Making Peace Possible

NO. 170 | December 2020

PEACEWORKS

Addressing Fragility

in a Global Pandemic

ELEMENTS OF A SUCCESSFUL US STRATEGY

Corinne Graff, editor
NO. 170 | December 2020

Making Peace Possible

The views expressed in this report are those of the authors alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of

the United States Institute of Peace. An online edition of this and related reports can be found on our website 

(www.usip.org), together with additional information on the subject. Parts of this work have appeared in slightly 

different form elsewhere and are published in this volume with permission of the authors and publishers.

© 2020 by the United States Institute of Peace

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Peaceworks No. 170. First published 2020.

ISBN: 978-1-60127-839-5

FRAGILITY & 

RESILIENCE

ABOUT THE REPORT

In May, June, and July of 2020, the United States Institute of Peace convened a 

series of consultations with experts on implementation of the 2019 Global Fragility 

Act, which called for an interagency initiative to stabilize conflict-affected areas and 

prevent violence globally. This report examines the key lessons the peacebuilding 

field has learned about how to support vulnerable countries in preventing conflict and 

violence, and offers practical policy solutions for how to overcome the obstacles that 

have plagued past US efforts. It assesses the current global strategic environment 

for preventing internal conflicts and addresses how to promote local ownership and 

inclusion, ensure accountability, align US activities across diplomacy and development, 

establish mechanisms for closer international coordination, and measure progress.

Cover photo: Anti-government protesters gather in Bangkok on August 16, 2020, for the 

largest rally in the city since a coup in 2014. (Photo by Adam Dean/New York Times)
USIP.ORG 1

3 Introduction

 By Corinne Graff

5 Understanding the Global Environment

5 A Theory of Success for the Global Fragility Strategy by Patrick W. Quirk

7 The Changing Strategic Landscape by Martha Crenshaw

9 Promoting Local Ownership and Inclusion

9 Leveraging the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda 

 by Kathleen Kuehnast and Amanda Long

12 Ensuring Local Ownership “from the Inside Out” 

 by Amy Potter Czajkowski

15 Using Everyday Peace Indicators to Increase Local Ownership

 by Pamina Firchow

Contents
2 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

18 Ensuring Accountability

18 Innovation, Learning, and Accountability 

 by Susanna P. Campbell

21 Promoting Good Governance in Security Sectors 

 by Jodi Vittori

23 Examining Perceptions and Biases by Mareike Schomerus

25 Leveraging Programs and Diplomacy

25 Integrating Diplomacy and Development Programming 

 by Sarah Rose

27 Supporting Security Sector Reform by Daniel R. Mahanty

30 Aligning Humanitarian and Development Action 

 by Olga Petryniak and Jon Kurtz

33 International Coordination

33 Enhancing Country-Level Coordination by Jonathan Papoulidis

35 Defining and Measuring Progress

35 Defining and Measuring Impact by Conor Seyle

37 Defining and Measuring Progress by Annie Pforzheimer

40 Selecting Indicators by Paul Perrin

42 About the Authors
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Addressing state fragility and violent conflict is one of the central challenges of the modern era. Violent conflicts have risen in number, duration, and intensity since 1990, spurring 

the spread of violent extremism and one of the largest displacement crises in human 

history, causing untold human suffering. As a result, the international community has 

coalesced around the need for new approaches to reduce conflict’s underlying drivers 

and increase resiliency to shocks. In the United States, this consensus has culminated in 

the Global Fragility Act (GFA), an ambitious measure signed into law in late 2019 that aims 

to overhaul the way the United States engages in countries vulnerable to conflict—especially in fragile states, where the social contract between citizens and the state is severed, 

and societies are fragmented and prone to violence. If successfully implemented, this 

new framework could begin to transform US policy and assistance in fragile countries and 

provide an alternative to the multibillion-dollar state-building efforts that have been underway for far too long in places like Afghanistan and Iraq and have few results to show for it.

The Global Fragility Act requires the State Department, US Agency for International 

Development, and other federal agencies to launch a comprehensive strategy to 

Protesters in Bangkok demanding democratic change on October 16, 2020. (Photo by Adam Dean/New York Times)

The international 

community has 

coalesced around 

the need for new 

approaches to reduce 

conflict’s underlying 

drivers and increase 

resiliency to shocks. 

In the United States, 

this consensus has 

culminated in the 

Global Fragility

Act (GFA).

Introduction

By Corinne Graff
4 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

address fragility and reduce the risks of violence and 

conflict by targeting its drivers. To better align US policy 

instruments in support of prevention—including foreign 

assistance, diplomatic engagement, and security 

sector assistance—the legislation sets out the roles 

and responsibilities of each US agency, creating new 

mechanisms for oversight and coordination. The bill 

includes unprecedented new congressional authorities 

to allow policymakers to implement a ten-year preventive strategy that can adapt in response to evolving 

local conditions, based on close consultations between 

the legislative and executive branches. The legislation 

requires agencies to test their initial efforts in a small 

set of countries and regions, and to report back to 

Congress every two years not just on their progress, 

but also on organizational learning.

Adhering to the principles embedded in the GFA—

including closer US interagency coordination, deeper

integration and burden sharing with international 

partners on the ground, and more nimble policy and 

programs that are responsive to in-country conditions—has been an age-old challenge in conflict environments. Executing this new mandate presents 

enormous difficulties. We should expect setbacks and 

slow progress. Achieving results will require tackling the 

bureaucratic, political, and operational obstacles to more 

fit-for-purpose policies and programs in fragile states, 

and reinvesting in US civilian capabilities, which have 

been severely depleted. Because this is not a challenge 

that the United States can or should tackle alone, it will 

require reinvigorating US leadership and committing to 

building coalitions of partners to get the job done.

At the same time, this agenda has gained added 

urgency in the context of COVID-19 because the fallout 

from the pandemic will stress countries’ social fabrics 

in ways that could deepen fragility and exacerbate 

protracted crises and have devastating consequences 

for both the world’s most vulnerable populations and 

international peace and security. Just as donors seek 

to respond to rapidly increasing health, food, and other 

emergency needs from the pandemic, it will be critical 

that this aid is in line with the new strategy and does 

not inadvertently stoke new tensions.

This report seeks to generate practical policy solutions 

for overcoming the obstacles to implementing a new 

US conflict-prevention strategy and country plans. Each 

article grapples with one of six key themes highlighted 

in the legislation: 

• What new risks and opportunities does the current 

global strategic environment present for policymakers charged with developing and implementing a 

new strategy? 

• Why is local ownership of conflict prevention initiatives and inclusion so important, and how can the US 

government maximize country ownership? 

• What accountability challenges confront policymakers in these countries, and what mechanisms can 

help to overcome them? 

• What solutions exist to overcome the age-old challenge of interagency coordination in fragile settings, 

including across both development and security 

assistance programs? 

• What are the benefits of aligning US efforts with 

those of other international partners, and what are 

the most effective modalities of such coordination? 

• Given the scope of the challenge of defining and 

measuring progress toward peace in fluid and volatile places, how should policymakers think about 

monitoring, evaluation, and learning?
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Understanding the 

Global Environment

A Theory of Success for the Global Fragility Strategy

Patrick W. Quirk

Summary

The global strategic environment in which the United States will implement the global fragility strategy and country 

plans includes increased intrastate violence exacerbated by the pandemic and intensifying US-China competition 

coupled with Russian muscle flexing for influence. The question is what theory of change should guide US and partner 

efforts under the strategy, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Environment

In the run-up to the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 

2020, fragility and associated violent conflict showed 

no signs of abating. Over the previous decade, 

intrastate violence and armed challengers in fact 

increased sharply.1 Persistent violence extends beyond combat between the state and armed actors to 

include intragroup violence rooted in ethnic, political, 

and religious divisions, often fueled by criminal opportunities.2 The pandemic is exacerbating these trends. 

Fragile states with strained health systems, fractured 

governments, and dwindling liquid assets struggle to 

contain the outbreak.3 The health crisis might temporarily hinder nonstate armed actors’ operations but 

will not displace their ambitions. Grievances at the 

core of ongoing armed conflicts will likely worsen. 

Authoritarian regimes prone to using government 

resources to suppress dissent, sometimes violently, 

are stepping up these tactics and exploiting the crisis 

to consolidate power. The confluence of these factors 

magnifies the relevance and timeliness of the forthcoming global fragility strategy.

Meanwhile, competition between the United States 

and China is intensifying as the pandemic both spreads 

and tightens its hold. Revisionist Chinese Communist 

Party (CCP) attempts to place China at the center of a 

global order are a fundamental challenge to the United 

States. China’s tactics in vulnerable countries—seeking 

maximum economic advantage and translating leverage 

into political influence—can exacerbate instability that 

the global fragility strategy seeks to address. The CCP’s 

landmark Belt and Road Initiative not only weakens US 

influence in recipient governments but also, through 

opaque deals and associated corruption, has the potential to undermine democratic governance and underwrite fragility across the developing world. Meanwhile, 

Russia—no longer a great power by any modern 

measure—continues to harbor revisionist ambitions. The 

Kremlin uses its relatively small resource base to expand 

Russian influence abroad to distract from domestic 

failures and undermine the United States. Extending 

these strategies, the CCP and the Kremlin have exploited COVID-19 to secure their interests and accelerate 

attempts to discredit US leadership.
6 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

Theory of Success

The United States is developing its fragility strategy in 

an environment of two interlocking dynamics: intrastate 

violence that has international consequences and 

interstate geopolitical competition that could exacerbate armed conflicts across the globe. The strategy 

needs to address both and build on existing policies, 

to include the 2018 Stabilization Assistance Review and 

the Trump administration’s approach to fragile states. 

Setting a realistic goal and sound theory of success 

to achieve it is the keystone to any strategy.4

 This is 

the most pressing conversation for US officials before 

turning to who does what, when, and where.

The goal should be enough of a reduction in violence 

and instability in strategically important countries or 

regions that the United States can secure short- and 

long-term American interests in these places.5 From 

there, Washington needs to address two questions. 

First, why does a specific place matter to US interests? 

Second, how can near-term wins in these places be 

balanced with longer-term realities and US interests? 

This strategy is an opportunity for the United States 

to forcefully recognize that for too long it has made 

policy decisions with near-term objectives—primarily 

counterterrorism or security based—that have undercut long-term objectives. The document should 

balance the two. Even if the United States focuses 

only on countries or regions that matter most, it will 

not be able to achieve its goals alone. Burden sharing is essential. Washington needs to cooperate with 

like-minded allies and partners as well as work with 

and through multilateral organizations. Even as it 

works to reform multilateral fora such as the United 

Nations, it needs to assert its leadership in them to 

achieve results on reducing fragility.

The global fragility strategy needs to have a theory of 

success if it is to achieve its overall goal. Here is such 

a theory of change: If Washington balances near-term 

security gains with the conflict dynamics (and underlying fragility) required to secure longer-term interests, 

and if it develops an evidence-based understanding 

of priority conflict dynamics in countries negatively 

affecting its interests, and if it deploys diplomacy and 

foreign assistance—bilaterally and multilaterally—that 

effectively disrupts these dynamics, and if partner governments (local and national) demonstrate the political 

will necessary to address these dynamics, then it will 

reduce violence enough to secure its interests in these 

countries because it will have effectively disrupted 

those conflict dynamics that matter most.6

For each priority country it selects, Washington needs 

to articulate its top short- and long-term priority national 

security interests, determine how fragility and violence 

impinge on them, and devise measurable metrics for 

holding itself accountable. Addressing violence and 

fragility should be a top priority in embassy planning 

rather than an afterthought. In countries where stabilization is required, Washington should develop a 

political strategy of “strategic empowerment.”7

 This approach involves supporting the local actor most aligned 

with US interests and values and most likely to be able 

to govern effectively and manage violence.

Recommendations

The political aspects of fragility and violence should 

guide the global strategy and country plans. Fragility 

is primarily the result of human actions and therefore 

inherently political. In crafting its strategy, the United 

States therefore needs to deploy preventive diplomacy and foreign assistance to disrupt conflict dynamics 

by publicly or privately targeting actors that enable 

violence or otherwise contribute to fragility.

Washington needs to articulate its top short- and long-term priority national security interests, determine 

how fragility and violence impinge on them, and devise measurable metrics for holding itself accountable. 

Addressing violence and fragility should be a top priority in embassy planning rather than an afterthought.
USIP.ORG 7

Supporting good governance should be central because ineffective governance and corruption are drivers 

of violence. Washington needs to prioritize bolstering 

democratic governance and promoting transparency 

and accountability. US support for democratic institutions 

can help partner nations counter the efforts of foreign 

authoritarians to shape their domestic politics.

