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Monitoring and Evaluation Tool 1
Conflict Sensitive and Peacebuilding WASH M&E Planning Tool
Purpose
This Tool complements the WASH for Peace – Monitoring and Evaluation Guide and outlines key steps and considerations to develop and implement conflict sensitive and peacebuilding M&E activities.
Conflict Sensitive and Peacebuilding WASH M&E Template
WASH Conflict-Sensitive and Peacebuilding M&E Guiding Questions and Checklist
Conflict Sensitivity M&E:
- Who is conducting the monitoring – WASH team, partners, third party monitors, others? How are they perceived by the people being consulted (communities, WASH authorities, partners, other staff) and how could this affect the data?
- Who is being consulted as part of the monitoring (direct and indirect beneficiaries, non-beneficiary communities, WASH authorities, others? How diverse are the groups being consulted (ethnic groups, children and young people, women and men, girls and boys, in positions of power or marginalized))?
- When is the monitoring being conducted? What key events are taking place in the WASH intervention context that need to be considered? Integrating conflict sensitivity into the monitoring processes and project activities may require changes in timing to be responsive to the dynamics of a conflict.
- How will analysis from monitoring be used to influence relevant decision-making processes (programme design/adaptation, advocacy, staff security planning)?
- Is there regular reflection and reporting on interaction between conflict and WASH interventions?
- How do CO/WASH managers encourage and support staff/partners directly involved in implementation and monitoring to openly share information on unintended negative consequences of WASH interventions?
- How does the CO/WASH team incentivize sharing real information of on-the-ground project complexities rather than only sharing success stories?
- Criteria of evaluations include conflict sensitivity: Do evaluations consider conflict sensitivity of an intervention, in particular wider, unintended impacts? Is understanding of conflict sensitivity a mandatory consideration when interviewing / selecting consultants?
Peacebuilding M&E:
- Does the WASH intervention have a WASH ToC and results framework informed by the CP Scan that can help you build your risk-informed, conflict-sensitive, and peacebuilding M&E Plan?
- Does your WASH results framework include impact, outcome, and/or output level result statements that explicitly capture contributions to peace and the necessary short, medium and long-term changes to achieve it?
- Does the WASH intervention results framework and M&E Plan include a distinct focus on women and girls’, adolescents’ and young people’s contributions to peace?
- Does the WASH intervention M&E Plan include peacebuilding indicators that can capture relevant attribution and contributions?
- Does the WASH intervention M&E Plan include peacebuilding indicators that can support the measurement of changes in perceptions, relations, behaviour and capacities related to conflict and peace, including proxy indicators as relevant?
- Does the WASH intervention M&E Plan include participatory and inclusive means of verification, including relevant methodologies and tools, to generate such data?
- If a WASH in Emergency intervention, does M&E Plan include higher frequency and relevant methodologies and tools that can be deployed and leveraged by WASH Cluster Partners?
- Does the WASH intervention include a conflict-sensitive and peacebuilding baseline?
- Does the WASH intervention M&E Plan include a proposed conflict-sensitive and peacebuilding evaluation to generate evidence and support organizational learning?
Conflict-Sensitive and Peacebuilding WASH Evaluation Checklist:
- The evaluation is conflict sensitive and will not fuel existing or new conflicts
- The evaluation is gender sensitive and actively promotes the inclusion and participation of women and girls to ensure their perspectives and experiences of conflict are captured in the analysis
- The evaluation is age-sensitive and actively promotes the inclusion and participation of children, adolescents and youth to ensure their perspectives and experiences of conflict are captured in the analysis
- The evaluation is participatory and inclusive to ensure it captures diverse perspectives and experiences of conflict among targeted communities, including minority groups
- The evaluation is accountable to affected and engaged populations – it has built in opportunities to present, validate and share the findings with participants so they can benefit from their engagement
Key considerations when designing and implementing a conflict-sensitive M&E
General M&E
- It is important to remember that M&E is an integral part of an intervention and must therefore apply the same principles and approaches to its implementation – it must be gender, age, disability and conflict sensitive.
- Ensuring that all groups in a community participate in the design and implementation of M&E in a conflict-affected environment will strengthen its conflict sensitivity by capturing diverse experiences and perceptions of WASH-related conflict and of people’s distinct interactions with the WASH intervention.
- M&E are typically extractive processes, as data collectors take information from respondents and offer little in direct return – go back and provide feedback about the result of your monitoring and evaluation to increase accountability and ensure the safe and meaningful participation of all groups in the community. This will reduce the risk of tensions being created by the monitoring activities themselves.
- Consult non-targeted groups as well as direct project participants – this is particularly relevant for context and interaction indicators, as it will help generate data on changes in the broader context in which the intervention is taking place and on possible effects of the intervention on tensions or divisions between targeted and non-targeted groups.
- Conflict-sensitizing all existing steps in the process, from the design to reporting and beyond, will require additional resources. For instance, organizational and institutional support for increased staff capacity development will be needed. Sufficient time to review and adjust existing tools and processes, as well as additional time to monitor or evaluate conflict and interaction indicators will also be essential.
- Ensure your conflict-sensitive M&E Plan considers the capacity and skills needed required by staff/partners involved, which are likely to include: conflict analysis skills; good knowledge of the context and specifically of WASH-relevant dimensions of conflict in the context; sensitivity to the local context; local language skills; monitoring and evaluation expertise (including interviewing skills).
- Use informal consultative processes to complement formal monitoring systems and processes to keep the WASH CP. Scan up to date and to monitor conflict sensitivity issues linked to the intervention.
- Consider the inclusion of conflict/interaction indicators in reporting formats (even if these are to be kept internal), even where it is not required by the donor – communicate to the donor UNICEF’s conflict sensitivity minimum requirements!
- Create safe spaces for staff and communities to encourage open dialogue on the project and conflict issues and tensions faced – this can support conflict sensitivity and also ensure staff and partners’ welfare in difficult situations, and where feedback and support to decisions would be helpful.
Evaluation specific
- If using an external evaluator be aware that their presence could raise expectations in the community for future or complementary activities.
- An evaluator can themselves contribute to conflict/ tensions depending on how they are viewed by the targeted communities.
- Ensure that the role of the evaluator is clear to communities and other actors.
- Ensure that both direct and indirect participants are included in the evaluation process.
- Ensure that the outcome of the evaluation is fed back to the community and all stakeholders and that they have opportunity to comment on the findings.
- Identify how learning on conflict sensitivity emerging from the evaluation can be shared with others (possibly by developing a public summary of key lessons learned) and inform future practice.
- Explicitly include a focus on assessing conflict sensitivity in the evaluator’s terms of reference, including a link to this Guidance and the Conflict Sensitivity Consortium page where guidance on conflict-sensitive monitoring and evaluation is included, as well as other relevant conflict-sensitivity resources to encourage external evaluators to adopt best practices in conflict sensitivity.