiators and their teams. I spoke about the origins and evolution of the toolkit, our goals, and our current assessment practices, and I solicited feedback for improving the quality of our product and our assessment practices. We saw the input of the MSN group as a critical part of our qualitative review process.
General observations on the toolkit series were that they are an important asset; that producing such publications contributes to building the knowledge and capacity of the field, lends a seriousness and credibility to mediation as a practice and contributes to the professionalization of the field; that the process of interviewing to garner lessons on particular topics encourages mediators and third parties to reflect on their experiences and on particular issues they may not have considered. Furthermore, particular publications, such as the handbook on Internally Displaced Persons, were seen as playing a significant role in giving visibility to particular neglected issues. We are taking into consideration a number of specific recommendations that emerged from the discussion on how to improve our publications, dissemination, and assessment practices.
Other working groups focused on how to assess support to mediation actors and build the mediation support capacity of the European Union; and how to assess support to mediation, facilitation, or peace processes. Some of the evaluation questions were based on the framework of “Evaluating Peace Mediation” (SwissPeace/Center for Peace Mediation/Crisis Management Initiative, 2008) which itself is a product of the Initiative for Peacebuilding.
The next meeting of the MSN is scheduled to take place hosted by the Crisis Managment Initiative in Helsinki, Finland, in June 2011. The topic for that meeting will be: “The Nexus between Mediation Processes and Development Work."
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