Finally, competition with global and regional authoritarian powers should be integral to the global fragility 

strategy because these states contribute to fragility 

and vie for influence in countries wracked by it. The 

strategy needs to prescribe ways to address the way 

each country contributes to the problem. Relatedly, the 

strategy also needs both to assume that any US engagement will take place where its rivals are competing for influence and to adjust its overall engagement 

to account for such spoilers.

The Changing Strategic Landscape

Martha Crenshaw

Summary

In the Global South, weak states are already destabilized by internal violence and both domestic and transnational 

terrorism. The pandemic introduces additional dangers, both short-term and long-term. It is essential that the long-term 

strategic environment is taken into account in responding to the COVID-19 crisis as well as to more immediate risks.

Long-Term Risks

One great risk is that the pandemic and the response to 

it will facilitate and encourage civil and regional conflict, 

violent extremism, and terrorism over the long term.1 The 

first potential problem is the lack of legitimacy, capability, 

and effectiveness of government institutions in fragile 

states. Poor governance, lack of credibility, inefficiency, 

and inequality will likely increase and be further exposed 

and exploited if local governments do not respond to 

a pandemic for which they are mostly ill prepared. The 

consequences of outbreaks among populations already displaced by fighting are potentially dire. Outside 

assistance is needed to ensure effective government 

responses, especially in health care, food security, 

housing, education, and humanitarian assistance.2

International cooperation is preferable to bilateral assistance programs, which foster suspicions of expanding 

national influence in the interest of great power competition. Such efforts need to be compatible with both 

counterterrorism and counter-extremism prevention 

measures, which often seem to be on a separate plane 

from aid as well as from each other.

The long-term economic and social consequences of 

both the COVID-19 crisis and the response to it also 

need to be considered. More people will live in poverty, unemployment will increase, more people will be 

displaced from traditional settings, conflict over scarce 

resources will increase, educational deficits are certain, 

corruption will deepen, and popular resentment will 

intensify.3

 Food insecurity is already increasing. Drops 

in remittances from richer countries are affecting dayto-day livelihoods. Poverty, although not a direct cause 

of terrorism, contributes to an environment that fosters 

discontent that extremists can exploit. Illicit economies 

offer opportunities for terrorist groups.

Negative long-term consequences for state capacity 

in the security sector, leading to further instability, will 

probably be uneven. In Africa, capacity in the weakest 
8 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

states—such as Somalia or Mali—is likely to decline the 

most precipitously. They are likely to struggle to maintain 

order and defend themselves against revolt or from internal coups. Stronger states may become more repressive 

in response to disorder, which would increase popular 

discontent, make violent opposition more attractive, 

and have extreme humanitarian consequences (such as 

population displacement, human rights abuses, and incarceration rates). The military and police forces of strong 

states are likely to become bigger players in governing. 

Increased authoritarianism will mean more dissent.

Short-Term Risks

In the short term, the dangers to security in fragile states 

are also urgent. In the immediate future, which side 

will be hurt most by the physical impact of the virus, 

government security forces or their violent opponents? 

Security forces, both national and international, can 

be weakened by illness in the ranks (as well as fear of 

contracting the virus, leading to desertions, shirking, and 

other performance deficits) and distracted by increased 

security pressures. As counterterrorism defenses erode, 

opportunities for violent extremism expand. In the Sahel, 

attacks from Islamist groups are both undermining security and hindering service delivery from national governments, multinational forces, and humanitarian organizations. This in turn increases the likelihood of negative 

outcomes such as failure to manage the health crisis. On 

the other hand, transnational networks of armed groups 

might be weakened if movement across borders is 

restricted. But if dispersed groups must depend more on 

local support, they may emerge stronger by forging ties 

with local dissidents and responding to popular grievances. They could become more embedded in local 

communities and allied with local elites. However, they 

often alienate locals with their extreme religious and 

social strictures, and thus the outcome is hard to predict. 

Alliances between jihadists and nationalists, ethnonationalists, separatists, or tribal factions complicate

conflict resolution even under noncrisis circumstances.

The pandemic also encourages belief in conspiracy theories and scapegoating, a common reaction to such a pervasive and invisible threat. Having an alien Other to blame 

is convenient. The effective risk is social fragmentation. 

If millenarian and apocalyptic worldviews are reinforced, 

motivation for violence will increase because the need to 

act will be framed as immediate and compelling. People 

inclined to believe conspiracy theories or who are psychologically distraught are easily exploited. The current crisis 

is also strengthening nationalist sentiment, xenophobia, 

and racism. Al Qaeda has called the COVID-19 pandemic 

divine retribution, for example.4 Violent oppositions can 

seize the opportunity to frame themselves as saviors or 

proto-governments competent to provide assistance 

when state government institutions fail.

Recommendations

The need for timely and decisive action in this crisis is 

clear and both short-term and long-term strategic outlooks are discouraging. The urgency of need and the 

responsibility that the international community shares 

should not be minimized.

An integrated response that includes the strategic 

elements described is imperative. A cohesive global 

approach that is coordinated and comprehensive is 

desperately needed. The need to act quickly should 

be balanced against the need to think about the 

problem of preventing further instability in weak states 

comprehensively, rather than through piecemeal approaches. As a corollary, security assistance should not 

strengthen military institutions at the expense of civilian 

institutions, for example, in public health and education.

If millenarian and apocalyptic worldviews are reinforced, motivation for violence will increase

because the need to act will be framed as immediate and compelling. People inclined to

believe conspiracy theories or who are psychologically distraught are easily exploited. 
USIP.ORG 9

Promoting Local

Ownership and Inclusion

Leveraging the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda

Kathleen Kuehnast and Amanda Long

Summary

To amplify the US global fragility strategy’s impact and prevent the “cascading crises” anticipated in the wake of the 

COVID-19 pandemic from wreaking havoc on the world’s most vulnerable people and countries, US policymakers working to advance the Global Fragility Act and the Women, Peace, and Security Act should combine forces. In the US fragility strategy and the ten-year country plans required under the act, policymakers need to integrate a proven method for 

improving global security—that is, a gender-inclusive approach to conflict resolution.

Women, Peace, and Security Act

In tandem with the new global fragility strategy, US 

policymakers are implementing the Women, Peace, and 

Security (WPS) Act, an innovative law signed in 2017 

that seeks to help prevent and mitigate violent conflict 

by amplifying women’s participation in decision-making 

processes. Reflecting UN Security Council Resolution 

1325 on Women, Peace and Security, the WPS Act 

recognizes the disproportionate impact of conflict on 

women and the critical role women play in the security 

and stability of a state. It also requires a whole-of-government strategy on integrating gender considerations 

into foreign policy and supporting women’s leadership 

in peacebuilding and conflict resolution. The lessons 

learned in the two decades since UNSCR 1325—and the 

commitments to empower half the population as allies 

and partners—will prove paramount to crafting a robust 

and enduring strategy to address global fragility.

The emphasis of the Global Fragility Act (GFA) on local 

ownership and civil society consultation offers one of 

the best opportunities for inclusive implementation of a 

government strategy for mitigating fragility. The bill stipulates that the US government should facilitate “participatory, locally led programs, empowering marginalized 

groups such as youth and women” and ensure “participatory engagement by civil society and local partners 

in the design, implementation, and monitoring of programs.”1 Endorsing this approach is simple, but operationalizing it in a fragile environment or conflict setting is rife 

with challenges. The WPS agenda offers a useful guide.

To ensure that civil society consultations are meaningful, policymakers could benefit from the WPS model. 

In developing its strategy for facilitating women’s 

engagement in conflict resolution and peacebuilding, 

the United Nations promoted National Action Plans on 

women, peace, and security, which eighty-six countries 

to date have published.2 According to this framework, 

partner governments host inclusive consultative processes that recognize women as equal partners and 

allow them to shape their agendas in a safe, accessible, and empowering environment.
10 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

Outside intervenors often conceive of local women 

in a conflict zone almost exclusively as either trainees 

or “subjects of research,” according to Liberia’s Nobel 

peace laureate and civil society leader Leymah Gbowee, 

rather than as experts in the problems at hand. To shift 

this perception, international interlocutors need to build 

inclusive listening sessions into their project designs and 

seek to understand and support local efforts already 

making strides to build peace. It is imperative that these 

listening sessions should recognize women as a diverse 

group—noting disparities in age, race, ethnicity, rural or 

urban backgrounds, and religion—and support networks 

among participants to sustain community engagement 

beyond the initial consultations.3

In applying these policies locally, the GFA’s implementers can build on a proven process for shaping development and peacebuilding programs that bolster local 

leadership, allocate adequate resources to local civil 

society groups, and heed the critical insights of women 

and girls on the front lines of conflict. As US officials select priority countries in which to implement the fragility 

strategy, they should give preference to those that 

have developed a National Action Plan because these 

governments have already signaled a commitment to 

partnering with women to improve peace and security.

The GFA calls for a rigorous monitoring and evaluation 

framework grounded in learning and experimentation, 

one of the act’s most innovative—and most challenging—directives. It also establishes a ten-year horizon 

for evaluating the strategy’s long-term impact, or the 

extent to which this model helps address the root 

causes of fragility by creating the conditions for lasting 

peace. Evaluating this progress means identifying 

sound metrics for assessing a country’s progression 

Hundreds of women marched ahead of Liberia’s presidential election, in Monrovia, Liberia, on October 9, 2017. (Photo by Jane Hahn/New York Times)
USIP.ORG 11

from fragility to stability; the treatment of women and 

girls needs to be a key criterion.

A solid body of qualitative and quantitative research 

demonstrates the positive relationship between gender 

equality and state security. Unequal societies are twice as 

likely to experience internal conflict: over nearly twenty 

years of peace processes, women’s participation made 

peace accords 35 percent more likely to endure at least 

fifteen years. These data demonstrate two distinct but important points. One, women’s status is a key predictor of 

state fragility or stability. Two, advancing women’s rights 

is an effective way to reduce fragility. In practical terms, 

if 50 percent of the population is unable to contribute to 

societal stability, reducing fragility is an empty mandate.

Strategies that aim to reduce fragility need to analyze 

gender inequalities in that society from design to monitoring and evaluation. Relatedly, they need to evaluate 

the hurdles to and opportunities for bringing positive 

change for women—and do so by consulting both 

women and men early and often. Tools for that analysis are many and varied. The US Institute of Peace’s 

Gender Inclusive Framework and Theory is a highly 

adaptable, easy-to-use analytic option to better understand the context and challenges for women and men, 

especially in fragile and conflict settings.4

 The UN’s 

Gender Inequality Index tracks the disparity between 

female and male achievements across three dimensions: reproductive health, empowerment, and the labor market.5 Saferworld’s Gender and Conflict Analysis 

Toolkit embeds gender indicators directly into a conflict 

analysis framework.6 The Peace Research Institute of 

Oslo and the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, 

and Security created the Women, Peace and Security 

Index, which analyzes trends in women’s well-being 

across eleven indicators focused on justice, inclusion, 

and security.7

 Independently, these four examples offer 

both guides for gender analysis at the project level and 

concrete data on gender equality, both of which could 

be directly embedded in the fragility strategy.

To increase state stability—and in so doing women’s security and prosperity—policymakers should measure the positive impact of the fragility strategy against a gender index, 

and integrate indicators from the suggested resources into 

its monitoring and evaluation framework. Identifying existing gender-sensitive systems at the country level, such 

as those run by National Action Plans, could help prevent 

project duplication and save money and resources.

Government Personnel Training

To limit the risk that humanitarian aid workers and international peacekeepers perpetuate cycles of conflict 

and fragility, the global fragility strategy should mandate 

pre-deployment training on gender sensitivity and codes 

of conduct. One woman in five displaced by violent 

crises experiences sexual violence—including at the 

hands of military personnel, humanitarian aid workers, or 

peacekeepers deployed to help them.8

 If unaddressed, 

this abuse can undermine the legitimacy of peacebuilding efforts and exacerbate drivers of fragility and conflict.

In recent years, the United Nations and international 

NGOs have stepped up their efforts to tackle this scourge 

and improve accountability mechanisms. Governments, 

though, need to do more. The WPS Act took up the 

mantle by mandating gender-sensitive training for all US 

government personnel deploying to war-torn or conflict-affected locations. US agencies—Defense, State, Homeland 

Security, and International Development—signaled a 

commitment to executing this mandate in the strategies 

they drafted for implementing the WPS Act. The plans 

include training personnel—including both contractors and 

employees—in international human rights law, strategies 

for protecting civilians from violence and exploitation, and 

how women’s equality advances state stability.

The forthcoming global fragility strategy and its tenyear plans for priority countries present an opportunity 

to take these efforts to the next level. In these plans, 

policymakers should build on the WPS Act’s provisions 

mandating gender-sensitive training and learn from 

their shortcomings, or risk losing hard-won progress.
12 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

Recommendations

Insistence on women’s meaningful participation in civil 

society consultations is more than appropriate, but 

carries a caution against symbolic efforts by external 

facilitators and country programs that do not yield real 

dividends for women.

