Monitoring and Evaluating Conflict Sensitivity: Methodological Challenges and Practical Solutions

All interventions – be they projects, programmes, a sector of work or country operational plans –interact with conflict in some way. Often there are unintended and unanticipated ways these interventions play out in a conflict context. Numerous peacebuilding evaluation reports purport to assess conflict sensitivity, but no actual methodologies for doing this are described within them.
This document gives practical guidance on how to monitor and evaluate that interaction between an intervention and conflict. It includes a discussion of the methodological questions that arise when embarking on a process to monitor and evaluate for unintended interactions with conflict, as well as a range of practical and field-tested tools to enable the reader to do this.
This document should help anyone designing a monitoring or evaluation process for conflict sensitivity – at whatever level s/he is concerned with (country operational plan, sector level, programme or project). It should assist both those within DFID and implementing partners, as it provides guidance that can assist with the methodological considerations and practical dilemmas facing both these groups.