"Peacebuilders operate in countries where the root causes of violence, poverty, inequality, human rights abuses, and weak institutions are intricately linked. As a result, peacebuilding programs have become increasingly complex and multifaceted. With the additional life-and-death realities characteristic of conflict settings, measuring the results and impact of peacebuilding programs poses unique challenges. Consequently, peacebuilding evaluation requires appropriate and specialized methodologies that can both capture long-term and multipart change processes and the effectiveness of those programs while being sensitive to ongoing and underlying conflict dynamics.

In the past twenty years, the peacebuilding field has made significant strides in addressing the technical challenges of peacebuilding evaluation. However, much of this progress has been made in individual, isolated organizations and, as a result, the field continues to face substantial obstacles to answering the question: What brings about lasting and sustainable peace?" (From: http://www.allianceforpeacebuilding.org/our-work/about-our-work/peacebui...) 

AfP has collaborated with the U.S. Institute of Peace to hold a year-long forum on this topic which resulted in a USIP special report , Improving Peacebuilding Evaluation: A Whole-of-Field Approach and an AfP publication Starting on the Same Page: A Lessons Report. This was followed by a summit conference whcih analyzed nine peacebuilding evaluation frameworks with the help of a large and diverse group of collaborators.  The report of that summit is: Proof of Concept: Nine Examples of Peacebuilding Evaluation .

AfP is also collaborating with CDA Collaborative Learning, Mercy Corps, Search for Common Ground, and USIP created the Peacebuilding Evaluation Consortium.-a "whole-of-community collaboration to develop innovative, cost-effective, and applicable methodologies that address the complex reality of peacebuilding evaluation, share learning, and foster collaboration, the Peacebuilding Evaluation Consortium is creating a new infrastructure for peacebuilding evaluation." (From http://www.allianceforpeacebuilding.org/our-work/about-our-work/peacebui...).