In selecting pilot countries, those that have already developed a National Action Plan on women, peace, and 

security should be prioritized. Relatedly, monitoring and 

evaluating impact should include both gender analysis 

and gender-sensitive indicators.

Pre-deployment training on gender sensitivity and 

codes of conduct will both safeguard standards and 

ensure that military personnel, humanitarian aid workers, and peacekeepers do not perpetuate cycles of 

violence and fragility.

Ensuring Local Ownership “from the Inside Out”

Amy Potter Czajkowski

Summary

Local ownership and leadership are critical to preventing extremism and violent conflict and stabilizing conflict-affected 

states. The more ownership and agency for peace from those in the affected locale, the more contextual and sustainable the solutions for peace and stability. Organizations, governments, and funders come and go, but communities remain. What is known about promoting genuine local ownership from the inside out? Many lessons can be learned from 

a community-based peacebuilding program successfully brought to scale in Sierra Leone after that country’s brutal civil 

war, and that has since helped rebuild governing structures from the ground up.

Fambul Tok in Sierra Leone

For more than a decade, the Sierra Leonean nongovernmental organization Fambul Tok, the US-based 

peacebuilding foundation Catalyst for Peace (CFP), and 

communities across Sierra Leone worked together to 

develop processes and organizational structures that 

leveraged latent community assets.1

 This approach 

supported communities in leading their repair and development and resisting violence and extremism. The 

outside actors invited communities to identify their own 

answers and walked with them through this process.

This process of reconciliation, community organizing, 

and development is called Fambul Tok—the same 

name as the NGO. It started with a question posed to 

community members, asking them what it would take 

for everyone affected by war to have the opportunity to reconcile. The inclusive organizing led not only 

to reconciliation but also to inclusive structures that 

eventually also advanced women’s leadership, conflict 

resolution, and development.

These structures and the local initiatives they started

have continued, taking on a life of their own and 

leading to the chiefdom- and district-inclusive committees that guide local governments in working through 

local conflicts. The Fambul Tok district and community 

structures also inspired the Wan Fambul (One Family) 

National Framework for Inclusive Governance and 

Local Development, a national policy working to center 

community initiative in peace and development. This 

initiative sparked what has become a whole systems 

approach that puts community ideas and energy at 

the center of the national system, thus allowing for a 

political process that moves from the “inside of the 

community out” toward the national government and 
USIP.ORG 13

international community. “Inside out” is a better metaphor than “bottom up” for ensuring local ownership because it calls attention to the repair work that needs to 

be done inside communities before external resources 

and investments can be used effectively—including to 

build up regional and national structures.

Although based in a specific time and place with its 

unique challenges and opportunities, the principles 

and strategies that guided this work in Sierra Leone 

from the inside out can inform other settings.

An inside-out approach draws on three principles. First 

is that everyone is part of a whole, connected system. 

Recognizing and bringing the parts into alignment taps 

into the power and agency of both the parts and the 

whole. Second is that mutual and respectful relationships are possible and necessary. Relationships are 

the glue that bring the whole into alignment, whether 

in the community or between government, civil society 

organizations, and funders. Third is that answers are in 

the places they are needed. Contextually appropriate 

ideas, solutions, and resources anchor sustainable 

peace and development and are often present even 

when not immediately visible.

The metaphor of a cup, which represents a community, 

helps explain what an inside-out approach entails. When 

the community has experienced harm and violence (latent and overt), the cup is cracked—representing broken 

relationships between people and groups—and community capacities are diminished. When national governments or national or international organizations pour 

external resources (water) into the cup, the water flows 

through the cracks and is wasted. Because most people 

in and outside the community do not see the community 

A charity worker, center, from the GOAL humanitarian agency, educates children in Freetown, Sierra Leone, on how to prevent and identify the Ebola 

virus in their communities on September 18, 2014. (Photo by Michael Duff/AP)
14 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

cup (the larger system), more water (resources, including taxpayer dollars) is often poured in when the initial 

efforts fail, which risks widening the cracks (exacerbating 

conflict) and depleting resources.

Unless the cracks in the community are seen, named, 

and addressed, the community and its resources 

(including relationships) remain invisible. When the 

community works together, using representative structures and inclusive processes, it finds answers on its 

own and can begin to address conflicts and issues that 

might lead to violence. Just as a repaired cup holds 

water—using resources effectively—so does a transformed community draw on the powerful resources it 

already has.

Four particular strategies have helped those outside a 

community (funders, organizations, and even governments) strengthen communities from the inside out.

The process of investing in a thorough, inclusive 

design process should involve asset mapping and 

reaching out to diverse voices. It also involves working 

at relationship development among all the people and 

groups needed to carry out the work of creating the 

community organizing core. The Fambul Tok process 

invited representatives from the community to form a 

leadership team to lead a process that involved the 

larger community to address harms and identify development priorities.

Supporting structures that represent the whole is 

essential. As the Fambul Tok process evolved, it 

became clear that structures were needed to bring 

more of the whole system into alignment—starting 

with communities, then working at the chiefdom, district, national, and international levels. Each level had 

different, complementary capacities. Sometimes the 

structures exist and simply need to be reinvigorated, 

and sometimes they need to be created.

People often believed that they had nothing to offer 

and thus looked for answers and resources outside the 

community. Investing in relationships and accompaniment yields dividends. Fambul Tok staff worked with 

community volunteers to design a process to repair 

relationships and identify existing strengths and resources. As a funding partner, CFP “walked” with the staff 

as they worked on organizational development issues 

and strategy. CFP prioritized the time needed to work in 

alignment with program principles and maximize creativity, adapting requirements to support the evolution of 

the program. CFP and Fambul Tok collectively identified 

the roles that an outside partner and funder could play 

to support community initiative. Those roles included 

connecting community initiatives with international 

organizations, funders, and district and national governments, and supporting community policy initiatives. 

Outside action was valuable to the extent that it ignited 

internal capacity, such that resources could be offered (if 

needed) from the outside in ways that strengthened the 

initiative and met the needs of those on the inside.

Acknowledge the capacity of a community to repair 

itself even though community capacity and solutions 

may not be immediately apparent. Doing this may 

require rethinking the language used, which often runs 

counter to intentions. For example, when labels such 

as fragile are used to describe a person or country, 

they highlight weakness rather than the assets that are 

needed to strengthen a community and to elicit the answers that are waiting there. The Fambul Tok process 

progressed through eliciting the cultural strengths and 

experiences in a community that create unity, highlighting and elevating them, and giving them space to grow 

through the leadership of the community.

Unless the cracks in the community are seen, named, and addressed, the community and

its resources (including relationships) remain invisible. When the community works together,

using representative structures and inclusive processes, it finds answers on its own.
USIP.ORG 15

Recommendations

Adopting an inside-out approach to conflict prevention and peacebuilding taps into the strength elicited 

through repairing community relationships. The approach described in this article enables aligning local, 

national, and global structures with inclusive community structures at the center and as the driving force 

of creativity, solutions, and action. Although the model 

does not capture all of the functions of peacebuilding, 

governance, or development activities, it can provide 

a structure and foster the local leadership needed to 

conduct other initiatives.

Identifying the many points of engagement in a national 

or local context, keeping in mind that sustainability will 

require aligning the efforts with the larger system, is 

essential. In Sierra Leone, peacebuilding work started 

with consultations at the district level, which led to direct 

engagement at the community level. In another place, 

engagement may need to start at the national level and 

focus on development rather than reconciliation, finding 

creative ways to bring in community voices, and gradually 

deepening external engagement with communities. The 

goal should be to acknowledge the many parts of the national or societal system as valuable, and over time work 

toward alignment and integration with those systems.

Using Everyday Peace Indicators to Increase Local Ownership

Pamina Firchow

Summary

Local ownership, a policy term commonly used in the development and peacebuilding sectors, signals the degree to 

which local actors feel invested in and are involved in developing programs intended to support them. Various initiatives promote and foster local ownership. The experience drawn from the Everyday Peace Indicators approach and its 

initiatives helps identify concrete steps policymakers should consider when developing country strategies for strengthening the potential for local ownership.1

What Is Local Ownership?

Historically, grassroots activists have always demanded 

to be included in policy decisions and have struggled 

over issues related to power and inclusion in decision-making. Policymakers thus use the term local 

ownership to refer to processes that foster inclusion 

of beneficiaries in consultation, design, implementation, and monitoring processes related to international 

development programs.2 The goals are to promote local 

relevance of interventions, sustain activities beyond the 

presence of external actors, and promote mutually beneficial relationships between global and local actors.

Conflict resolution and peacebuilding are about altering power structures and relationships in a country and 

its society. Especially in conflict-affected settings, local 

ownership is important because it is about power and 

inclusion. People need to have a stake in what they are 

receiving and feel responsible for the outcome if external 

projects are to succeed.3

 Local people have to actively 

engage in the development of their own communities, as 

well as reflect and act on ways to improve their situations 

and foster peace. Local ownership can allow for openings to emerge in local power structures because locals 

are empowered to advocate for their needs and goals.

Local ownership presents challenges to foreign donors 

given the political and bureaucratic hurdles in both 

donor and partner countries. These hurdles can often 

impede true local ownership because the programming 
16 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

cannot address fundamental power disparities between 

the funders and the funded. This can lead to artificial 

and inorganic programming that is not sustainable in the 

long term. Funders are often reluctant to release control 

for fear of actual or perceived inadequate local capacity 

and excessive local corruption. Releasing donor control 

is key to local ownership, and positive accompaniment 

of the process is key to making it work.

Seven steps are crucial.4

Step 1: Who is local? The first step is determining 

which local actors are important and assessing the 

power relations likely to influence local inclusion. 

Multiple actors can fall into that category—national 

governments, subnational governments, national civil 

society actors, local civil society actors, and individuals, 

among others—and all can relate to each other through 

various hierarchies and power relations. In an effort 

to work with locals, international peacebuilders often 

rely on the same group of urban and elite civil society 

representatives, which reinforces cycles of exclusion of 

marginalized groups and results in power imbalances.

Step 2: Go directly to the source. Policymakers need to 

consider establishing relationships with local civil society 

to work directly with national and community-based civil 

society groups. Working through international nongovernmental organizations creates a power imbalance 

between local and international NGOs and wastes 

precious resources by giving funding to brokers. Priority 

should be on developing relationships with local actors.

Step 3: Eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy. 

Policymakers should allow locals to lead the programming agenda and to encourage unrestricted funding 

Indigenous people march during a national strike in Bogotá, Colombia, on October 21, 2020. (Photo by Fernando Vergara/AP)
USIP.ORG 17

schemes. Involve external actors only when locals 

request technical support.

Step 4: Prioritize accountability to communities.

Policymakers should use participatory and collaborative forms of consultation, design, monitoring, and 

evaluation to encourage learning and innovation and 

to limit complex reporting requirements. (See below for 

a brief overview of the Everyday Peace Indicators, one 

measurement tool that allows for bottom-up reporting.)

Step 5: Less is more. Sometimes it is necessary to put 

more resources into fewer projects in order to ensure 

quality results. Focusing deeply on fewer efforts is key 

to the sixth and seventh steps, which are critical for 

local ownership to flourish.

Step 6: Accompaniment is key. Policymakers should 

put resources into developing collaborative and productive relationships over time with local stakeholder 

target groups, because trust is fundamental to fostering local ownership.

Step 7: Longer funding cycles (peacebuilding takes 

time). Lastly, policymakers should commit to supporting fewer efforts over a longer period to secure better 

outcomes. Demonstrating a track record of being a 

supportive, positive, and sustained presence in the 

peacebuilding community is essential.

Why Indicators Matter

A focus on indicators is critical because indicators 

hold authority and direction over international policy. 

Indicators can be used to a variety of ends, including 

accountability, advocacy, and impact of initiatives.

Everyday Peace Indicators (EPI) is a methodology 

created to help bridge the divide between everyday 

people and national and international elites. Local 

communities are the best source of knowledge for 

identifying key signals and changes within their own 

context. This approach works with communities to 

produce indicators of difficult-to-measure concepts like 

peace. Indicators collected using EPI harness community knowledge and definitions to best measure social 

concepts such as peace, reconciliation, and justice. 

Because the indicators are generated by the people 

who have experienced them, they can be analyzed to 

clarify and explicate how communities understand the 

concepts, what changes they expect to see, and how 

to measure progress. Interventions can thus be better 

designed and implemented to effectively meet the 

needs of the communities. The methodology sustains 

local participation while ensuring local ownership of the 

data created, with local partners informing the research 

design, data generation, and monitoring process.

