Peacebuilding Accountability: The United Nations Peacebuilding Fund and Community-Based Monitoring and Evaluation

Abstract International peacebuilding as a discourse and practice has expanded rapidly in the nearly three decades since the publication of Boutros Boutros-Ghali's Agenda for Peace. Alongside the growth of peacebuilding efforts has come the realization that many peacebuilding projects conceived of and sponsored by the international community have failed to meet their own objectives or, more importantly, have failed to be embraced fully by those whom they were supposed to help: the individuals and communities attempting to rebuild their lives in post-conflict countries. One area that has been under-examined and—in particular—under-theorized is the role and impact of funder accountability mechanisms on local ownership, community agency, and peacebuilding success. However, in the development field some work has been done to examine accountability models and to try to develop new ones. As part of a project funded by the Council on Foreign Relations, the author served as a local peacebuilding advisor to the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund's monitoring and evaluation team, where he led an effort to develop a more collaborative evaluation method designed to close accountability loops by including a broader range of actors than that normally considered by current evaluation methodologies. This article offers a scoping analysis of the strengths and weaknesses inherent in the interactions between large international donor agencies and local peacebuilding efforts. It also presents a preview of one agency's determined efforts to bridge those gaps and implement programs and processes designed to promote local agency while supporting transparent accountability.