Recommendations

Policymakers need to think carefully about defining 

local target groups when developing programming targeted at local ownership. Is the target political leaders 

in a local municipality or community leaders in villages 

or everyday people in a neighborhood? Local power 

dynamics are complex and constantly evolving, especially in conflict-affected contexts.

Staying connected with communities and partners as 

much as possible is important. A particular concern is 

to be especially careful about spreading programming 

too thin. It is therefore important to focus on sustained, 

long-term work in a few locations to establish and build 

strong relationships.

Providing partners the space and time to ensure that 

they are accountable to the communities they serve 

rather than to donors and the international community 

is essential. Adaptable design, monitoring, and evaluation tools that may be unconventional but demonstrate 

compelling results when working in the peace and 

conflict sector should be encouraged.
18 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

Ensuring Accountability

Innovation, Learning, and Accountability

Susanna P. Campbell

Summary

To ensure that foreign assistance both is grounded in conflict-sensitive assessment, monitoring, and evaluation, and 

integrates true local and national ownership throughout the program cycle, US government agencies and departments 

need to combine top-down accountability with bottom-up innovation, learning, and accountability.

Top-Down Accountability

Top-down accountability sets priorities. Whether in 

compliance reports for accountants, program evaluations, or reports to headquarters or Congress, accountability aims to ensure that foreign assistance achieves 

the foreign policy aims of the US government and the 

people it represents. International aid is a foreign policy tool to achieve particular objectives. The objective 

of the Global Fragility Act is to prevent violent conflict 

and extremism. For the global fragility strategy to ensure that US foreign assistance focuses on preventing 

violent conflict and extremism, it must establish topdown accountability mechanisms that enable federal 

agencies and departments to prioritize prevention and 

peacebuilding over other competing priorities. These 

mechanisms can help US missions and agencies determine what types of interventions they implement. They 

cannot, however, ensure that the interventions will be 

effective. Top-down accountability alone will not prevent violent conflict or extremism. Effective peacebuilding and conflict prevention also require country-level 

innovation, learning, and bottom-up accountability.1

Both preventing conflict and peacebuilding are inherently experimental in that the dynamics they aim 

to mitigate have not yet unfolded. Such efforts aim 

to change highly fluid conflict dynamics, and thus 

whether they will work is at best uncertain. Each intervention is based on a theory of change that describes 

how the given intervention will contribute to peace.2

To achieve the desired change, activities need to be 

adapted to and grounded in the particulars of the 

context, both when the intervention is designed and 

when it is implemented. To adapt an experimental intervention to a changing context, actors need to innovate and learn. To learn, implementing agencies need 

to be explicit about their theory of change, gather 

regular information about whether the intervention is 

achieving this desired change, use this information to 

question the relevance of the theory of change, and 

adapt the theory of change the intervention to better 

fit the changing context.3

 This type of adaptive programming runs counter to common practice in most 

international development, security, and humanitarian 

agencies, but is necessary for effective peacebuilding 

and conflict prevention interventions in fragile and 

conflict-affected contexts.

Learning has multiple meanings. It can refer to the 

intake of information but also to action taken (based 

on that information) to reduce the gap between the 

organization’s aims and outcomes. It is the latter type of 

learning that matters most for intervention in fragile and 

conflict-affected states. To achieve complex outcomes 
USIP.ORG 19

in changing contexts, organizations need to question 

regularly whether they are achieving the change that 

they want to achieve, why, and why not. This requires 

double-loop learning, which demands that organizations, first, regularly process real-time information 

about a program’s success and failure in an open and 

nondefensive way, and, second, take regular actions 

to reduce the gap between the program’s aims and 

outcomes.4

 Although double-loop learning matters in 

all contexts, it is likely to matter most in changing contexts characterized by uncertainty about exactly how 

the intervention should be implemented or whether it 

is even the appropriate intervention.5 Monitoring and 

evaluation can help double-loop learning, but can also 

hinder it if information about intermediary program outcomes is not considered by decision-makers, failures 

are hidden, or adjustments to reduce the gap between 

aims and outcomes are discouraged.

Bottom-Up Accountability

To identify whether a program is having its intended preventive or peacebuilding effect, implementing agencies 

need to establish relationships, feedback mechanisms, 

and trust with the national and local stakeholders most 

affected by the program. In other words, they need to 

create bottom-up accountability mechanisms if conflict 

prevention, peacebuilding, and preventing violent extremism programs are to be effective. This ensures that 

program staff receive feedback about what is working, 

what is not working, and what can be done to make it 

work better. Bottom-up (local) accountability requires that 

the local and national stakeholders who are most affected by the program are involved in the program, design, 

monitoring, and evaluation of the project.6 It requires that 

they are given the authority to hold the US government 

and its implementing partners accountable for achieving high-quality outcomes in their countries. Without 

Government employees attend a class on victim protection as part of a USAID-funded project in Sonsonate, El Salvador, on May 25, 2018. (Photo by 

Meridith Kohut/New York Times)
20 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

bottom-up accountability, the aid agencies’ primary 

incentive is to spend money on the tasks outlined in the 

original project document, not to engage in the time-consuming work of ensuring that it fits with the changing 

preferences and needs of those affected by the conflict.7

Recommendations

Country plans need to outline an annual strategic and 

learning process rather than a programmatic plan. They 

need to define the annual process by which the United 

States and its implementing partners will gather comprehensive data, develop shared priorities to respond 

to that context, identify the theory of change associated 

with each priority, explain interventions for each priority, 

decide on the specific bottom-up accountability mechanisms for each intervention, and identify the shared 

decision-making body that will decide how to adjust and 

adapt the interventions in response to feedback.

One of the important innovations of the act is biennial 

reporting to Congress. Setting targets that focus on 

the core priorities of the Global Fragility Act can help 

ensure that US foreign policy and assistance prioritize 

preventing violent conflict and extremism. If the focus 

is only on meeting measurable targets established in 

Washington, however, it is clearly not on bottom-up 

accountability, learning, and innovation. The reports to 

Congress should focus on whether the US mission and 

its implementing partners are contributing to general 

conflict prevention and peacebuilding aims. To demonstrate this, the reports should include a summary of 

how these aims are met, or not, in each context, using 

locally derived indicators.8

The reports should also detail changes to conflict 

prevention and peacebuilding interventions and the 

lessons learned from these changes as well as whether US missions and agencies implement strategies that 

involve an inclusive group of local stakeholders. By 

monitoring the how of effective preventive programming and implementation, Congress can help create 

the incentive for federal agencies and departments to 

engage in the difficult and time-consuming work of localized program design, learning, and innovation. It will 

also help create a knowledge repository of the lessons 

learned. If the goal of the ten-year strategy is to improve the functioning of US foreign assistance in fragile 

and conflict-affected states, each pilot country needs to 

continuously refine and improve its knowledge base by 

monitoring and reporting on its learning.

To improve the effectiveness of US interventions in 

fragile and conflict-affected states, the global fragility 

strategy needs to include clear top-down and bottom-up accountability objectives. The sets of objectives 

should be consistent with each other, and should be 

reflected in the ten-year country plans and biennial 

reports to Congress.

One of the important innovations of the act is biennial reporting to Congress. Setting targets that focus 

on the core priorities of the Global Fragility Act can help ensure that US foreign policy and assistance 

prioritize preventing violent conflict and extremism.
USIP.ORG 21

Promoting Good Governance in Security Sectors

Jodi Vittori

Summary

Corruption in the security sector in fragile states is frequently part of a strategy to help maintain political settlements, provide rent-seeking and patronage opportunities, and ensure that the security sector will help prevent popular calls for economic and political reforms. The result is often an entrenched sector incapable of defending the state against internal and 

external threats. This undermines US foreign policy and national security interests, including counterterrorism objectives. 

Thus, centering anticorruption and good governance in security assistance programs, helping facilitate citizen engagement, and adopting specific corruption risk assessments will be important in achieving Global Fragility Act goals.

Mitigating Corruption

Mitigating security sector corruption is, or should 

be, an essential element of implementing the Global 

Fragility Act (GFA). Any corruption, but especially in 

the security sector, undermines the ability of military, 

police, and intelligence forces to respond to internal 

and external threats. Correspondingly, it contributes 

significantly to state fragility and vulnerability to violent 

conflict. In countries already grappling with fragility and 

violence, global stresses associated with the response 

to COVID-19 add to the complexity. Meanwhile, the 

worldwide economic decline implies a dramatic cut in 

resources for both legitimate state use and patronage. 

Further, state elites may enable large security sector 

budgets and additional corruption to ensure that security forces help resist popular calls for greater resources 

for public health and economic assistance, thereby contributing to greater civil instability. The lack of oversight 

in financial sectors, clampdowns on free press and civil 

society groups, and lack of transparency in contracting 

in response to the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbate 

these risks. Now that the GFA is enacted, the United 

States needs to curb predatory behavior by supporting 

defense and security institution building and by supporting accountability and transparency through robust 

parliamentary, civil society, and media oversight.

In many fragile states, the security sector is key to 

maintaining the regime and associated privileged elites 

because regime survival often largely depends on the 

use or threat of violence against its citizenry.1

 Fragile regimes maintain power and seek legitimacy by appropriating the state’s military, police, intelligence agencies, 

and quasi-state groups such as militias into networks of 

corruption and patronage. Unpopular regimes recognize potential disloyalty by security forces through, for 

instance, possible support for civil protests, popular 

uprisings, or even military coup d’états. Keeping the 

security sector loyal is thus often an overriding preoccupation. Defending the state from various internal and 

external threats may well be secondary.

Enabling corruption and permitting other predatory 

behavior by the military or the police helps ensure 

their loyalty. Corrupt procurement and service contracts are a way to pass money and other resources 

to favored security sector elites through kickbacks 

or even fake contracts. This has been the practice in 

places such as South Sudan and Afghanistan, where 

natural resource and other contracts are diverted as 

part of maintaining political settlements. The result 

of entrenched security sector corruption is often a 

hollowed-out sector, unwilling and incapable of defending the state against internal and external threats, 

allowing terrorism, insurgency, and criminality to grow 

into existential threats.

Corruption is made especially easy by the lack of 

transparency and accountability in security sectors. 

According to Transparency International, 
22 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

In many countries with high levels of inequality and poverty, defense budgets are the largest areas of government 

spending, yet receive the least scrutiny or attention. A lack 

of accountability and the prevalence of knee-jerk secrecy 

in defense budgets can become an easy way for corrupt 

governments to hide money, extract kickbacks, and pay 

for extensive patronage networks.2

An analysis of the Transparency International Defense and 

Security Government Defense Integrity Index for 2020 

shows that acquisition planning, parliamentary oversight, 

and auditor effectiveness are severely lacking in more 

than half of Middle East and North African countries.3

By implication, a strategy to gradually and deliberately improve the relationships between a regime, its 

security forces, and its population will be key to improving state legitimacy and resiliency. This must include 

training and incentivizing security sectors and their 

regimes to improve transparency and accountability. 

The United States also needs to encourage political 

institutions, civil society, and public space for citizens to 

facilitate effective oversight as part of broader security 

assistance and good governance efforts.

Recommendations

Defense institution building should be front and center of 

any security assistance offered in priority countries under 

the GFA, and anticorruption programs mandated as part 

of all such programs. Reform needs to be a condition for 

assistance—including any arms or services associated 

with sales or “train and equip” programs—especially for 

fragile states not in full-blown conflict situations.

The Global Fragility Strategy should emphasize the need 

for the United States to help establish the conditions 

that enable a state’s citizens to better hold their security 

institutions to account. The State Department and USAID 

could assist in capacity building for parliaments and civil 

People wait in line for food staples in Caracas, Venezuela, on January 26, 2019. (Photo by Meridith Kohut/New York Times)
USIP.ORG 23

society and in helping states develop effective anticorruption oversight of security sectors. 

The strategy should also include clear guidance to all 

relevant agencies, instructing them to assess security 

sector corruption risks as a baseline and as part of 

measurement, assessment, and evaluation. Two indices—the TI-DS Government Defense Integrity Index and 

the World Justice Project’s annual Rule of Law Index—

already account for issues related to security sector 

governance, and others can help in this process.

Finally, the strategy should address the impact of security assistance programs on corruption. The National 

Security Strategy and Defense Department doctrine, 

training, and campaign and operational plans should 

all address corruption in the security sector. The State, 

Defense, and Commerce Departments should review 

arms and dual use programs to align them with GFA 

country plans.

Examining Perceptions and Biases 

Mareike Schomerus

Summary

In implementing the Global Fragility Act of 2019, policymakers will need to rely on their understanding of conflict drivers and how stabilization and conflict prevention occur. A shared understanding across government agencies is thus 

essential to aligning diplomacy, development, and defense activities. Equally important, however, will be to ensure 

that diplomats and development workers understand the contexts in which they are working and have the flexibility to 

adapt to the perceptions and realities of citizens in conflict countries. 

Aligning Diplomacy, Development, and Defense

More than a decade of research by the Secure 

Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC) has demonstrated that how a citizen sees a situation is at least as important, if not more so, than what might seem like objectively 

measurable progress.1 We call the many layers that influence how people experience a situation the mental landscape.2 Further, how legitimacy is created in situations 

of fragility is often quite different from how interventions 

seek to support it, usually by improving service delivery.3

Perceptions matter on all sides. When policymakers rely 

on personal understandings and mental models of what 

constitutes an improving situation or legitimate institution 

or service, their interventions could make things worse.

The broad, innovative authorities provided to US policymakers under the new legislation should be used to 

ensure that, rather than being dictated from Washington 

and imposed from the outside, stabilization and prevention 

programs and country strategies in particular countries 

reflect careful empirical research concerning what constitutes legitimacy and how citizens experience a situation 

in that context. When implementing Global Fragility Act 

(GFA) country strategies and interventions, US embassy 

staff should be encouraged to adopt reflective approaches 

and continuously adapt their programs to changes in how 

communities perceive programs. Although USAID’s Office 

of Transition Initiatives may be positioned to carry out 

adaptive programming, policymakers need to recognize 

that support to building trust in government and state legitimacy is not a process that can be achieved on a project 

cycle, but requires an adaptive, multiyear country policy 

strategy, nimble management by the embassy team, and a 

commitment to research and learning. 
24 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

Fragility in Context

The GFA does not define fragility but instead conceptualizes it as the absence of stability, that is, the conditions 

that might foster extremism and violent conflict, the processes that marginalize and exclude groups of people, 

and the institutions and actors that lack legitimacy. Part 

of the GFA’s directive is for policymakers to pursue “an 

analysis of the conditions that contribute to violence and 

fragility.”4 This analysis is prescribed at both the local and 

national level, but the overall GFA framing prioritizes the 

state as an organizing entity. This model of a fragile state, 

however, does not capture how many people in reality 

experience either “the state” or fragility. Someone living 

in a fragile situation may perceive and experience fragility as a stable state of certainty (existing powers tightly 

regulate exclusive access to resources) or as an unstable 

state of uncertainty (conflict situations can be very fluid).

The GFA stresses the need for “participatory, locally led 

programs empowering marginalized groups such as youth 

and women, inclusive dialogues and conflict resolution 

processes” and for context specificity.5 SLRC research 

indicates that policymakers’ understandings of these 

concepts may be problematic; thus, policymakers should 

be encouraged to reflect on whether their approaches are 

consistent with local articulations of the concepts.

Programs that support inclusion can overlook people’s 

experience of violent conflict. That experience can 

shape perceptions and expectations of inclusion, including increasing the perceived standards of fairness.6 The 

sentiment of fairness is often outcome based. This sets 

up a particular challenge for programs and processes 

that aim to be inclusive and fair, yet can only be experienced as such if they produce a positive outcome for 

everyone against increased fairness standards.

Context specificity can become a reductive concept. 

External actors can easily overestimate how much they 

know about complex, deeply historicized situations of 

tension. Context-specific engagement can be reduced 

to implementing what is considered best practice from 

the implementer’s perspective. Facilitating positive 

change through a program might require local staff to 

abide by international norms and policy and program 

imperatives while seeking to do what they consider 

best for the local context.7

Empowerment is granting power to someone often without considering existing power relations. Policymakers 

should be encouraged to acknowledge the risks involved for actors in being empowered. The notion of 

empowerment is deeply linked to a notion of agency. 

Empowerment is expected to create agency and to allow 

locally driven mechanisms to advance community resilience, accountability, and stability. Empowerment assumes 

that groups or individuals are able to deviate from existing 

social norms without cost, such as by investing in education when it might break social norms. Taking the risk 

of an investment in the future requires trust in those who 

support such risk-taking; if such trust does not exist, taking 

a risk on the future becomes reckless.8 The lack of trust 

that can result can lead to further obstacles to change.

Recommendations

Diplomats and aid workers should be encouraged to conduct or commission empirical research about what makes 

institutions legitimate in specific contexts. Relatedly, policymakers in the field should take a reflective approach 

to implementing the GFA, including by articulating the 

mental models that underpin how they understand or imagine fragility, and ensuring that their policy and program 

interventions are informed by context-specific research.

Genuinely context-specific approaches require research and analysis on behavioral patterns and 

perceptions and on how the two interact in different 

contexts. Building trust in government and state legitimacy is a process and cannot be achieved on a project 

cycle, but requires instead sustained diplomatic and 

program engagement by donors.
USIP.ORG 25

Leveraging Programs 

and Diplomacy

Integrating Diplomacy and Development Programming

Sarah Rose

Summary

In the United States, coordination between diplomacy and development has been inconsistent, hampered at times 

by things like bureaucratic turf battles, limited funding, and ambiguous authorities. The Global Fragility Act promises 

to improve coherence between diplomacy and development efforts to address the root causes of fragility and violent 

conflict. It directs the State Department, USAID, and other agencies to develop a joint strategy around shared long-term 

goals and to coordinate their approaches to achieve them. 

The Imperative

Fragility is often at least in part rooted in intentional choices by powerful elites to maximize their interests at the 

expense of the public’s. The resulting political or social 

exclusion can generate grievances and create conditions 

for violence to emerge.1 These dynamics suggest that 

promoting inclusion will likely emerge as a central objective in many Global Fragility Act (GFA) focus countries.

Achieving this objective will require alignment within 

and across the diplomacy and development spheres 

on social cohesion and inclusion goals and how to 

achieve them. Providing aid can help address perceptions of injustice by expanding service delivery, but 

people’s perceptions of the state are colored by more 

than service provision.2 Foreign assistance promoting 

good governance can also help, but funds are usually 

small and programs tend to provide technical solutions 

to discrete governance challenges rather than tackle 

the complex political dynamics at their root. Diplomatic 

modalities to encourage and foster inclusion and social 

cohesion are critical complements.3

 Further, in the face 

of actions that reinforce exclusionary rule, even the 

best aid programs will fall short of potential if US diplomats overlook shrinking civil liberties.4

Recommendations

Several operational and structural approaches would help 

facilitate better integration between aid and diplomacy. A 

first step in terms of operational coordination would be 

to lay the groundwork—and ensure accountability—for 

a coherent US government response to increasing 

patterns of exclusion, including democratic declines 

and closing civic space. To that end, each GFA country 

strategy should center around governance and include 

an agreed upon statement on what patterns of actions 

would prompt a US response and how agencies would 

coordinate their approaches.

The State Department and USAID each conduct 

political and conflict analyses, but the quality and 

comprehensiveness of these products vary, and the 

products are seldom shared across agencies in a way 

that fosters “singing from the same song sheet.” GFA 

implementation needs to ensure enough staff and 

resources to track key political economy and conflict 
26 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

questions in focus countries on an ongoing, iterative 

basis because point-in-time assessments are soon outdated. Similarly, embassy teams should allocate staff 

and resources to expand their connections beyond a 

well-known set of capital city–based, elite interlocutors 

to include second-tier influencers and informal political 

and economic structures.5 Further, political economy 

and conflict analyses, accompanied by recommended 

actions, need to be shared across agencies and, as 

appropriate, with other donors and partners involved in 

US-funded efforts.6

For political economy and conflict analyses to inform 

programming decisions, aid programs and diplomatic interventions also need to be flexible enough to adapt to 

new or improved information about changes in context 

or program performance. Indeed, more flexible programs are associated with more favorable outcomes, especially in fluid contexts such as fragile states. Adaptive 

programming has emerged as a priority at USAID and in 

the GFA, but because risk aversion and time pressure 

on staff may contribute to a preference for tried-and-true 

tools, embassy and mission leadership will need to promote more adaptive approaches. A shift toward more 

adaptive programming needs to be accompanied by a 

shift in expectations for accountability that entails less 

emphasis on counting outputs, more communication 

between implementers and overseers, greater attention 

to the feedback loops that inform program adjustments, 

and more focus on program outcomes.7

The GFA calls for compact-based partnerships in which 

donors and the partner country government agree to 

work toward shared, country-led objectives and outline 

each party’s contributions toward these goals. Partner 

country contributions often include policy reforms that 

advance inclusion or shift political or economic risks. 

Diplomats can reinforce messaging around these reforms to secure buy-in, and aid programs can support 

technical aspects of reform implementation. Tying 

aid packages to reform is another possibility.8 If done 

well and in the right circumstances, such an approach 

could both help empower reformers and improve aid 

outcomes, given that assistance tends to be more 

effective in more favorable policy environments. GFA 

implementation should explore opportunities to link 

aid to reform but needs to ensure that any conditions 

support local reform processes, allow local leadership 

over both their design and implementation, focus on 

outcomes rather than prescribed forms, and have a 

long enough timeline to build local support and participation. Conditions also need to be accompanied by a 

credible promise that funding will be withheld if reforms 

are unsuccessful. Bureaucratic pressure to spend 

down budgets and concern for strategic bilateral 

relationships can make this difficult, however, carrying 

implications for country selection. For GFA assistance 

to leverage reforms, selected countries should include 

those with a domestic reform process under way and 

where US strategic interests do not threaten to dominate funding decisions.9

The GFA outlines key roles and responsibilities for 

relevant agencies.10 Although this is a critical first step 

to harness better coordination, it is only a partial solution. History has shown that interagency initiatives stall 

or break down over questions such as who has budgetary, policy, and legal leverage. How will agencies 

resolve disputes when they disagree? How will agencies 

integrate complementary efforts that sit outside the 

initiative?11 GFA implementing agencies need to review 

experiences with other successful (and less successful) 

interagency initiatives to identify sticking points and 

come to early agreement on how to address them.

In addition to defining agency roles, it will be important to set expectations for the relationship between 

coordination structures. The National Security Council 

History has shown that interagency initiatives stall or break down over questions such as who has 

budgetary, policy, and legal leverage. How will agencies resolve disputes when they disagree?
USIP.ORG 27

and other Washington-based interagency processes 

can help set priorities, liaise with Congress and multilateral actors, identify funding sources, and bring a 

cross-country comparative lens. But the country level is 

where bilateral relationships are formed and managed, 

where donor coordination takes place, and where strategies and programs are developed. Where mission-led 

leadership and processes are strong, Washington-led 

direction can interfere; in these cases, the US role 

should be supportive and more targeted.

The success of interagency processes clearly relies on 

the quality of individual agency investments. Lack of 

coordination within agencies, such as disagreements 

between functional and regional bureaus, can be a 

stumbling block. Designating a single agency broker 

responsible for corralling internal viewpoints can help 

bring a unified agency voice to interagency processes.12

Including contributions to interagency coordination in 

staff performance evaluation criteria can also realign 

incentives toward more constructive engagement.

Supporting Security Sector Reform

Daniel R. Mahanty

Summary

As the US government formulates its strategy for addressing fragility, it needs to seriously consider its potential role 

in supporting security sector reform as both method and ends. The practical record illustrates the limitations of external assistance, yet analysts and practitioners have identified ways the United States can meaningfully support internal 

reform processes through political influence, technical support, and self-restraint.

Reorienting, Repurposing, and 

Rightsizing Security Institutions

The first-order question policymakers need to answer 

in situating security sector reform (SSR) as part of a 

global strategy for addressing fragility is whether the 

reform of security institutions serves the objective of 

preventing and limiting violence. The record seems 

clear. A consensus now recognizes the relationship 

between pervasive violence and inefficient or illegitimate security institutions. State security institutions are 

like others in that once they are reformed, the societies in which they exist are likely more stable and free 

from wanton violence, but the processes of reform 

can themselves have either stabilizing or destabilizing effects.1

 Yet reorienting, repurposing, and possibly rightsizing security institutions once designed to 

serve a rent-seeking elite and transforming them into 

representative, accountable, impersonal, and impartial service providers creates “winners” and “losers,” 

oftentimes heavily armed ones.2 It is this phenomenon 

to which the importance of recognizing the political 

character of security institutions is most attached.

This potential outcome should not deter policymakers 

from supporting reform. After all, the redistribution of security dividends from a dominant coalition to the public 

is very much the point of reform. Although changes in 

the security sector may introduce some risk of violence or political uncertainty, the failure to reform often 

introduces even greater risk to long-term stability. Welldesigned processes can temper conflict dynamics by 

providing channels of communication between security 

service providers and the public, enhancing inclusivity, 

strengthening accountability, and improving responsiveness.3 Being aware of the reasonably predictable 

consequences of reform can reinforce the importance 

of political resilience to security-related setbacks and 

disruptions, to protecting those at greatest risk of harm 
28 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

from change, to correctly sequencing reform efforts 

relative to other political processes, and to undertaking 

the bargains necessary to eliminate spoilers.

Although no universal model represents the optimal 

end-state of reform for states and societies of vastly different character, the reform process and its objectives 

can be bound by common principles. These include an 

emphasis on inclusion, the participation of civil society, accountability, transparency, professionalism, and 

the expectation that the legitimacy of the end-state of 

reform depends in no small part on the protection of 

human rights.

US Policy

Once the correspondence between SSR and violence 

prevention or mitigation is established, policymakers 

can begin to assess how best to ensure that US support results in sustainably improved performance and 

accountability. The report card on related US policy in 

other states is mixed, in large part because policy and 

practice have been uneven. Yet examples of successful 

US-led or US-supported security partnerships that led 

to meaningful reforms do exist, such as defense sector 

reform in Liberia.4 The most common critiques fall into 

one of four general categories. The United States 

prioritizes its relationships with, but not the legitimacy 

of, security institutions in the conduct of its foreign and 

national security policy; does not pay enough attention 

to second-order effects and unintended consequences 

when providing technical, operational, and material 

support to partner security forces; has treated SSR

as primarily a technical rather than political exercise, 

understated the political role security institutions serve, 

and engaged on overly technical and transactional 

terms; or overstates its technical ability to transform 

security institutions but understates the totality of its 

political influence in promoting positive change.

Appropriately tailored strategies can address these 

critiques by recognizing the political nature of security 

institutions and reform processes, placing enough emphasis on correctly diagnosing the role played by security institutions and actors in fragility dynamics, focusing 

on the legitimacy rather than the strength of security 

partners, and understanding both the prospects and 

limitations of technical support.

Meanwhile, like any other form of development-focused 

engagement, programs in the security sector can work. 

The effectiveness of external interventions depends 

on how realistic and well-defined the objectives of a 

program are, the timing of an intervention, how well the 

program is designed (including pre-programmatic, localized needs assessments, and sustainment), and the 

degree to which the targeted stakeholders demand and 

“own” the intended outcomes of the processes supported by the intervention. Fortunately, Washington has 

no shortage of expertise on effective program design. 

The 2020 interagency Guidelines for Effective Justice 

and Security Sector Assistance in Conflict-Affected 

Areas clearly reflects contemporary international best 

practices, and USAID has developed a number of 

additional resources available to program managers 

for effective and conflict-sensitive program design and 

implementation. Binding policymakers and program 

managers to the principles reflected in this guidance 

could improve the likelihood that programs succeed.

The notion of introducing conditionality or selectivity 

to US security sector assistance has recently gained 

traction as a way to promote reform. So has the idea 

of enshrining mutual commitment through more formal 

“compact” arrangements, a design feature of the 

Global Fragility Act (GFA). Conditioning aid and formalizing arrangements can yield benefits, but before 

committing to either approach in promoting SSR as part 

When the emphasis is prevention, Washington should support meaningful human rights–related reform 

of security forces, such as restraint in the use of force, humane detentions practices, legitimate forms of 

due process, conduct-related accountability, and stronger public oversight of security actors.
USIP.ORG 29

of its strategy for fragile states, policymakers should 

consider several points:

• Neither positive inducements nor negative sanctions 

are enough on their own to overcome internal incentives that shape the political status quo.

• It may be more difficult to apply conditionality in situations where the United States is diplomatically overleveraged as a result of its dependency on security assistance as a way to curry political favor with a partner.

• The most deserving and promising targets of assistance are not necessarily those with the most pressing 

need for reform and even more rarely those where the 

United States has an abiding strategic interest.

These caveats in mind, prospects for SSR should nonetheless figure heavily into US selection criteria for identifying GFA priority countries. The basis of selection for 

priority countries should include indications of nascent 

or ongoing reform processes that can be supported, the 

availability of reform champions within security institutions, and the existence of a civil society that can serve 

as a feedback channel and source of public oversight. 

Although the resulting short list of countries may not 

correspond completely with US strategic priorities, focusing on the best prospects will likely yield the greatest 

political and financial return on investment over time.

In these contexts, compacts that establish common 

terms of reference and shared objectives, clarify mutual 

commitments, and determine the timeline for implementation are a sound basis for supporting reform.

Recommendations

The global fragility strategy should prioritize external 

support for SSR and an enabling environment for 

civil society, foster relationships with reform agents, 

and lead efforts to renew international attention to 

security governance and accountability. When the 

emphasis is prevention, Washington should support 

meaningful human rights–related reform of security 

forces, such as restraint in the use of force, humane 

detentions practices, legitimate forms of due process, 

conduct-related accountability, and stronger public 

oversight of security actors.

Policymakers need to be aware of the limitations of 

external interventions. They also should be aware of 

Washington’s power to influence when opportunities 

allow. When they are identifying GFA priority countries, 

prospects for SSR and timing should figure heavily into 

selection criteria. Policymakers also need to bear in 

mind that limited and targeted investments in reform 

processes otherwise owned entirely by the partner can 

have greater impact than large programs.

The global fragility strategy should call on leaders and 

policymakers to ensure US security cooperation and 

assistance activities—and, when possible, those of 

other donors—are consistent with stabilization and with 

preventing violence, and in no way exacerbate the risk 

of violence, corruption, or human rights violations.
30 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

Aligning Humanitarian and Development Action

Olga Petryniak and Jon Kurtz

Summary

If it is to bring greater coherence to foreign assistance objectives and mechanisms, the global fragility strategy needs 

to leverage its cross-agency mandate toward targeted conflict-prevention and stabilization efforts. Resilience offers a 

guiding framework and approach for aligning and improving international responses—humanitarian, peace, and development—to achieve the aspirations of the Global Fragility Act.

Implementation

The focus of the Global Fragility Act (GFA) on longterm conflict prevention and stabilization recognizes 

that the vision of the triple nexus—the blending of 

humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding assistance to address protracted, conflict-driven crises—

can be realized only if the peace pillar is mandated, 

funded, and put effectively into practice. However, 

merely layering peacebuilding funds and activities 

atop ongoing humanitarian and development investments in conflict-affected settings will not bring the full 

promise of the GFA to fruition.1

The $42 billion in humanitarian and development 

assistance to the world’s eighteen most fragile 

states in 2018 dwarfs the GFA’s $230 million offering. 

Humanitarian and development aid can directly affect 

prospects for peace, but only if intentionally designed 

to do so. A narrow focus on life-saving assistance by 

humanitarian action in prolonged crises can undercut 

local coping mechanisms and destabilize subnational economies. These factors can exacerbate the 

drivers of fragility, sowing the seed of future crises. 

Emphasizing economic growth, on the other hand, 

can reproduce the inequalities and ensuing grievances that lead to violence. Conflict prevention and 

stabilization will be influenced—reversed, stalled, or 

assisted—by humanitarian and development action. 

The global fragility strategy (GFS) needs to insist that 

advancing peace is part and parcel of these efforts in 

fragile, conflict-affected settings.

Resilience offers a framework for aligning and improving the coherence of international humanitarian, peace, 

and development responses to achieve the aspirations 

of the GFA.2 The framework guides foreign assistance 

to strengthen sources of resilience to the shocks and 

stresses defining fragile contexts. In conflict-affected settings, this includes bolstering the capacity of 

institutions and communities to mitigate the drivers and 

effects of violence alongside other risk factors—climate 

events, economic disruptions, and now a pandemic—

that exacerbate fragility.

Collective Action

The GFA aims to address long-term drivers of fragility 

and violence through “justice sector reform, good governance, and inclusive and accountable service delivery.” However, the dynamic nature of conflict limits the 

potential of playing this long game to gradually cultivate 

peace and stability. Increasingly frequent and often reinforcing disruptions—drought, food price spikes, a political transition, or even isolated violence—can quickly fuel 

political and social instability in contexts characterized 

by systemic exclusion, injustice, and grievance. This is 

particularly evident in a COVID-19 world.3

Ensuring that longer-term conflict-prevention and 

peacebuilding efforts are effective and take hold 

requires peace, development, and humanitarian actors 

to strengthen sources of resilience that could support 

near-term violence prevention measures—including 

conflict-sensitive responses—alongside longer-term 
USIP.ORG 31

reforms. For instance, in Nigeria’s Benue State, interventions focused on strengthening interaction, dispute 

resolution, and social cohesion between conflicting 

groups buttressed communities from a fresh wave of 

violence in 2018.4 Following the 2014–15 outbreak of 

Ebola that fueled a rise in public mistrust, mobilization 

and engagement of legitimate, local community structures in Liberia helped squelch harmful narratives, built 

public trust, and motivated communities to unite behind 

disease prevention and response measures.5

Working at local levels alongside a national agenda 

is essential to preventing and mitigating conflict. But 

questions remain as to which local capacities are most 

critical to strengthen. Two key sources of resilience are 

often overlooked or even undermined by external aid: 

strong social networks, including kinship structures, 

solidarity groups, and informal institutions; and local 

markets, such as exchanges among producers, traders, 

suppliers, and urban entrepreneurs. When functioning, 

these relationships and institutions routinely enable 

communities to better cope in conflict settings, offer 

opportunities to reduce violence, and provide a requisite foundation for future prosperity. 

The need to invest in local support systems is evident in South Sudan. Crisis-affected communities with 

strong, diverse social relationships shared information, 

extended psychosocial support, and exchanged food, 

labor, and cash. These factors allowed them to better 

adapt and maintain their livelihoods during conflict. 

Conversely, for internally displaced populations in 

designated Protection of Civilians camps, isolation from 

kinship networks and information sources limited their 

ability to return home or reestablish livelihoods—important preconditions for stability in South Sudan.6 In 

USAID humanitarian aid is stored at a warehouse on the outskirts of Cucuta, Colombia, on the border with Venezuela on February 19, 2019. (Photo by 

Fernando Vergara/AP)
32 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

Syria, market actors quickly adapted to evolving crisis 

dynamics, and continued to provide critical goods and 

services in the midst of conflict. Households with access to functioning markets were found to have greater 

psychosocial and financial well-being—two outcomes 

that can advance peace in contexts where trauma and 

economic exclusion fuel cycles of violence.7

The GFA provides for “an analysis of the conditions 

that contribute to violence and fragility” in priority countries, including through proven tools for conflict analysis. However, many conflict and risk assessments have 

been too slow, too cumbersome, and too removed 

from subnational realities to inform appropriate action 

in dynamic, conflict-affected environments. The strategic resilience assessment for northeast Nigeria that 

Mercy Corps conducted on behalf of USAID in 2018 

painted a vivid picture of how quickly threats evolve, 

frustrating aid efforts and invalidating strategies.8

Lessons from Nigeria highlight that rapid and continuous analysis must complement one-off assessments 

with timely and granular insights that can inform more 

agile programming to quickly adapt in rapidly changing 

contexts. For instance, Mercy Corps’ crisis analytics 

hubs in contexts such as Syria and the Democratic 

Republic of Congo integrate continuous field-based 

monitoring with open-source data and analysis by both 

subject-matter experts and highly sophisticated software. In Syria, this enabled teams to successfully predict the sites of armed conflict as well as safe zones, 

enabling the pre-positioning of assistance to conflict-affected communities. In the Democratic Republic 

of Congo, analytical hubs conduct real-time tracking 

of rumors and misinformation related to COVID-19 that 

can incite violence, allowing response teams to tailor 

messaging campaigns that build community trust and 

reduce the risk of violence.

Recommendations

Successful GFA implementation requires collective 

action in three interdependent areas. First is to pair 

short-term violence prevention with efforts to transform 

structural drivers of conflict. Humanitarian and development investments in such actions can prevent states 

from regressing deeper into violence during crises and 

create the short-term, positive peace necessary for 

longer-term transformation.

Second is to support local market and social systems 

that can strengthen sources of resilience to the causes 

and effects of violence. The GFS should direct local 

investments to strengthen rather than undermine these 

systems, and expand access to them for women, youth, 

and other historically marginalized groups. Investments 

that strengthen market and social networks while 

ensuring conflict sensitivity can help address exclusion, 

constraints to resource access, and disruptions to local 

livelihoods in conflict environments. They thus offer 

essential leverage points for international responses to 

create enabling conditions for stabilization, recovery, 

and peacebuilding.

Third is to invest in rapid, real-time risk and resilience 

analysis. Such efforts can enable GFA implementation 

to stay ahead of unfolding events and most appropriately respond to evolving threats that have a direct 

impact on conflict dynamics.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, analytical hubs conduct real-time tracking of rumors and 

misinformation related to COVID-19 that can incite violence, allowing response teams to tailor messaging 

campaigns that build community trust and reduce the risk of violence.
USIP.ORG 33

International Coordination

Enhancing Country-Level Coordination

Jonathan Papoulidis

Summary

As the humanitarian and economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to grow, the United Nations has warned that 

the crisis may fuel conflicts around the world as well as increase starvation, extreme poverty, and forced displacement.1

Given the context specificity of conflict drivers as well as aid fragmentation, effective country-level cooperation among 

political, security, and development actors will be vital to prevent further instability and build resilience in fragile states.

Evidence and Joint Accountability

Promoting effective cooperation in fragile states is an 

age-old challenge, but it is critical to overcome aid 

fragmentation, which stymies efforts to help countries 

overcome fragility. As the development and humanitarian community has learned for well over a decade, 

coordination is key to avoiding inefficient or wasteful aid 

allocations and overwhelming weak host-government 

institutions.2 Even before the pandemic, the Global 

Fragility Act (GFA) called on agencies to “identify mechanisms to improve coordination between the United 

States, foreign governments, and international organizations” to better address the causes of fragility and violence. Recent lessons suggest that closer coordination 

on the ground in developing countries requires either 

establishing or strengthening two sets of mechanisms.

The first is a framework for conducting joint assessments 

and plans for preventing conflict and building resilience, 

a practice that has become more common in the development sector in the aftermath of conflict, and increasingly even in countries where conflict is only beginning to 

spread.3 To have sustainable impact, joint assessments 

should take place under the leadership of the host government—with UN and World Bank country teams providing strong support—and should include not only national 

and local government representatives, but also the civil 

society actors that need to help drive the policy agenda. 

The assessment and planning phase should include a 

strategic-level, joint framework for evaluating progress 

toward policy objectives and holding the parties to account.4

 That process should be enshrined in a diplomatic 

agreement. The methodology for the joint assessment 

needs to balance depth and analysis with speed.

Equally important but often underappreciated is the 

need to establish a robust cooperation structure—or 

country coordination platform—to guide the creation 

of these joint assessments and the strategies they 

produce and to oversee their implementation and 

adaptation. Although the need for evidence-based 

conflict assessments, robust strategies, and clear metrics for tracking progress is widely appreciated in the 

peacebuilding community, far less attention has been 

given to the country-based organizational structures 

and processes needed to enable coordination, strategic planning, and mutual accountability over time 

to achieve results.5 This lack of attention is surprising 

given the significant investments in fragile states and 

increasing calls to support a humanitarian, peace, and 

development nexus for greater coherence and coordination between diverse actors in these contexts.
34 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

Country coordination platforms organize national and international stakeholders into a three-tiered structure that 

allows them to align their activities, including potentially 

large-scale operations and pools of funding.6 Critically, 

these platforms should not serve as top-down mechanisms for imposing externally determined policy prescriptions but instead actively incorporate feedback from local 

stakeholders and adapt policies and programs in the 

face of shocks and complex political economies.7 The 

GFA’s most important directive is arguably that the US 

government adopt an adaptive management approach 

to conflict prevention, peacebuilding, and development 

in the context of more robust country coordination.8

For nearly two decades, country platforms have been 

tested across a broad range of fragile states, including Liberia, Haiti, Afghanistan, and the Central African 

Republic. In Niger, the platform played a key role in 

strengthening government and partner efforts for conflict 

prevention, peace, and security.9 In Somalia, the threetiered model helped sustain peace efforts. Although 

Somalia’s country coordination platform was not without 

challenges, recent analysis has shown how pivotal it 

has been to supporting the country’s still fragile political 

settlement and state-building and development efforts, 

while helping prevent the country’s slide back into fullblown civil war.10 At the same time, peace processes and 

programs have too often been designed based on externally imposed timelines and goals, as in South Sudan, 

where donors and the central government imposed a 

largely top-down approach that did not include local and 

civil society actors and failed to promote peace.11

Recommendations

To advance the GFA, country coordination platforms 

need to be built or strengthened to prevent conflict 

and build resilience against future violence. They 

should consist of three key components. First is a 

high-level steering group led by the host country’s 

president or prime minister that includes representatives from bilateral donors, multilateral institutions, 

implementing partners, and civil society. The steering 

group assesses progress on strategic direction and 

helps resolve collective action problems.

The second component is sector groups led by 

government ministry officials include stakeholders 

responsible for shaping and supporting policy across 

development and peacebuilding sectors. Finally, the 

country coordination platforms need a secretariat that 

can ensure the smooth operations of both the high-level and sector groups in countries where governments 

have limited capacity. This body can provide critical 

capacity, troubleshooting, and analytic support, such as 

by enabling the country platform to function by collating data from host-government institutions and international partners.

Washington should initiate or support a stock-taking exercise to learn from platforms in fragile countries such 

as Somalia, which will prove helpful to guide future US 

engagement in fragile contexts. This review should 

identify the authorities and mechanisms that are needed to allow the United States to engage in and support 

country platforms in fragile states.

Peace processes and programs have too often been designed based on externally imposed timelines 

and goals, as in South Sudan, where donors and the central government imposed a largely top-down 

approach that did not include local and civil society actors and failed to promote peace.
USIP.ORG 35

Defining and

Measuring Progress

Defining and Measuring Impact

Conor Seyle

Summary

The Global Fragility Act seeks to help the US government manage tensions between the diverse goals, priorities, and 

incentives of actors in stabilization settings. Implementation needs to include a measurement system that defines what 

success looks like. The key challenge is navigating tensions between collective impact and narrow problem focus, 

between the global fragility strategy and country plans, and between measurement activities and program goals.

Navigating Inherent Tensions

Consistent with current research, the Global Fragility 

Act (GFA) recognizes that sustainable stabilization and 

conflict prevention requires working across the security, political, and economic domains.1

 At the same time, 

stabilization programs require identifying a limited set 

of programmatic goals within each domain. That is, success needs to be defined at the country level across 

different domains, as well as at the project level.

The GFA requires a coherent global fragility strategy 

(GFS) that starts with the multiple causes of fragility 

and violence, and focuses on empowering local, 

national, and multilateral actors to address them.2

Individual country strategies need to fit within the 

GFS, but specific needs of an individual country will 

require individual strategies. Measuring success 

therefore should be done in a way that supports 

assessment and advancement of the overall GFS yet 

allows it to be customized to local needs. How the 

measurements are conducted—who collects data, 

who is engaged in the process, and whether and 

how results are reported—can effectively change the 

strategic goals of the program by having different 

impacts on local capacity and trust in implementers.

The GFA is not the first attempt to improve coordination in 

stabilization, and a significant body of research suggests 

that a persistent reason for the failure of such efforts 

relates to organizing the actual executors of the strategy. 

The success of the GFA will hinge in part on the collective commitment of the individuals tasked with executing 

it. Bringing these stakeholders—which should include 

representatives of the major implementing organizations 

as well as embassy staff and local actors from priority 

countries—into the development of the indicators and 

measurement plan can ensure alignment with the goals.

The tensions identified can be managed through a 

process that is both collaborative and designed from 

the outset to be modular and operable at the collective 

and project levels. One approach would be to develop a universal assessment framework that establishes 

specific content areas and indicators aligned with the 

GFS. This should include all major political, institutional, 

development, and security elements identified as part of 
36 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

the strategy. The indicators should focus on outcomes of 

programs in terms of specific changes in local conditions 

rather than measure project activities. When existing data 

align with the strategy, indicators should be aligned to relevant data such as academic sources, national data sources, and international organizational assessments. This 

can help facilitate data collection and collective learning 

if the indicators are appropriate and work at both project 

and country measurement levels. Finally, development 

should be done with engagement and buy-in from key 

US government implementers and at least some engagement from representatives of priority countries or regions 

through meaningful consultations throughout the process. 

The goals and assessment frameworks of country strategies should be developed with close engagement with 

local actors as well as partners in Washington, and they 

should be built on a subset of the universal framework to 

allow the development of strategies that map most closely onto the needs of that country. In doing so, designers 

should consider both primary indicators—those the program is designed to affect—and secondary indicators that 

may be affected incidentally to achieve the primary goals. 

Doing so helps manage the program-country tension.

Wherever possible, multiple methods and sources 

should be used for data collection, relying on local staff, 

civil society organizations, and academic institutions as 

part of the project. The actual process of data collection, 

if done with and through local institutions and other organizations, can help improve transparency and engagement with local communities as well as build local expertise in ways that can promote the overall GFA goals.

Each violence indicator in the following list is collectible 

at the local and national level. Most of the items are 

adapted from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data 

Project (ACLED) and the UNʼs Sustainable Development 

Goals (SDG), but in practice they should be developed 

with direct input from stakeholders, and individual projects should target identified specific indicators as well 

as any others their input might suggest.

• Battle deaths: number of events and reported deaths 

due to battle, disaggregated by state or nonstate 

perpetrator (ACLED)

• Explosive or remote violence: number of events and 

reported deaths due to explosives, artillery, drone 

attacks, or other forms of remote violence, disaggregated by state or nonstate perpetrator (ACLED)

• Violence against civilians: number of events and reported deaths from violence directed against civilians 

and perpetrated by organized armed actors, disaggregated by state or nonstate perpetrator (ACLED)

• Criminal violence: number of victims of intentional homicide per hundred thousand, by sex and age (SDG 16.1.1)

• Gender-based violence: proportion of ever-partnered 

women and girls age fifteen and older subjected to 

physical, sexual, or psychological violence by a current or former intimate partner in the previous twelve 

months, by form of violence and by age (SDG 5.2.1)

• Perception of safety: proportion of population that feels 

safe walking alone around the area they live (SDG 16.1.4)

• Dehumanization or intergroup threat: to be identified 

(no current standardized measures)

Recommendations

Policymakers and implementers need to recognize 

that measuring program impact will reflect many of the 

tensions inherent in the GFA. It is thus essential to ensure that the process of developing the indicators is an 

inclusive and collaborative exercise. Identifying clear 

strategies to help reconcile some of these tensions 

needs to be integral to the measurement system. The 

GFS should direct agencies to develop a universal assessment framework that establishes specific content 

areas and indicators aligned with the GFS. The goals 

and assessment frameworks included in the country 

plans should reflect this universal framework. 
USIP.ORG 37

Defining and Measuring Progress

Annie Pforzheimer

Summary

Meaningful monitoring and evaluation are essential to ensuring effective use of scarce national funds, staff, and political capital, but are impossible without a well-accepted definition of policy success. Short-, medium-, and long-term 

goals should be established and viewed as interrelated, recognizing that each level requires very different metrics. 

Measuring both programs as well as nonprogram activities, such as diplomatic outreach, will be critical.

Defining Success

Policymakers need to define success clearly enough 

for diplomats and aid workers to be able to act on guidance contained in the Global Fragility Act (GFA). Absent 

clearly defined goals, the task of evaluating progress 

and the effectiveness of taxpayer dollars spent under 

the act will be impossible.

The guidance the legislation offers on identifying priority 

countries could be used to define US policy goals, but 

this approach poses significant challenges. The GFA 

identifies three broad issues as relevant: US national 

security interests; reducing violence, fragility, or vulnerability to climate change; and advancing relationships 

with governments willing to work with the international 

community. In theory, these three categories could guide 

the development of baseline analyses in fragile countries 

and the measurement of progress under the global fragility strategy and country plans. Yet two of the three—US 

security interests and host nation willingness—are highly 

subjective and susceptible to abrupt political changes, 

which undermine planning assumptions. The third—levels 

of violence, fragility, and climate change vulnerability—is 

easier to quantify and measure, yet refers to complex 

concepts that offer few easy policy solutions. At the same 

time, the concept of violence itself is broad, and includes 

both data that are hard to find at the national level (victim 

surveys) and some data that are widely available in some 

countries, but not others (crime statistics).

An alternative approach would be to start from an existing definition, perhaps based on one of the analytical 

frameworks referenced in the legislation. One example is the OECD’s States of Fragility framework, which 

defines fragility as “the combination of exposure to risk 

and insufficient coping capacity of the state, system 

and/or communities to manage, absorb or mitigate 

those risks.” Using this definition, success could be defined as fragility’s opposite—that is, a scenario wherein 

state institutions are able to absorb social, political, and 

environmental risks without citizens having to resort to 

violence or migration. Subcomponents of this definition 

could focus on democratic institutions, and one metric 

might include the extent to which citizens peacefully 

accept certified election results even in a close race.

Ultimately, the definition of success should be based 

on a vision of what is achievable given genuine political 

will on both sides—in the host government and with the 

US government. Yet even in an ideal political scenario 

(when both sides are committed to success), when a 

situation is fragile, the unpredictable impacts of wars, 

environmental disasters, and worldwide economic 

downturns can have an outsized impact on a country’s 

trajectory. The risk of such external shocks needs to be 

factored into any definition of success. A realistic goal 

would entail achieving a strong trend toward establishing institutions and mechanisms that manage risks and 

sustaining that progress over three to five years or—

more realistically—a decade, as the GFA suggests.

In addition, dissemination and buy-in are essential to 

defining success. Stakeholders need to understand the 

stated goal and reasoning behind it; just as important, 
38 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

they need to understand that some objectives may 

need to be excluded or set as a lower priority. US policymakers, who may have both institutional and personal biases, often disagree on what broad terms such as 

stability mean, and many policy deliberations actually 

are on protecting bureaucratic spheres of influence. 

Involving key bureaucratic stakeholders in discussions 

can help overcome some of these divisions.

Once a consensus definition of success and possible 

indicators to measure progress are determined, consultations should begin with the congressional committees 

that drafted the legislation, and subsequently include 

other concerned committees with oversight over relevant US government agencies. Beyond these constituencies, consultations should be inclusive and extend to 

host nation authorities and civil society, in addition to the 

US private sector, nonprofit community, and media.

GFA-related strategic goal statements should be consistently part of US public statements on the country or 

region in question. This is vital, because sending the 

wrong message to host nation officials (for example, 

that the United States values counterterrorism cooperation over anticorruption efforts) by the embassy, US 

military, or visiting dignitaries undermines the impact 

of ongoing programs and policies. Sending the right 

message, on the other hand, can accelerate program 

impact by getting host nation stakeholders on board 

with politically risky reforms.

Whenever possible, using metrics collected by neutral 

third parties is preferred when showing macro trends 

over extended periods. In the highly politicized environment of US congressional appropriations, metrics collected by experts without a direct stake in the outcome 

of programs or funding tend to have the most credibility. 

An activist holds a sign that reads in Spanish "Thanks CICIG" at the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) headquarters in 

Guatemala City on August 31, 2019. (Photo by Moises Castillo/AP)
USIP.ORG 39

Furthermore, indicators such as the World Bank “Doing 

Business” rankings are likely to be collected regardless 

of US funding. Relying on third-party metrics collected 

on a worldwide basis also helps standardize elements of 

the US policy response across regions. One disadvantage, however, is that these metrics may be overly broad 

and fail to incorporate individual country contexts.

The timeline over which metrics can measure progress 

will of course vary, but the need for continuous congressional oversight will not, necessitating a variety of 

interrelated indicators. Third-party indicators can take 

years to show progress and reveal trends. At the other 

extreme are short-term metrics, such as the number of 

trainees in a rule of law program or hectares of narcotics 

under cultivation, which describe the efforts of the donor 

community to address fragility but may not be a good 

measure of impact. They may be necessary to demonstrate program investments, but program-level metrics 

often only get at a small fraction of the challenge of fragility. So, for example, the number of trainees does not 

answer either who is promoted as a result of a training 

program or who has the ability to use that knowledge 

in a system that may be corrupt to begin with. Metrics 

relevant to a single rule of law program also cannot 

show what percentage of the judiciary or portion of the 

institutional or administrative gap a program actually fills.

Interim metrics are needed to provide a link between program output metrics and outcomes. Such milestones can 

help Congress and the executive branch track progress, 

which is essential to achieving goals. For example, tackling corruption should progress year by year, beginning 

with diplomatic efforts to press senior politicians to agree 

in theory to anticorruption legislation, to assistance programs to help the legislature draft and pass a particular 

law, to working with ministries to promulgate regulations 

more broadly, and eventually to training the entire class of 

rule enforcers while promoting citizen awareness.

Many of the most effective actions Washington could 

take are nonprogram activities, such as diplomatic 

interventions, public statements, outreach to vulnerable populations, and VIP visits, as well as multilateral 

resolutions, votes, and sanctions. For example, the 

International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala 

had a strong measure of success, in part thanks to 

behind-the-scenes diplomacy, including phone calls 

by White House officials to pressure the Guatemalan 

government to allow the continuation of the international 

anticorruption body. Country baseline assessments and 

goal setting should measure the impact of nonprogram 

activities of categories such as “united international 

community positions” on multilateral advocacy or the frequency of access that marginalized groups have to the 

US ambassador. These categories are especially important for bringing about structural changes that programs 

alone cannot and are essential to showing the outcome 

impact, such as greater democratic freedoms.

Recommendations

The definition of policy success depends on a vision of 

what is achievable when genuine political will exists on 

both sides. A clear definition thus needs to be articulated in the global fragility strategy, and should be 

developed through an inclusive consultative process 

that ensures wide political buy-in. Stakeholders need 

to understand the stated goal and reasoning behind it 

and that some objectives may need to be excluded.

Metrics are also essential to success. Those collected 

by disinterested experts without a direct stake in the 

outcome typically have the most credibility. Meaningful 

long-term outcome indicators guided by third-party 

metrics and yearly interim measures showing progress 

toward that goal should be integral to the country plans 

and the biennial reports to Congress.

The fragility strategy should make clear that nonprogram activities—multilateral resolutions, diplomatic 

interventions, and the like—must be included in US 

efforts to advance GFA goals. Such efforts are essential 

both to structural changes and to demonstrating the 

outcome, such as greater democratic freedom.
40 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

Selecting Indicators

Paul Perrin

Summary

Far too often, monitoring, evaluation, and learning are conceptualized as an indicator and process issue, focused on finding 

the “right” indicators then building systems, evaluations, reporting, and approaches around these metrics. Despite the great 

merit in both a timely response and in a performance-based approach built on metrics to ensure accountability and learning 

in the Global Fragility Act’s implementation, acting too hastily and focusing only on indicator content entails significant pitfalls.

Adopting the STEPP Lens

In complex peacebuilding and stabilization contexts, 

monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) design must 

be approached multidimensionally. Rather than seeking 

the “correct” indicators to measure and how to measure 

them, decision-makers should consider adopting what 

can be referred to as the STEPP approach—a holistic 

approach to selecting indicators that embraces the 

complexity inherent to the Global Fragility Act (GFA). The 

approach comprises five interrelated domains: strategy 

and structure, environment, people, tools and technology, and processes. It encourages designers to pragmatically consider indicator suitability within the context of 

the proposed program. It applies equally to MEL system 

design at the global strategy level and within each GFA 

country. This approach will also help ensure that the 

mandate of local participation in system design addresses any local power imbalances.

The first step in designing a MEL system focuses on 

strategy and structure, that is, setting a conceptual 

framework and strategic boundary, including conceptual 

boundaries for fragility, organizational boundaries, and 

intervention boundaries. Far too often, systems and approaches have been designed in parallel with program 

strategy, often resulting in a disconnect between the 

information needs of the program and the information 

generated. When a clear strategy is developed first, the 

remaining indicator activities proceed in a focused and 

efficient way and offer opportunities for learning. The 

strategic framing of the GFA provides foundational information about critical indicators that may be included in 

the system, but indicator formulation should not precede 

the strategy. Clarifying each system’s relationship to the 

overall MEL approach of the GFA will be critical in facilitating data and information interoperability and flow.

MEL does not unfold in a vacuum but exists instead within 

a set of contexts with practical, cultural, and organizational norms, constraints, and processes—its environment. 

Identifying the factors that inhibit or facilitate MEL at each 

level will be critical to understanding the appropriateness of certain metrics. Environmental, contextual, and 

organizational constraints can be identified early and an 

environmental opportunities plan can be developed.

In monitoring compliance and evaluating initiatives, it is 

important to differentiate between operational, tactical, 

and strategic activities. For example, experience has 

shown that strategic policy decisions are best informed 

by data and information synthesized across initiatives and 

contexts. An organizational policy cannot be established 

on the basis of monitoring and evaluation from a single 

project; policymakers are eager to find ways to aggregate 

data and learning across contexts, even when the data 

do not suggest such synthesis. Aggregating data contributes to an inherent tension between the need for flexibility in data collection at the local level (to allow for contextual information) and for standardization at higher levels 

of strategic analysis (to allow for information aggregation 

across contexts and settings). When this tension is either 

poorly understood or ignored, MEL cannot fully meet 

its organizational potential. One way to approach the 

tension is to create a typology of indicators, distinguishing 
USIP.ORG 41

between three categories: required, a very small number 

of indicators required across all contexts and programs; 

required if applicable, some additional indicators deemed 

necessary only if certain conditions or intervention types 

were present; and standard, a library of standard indicators commonly used but not required under the GFA. The 

first two categories allow for targeted MEL. The third allows countries and programs to adopt and adapt existing 

indicators relevant to the local context.

MEL is an inherently human process. The various people 

involved throughout the MEL life cycle will have different 

preferences, personalities, perspectives, motivations, 

and capacities. Fundamental to understanding the people domain is identifying (in a stakeholder analysis) the 

key actors to be included in developing the system at 

each level. The analysis will identify international, national, and local individuals, groups, and organizations with a 

vested interest in program and learning outcomes, along 

with their respective information interests.

Each individual in the process should at least be supported by incentives and reduction of disincentives for 

participation, adequate understanding of their roles 

and responsibilities, adequate capacity building around 

these roles and responsibilities, and adequate resources 

and tools to perform their functions. Motivation and role 

clarity are equally important. Adequate resources should 

be planned for and allocated to ensure that these elements come together in support of the other domains.

Far too often, tools and technology are seen as a driving 

force for other MEL activities. The STEPP approach 

argues for the opposite: tools and technology can become solutions in search of a problem if selected before 

a policy challenge has been identified. The indicators 

themselves are tools, as are the data collection forms 

and systems that allow the requisite data points to be 

collected against the selected metrics. The development 

of these tools should be sensitive to the environmental 

context and reflect the needs and capacities of their 

users. Creating a comprehensive and consolidated tool 

library for all of the indicators and accessible to all the 

individuals implicated in the people domain is essential.

Finally, a process should be established for integrating 

the components of each domain as part of a holistic 

MEL system. Building on the existing processes of each 

US government actor involved in GFA implementation 

will be key to interagency collaboration. For each pilot 

country, it is important to understand the processes 

whereby governmental and nongovernmental organizations generate and use information. In addition, a 

data flow map should be created for each indicator 

to specify whether and how data will be exchanged. 

MEL policies and procedures will also be needed, and 

should strike a balance between security and transparency imperatives. USAID’s approach to using data responsibly could serve as a template for such a policy.1

Recommendations

MEL is a multifaceted process. Because it is, recognizing 

that obtaining timely, useful, and accurate MEL data for the 

GFA will require more than merely selecting appropriate 

indicators is essential. An effective system must take all 

five of the STEPP domains described into consideration. 

Approaching monitoring and evaluation through a 

STEPP lens enables policymakers to holistically assess 

the opportunities and challenges to making operational, tactical, and strategic decisions under the GFA. A 

comprehensive system like the one described here 

thus needs to embrace multiple levels.

The GFA is a complex, dynamic, and long-term mandate. 

Accordingly, it is important to ensure enough resources up front to permit the STEPP framework to be fully 

implemented. Resisting the urge to immediately deliver a 

MEL plan after launching the strategy would allow implementing diplomats and aid workers to fully work through 

the STEPP framework. An adequate up-front investment, 

though, will pay dividends across the life of the GFA’s 

constituent projects, programs, and strategies.
42 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

About the Authors

Susanna P. Campbell is an assistant professor 

and director of the Research on International Policy 

Implementation Lab at American University. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in conflict-affected countries, 

including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, 

Nepal, Sudan, South Sudan, and East Timor. Previously, 

she worked for the United Nations, International Crisis 

Group, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Martha Crenshaw is senior fellow emerita at the 

Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Center 

for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford 

University, and professor of government emerita at 

Wesleyan University. She is the author (with Gary LaFree) 

of Countering Terrorism: No Simple Solutions.

Amy Potter Czajkowski is director of global learning at 

Catalyst for Peace, a US-based foundation that uses an 

inside-out approach to address conflict and contribute 

to peaceful coexistence. Part of the team that founded 

Fambul Tok, a national peace, reconciliation, and development process in Sierra Leone, she offered her experience in process and program development to create 

spaces for learning and emergent program design.

Pamina Firchow is an associate professor of conflict resolution and coexistence at Brandeis University’s Heller 

School for Social Policy and cofounder of Everyday 

Peace Indicators. She was a Jennings Randolph Senior 

Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in 

2016. She has published widely on participatory approaches to the design, measurement, and evaluation of 

transitional justice, reconciliation, and peacebuilding interventions, including Reclaiming Everyday Peace: Local 

Voices in Measurement and Evaluation after War. 

Corinne Graff is a senior advisor at USIP and teaches 

a graduate seminar at George Washington University. 

In 2018 and 2019, she was a senior policy advisor to 

and member of the staff of the Task Force on Violent 

Extremism in Fragile States. Previously, she served as a 

deputy assistant administrator for Africa at USAID, director 

for development and democracy at the National Security 

Council, and senior advisor at the US Mission to the UN.

Kathleen Kuehnast is the director of the Gender Policy 

and Strategy program at USIP. Her work focuses on the 

gendered impacts of violent conflict on men and women 

and the importance of UNSCR 1325 as an institutional 

mechanism for change. She is coauthor of USIP’s Gender 

Inclusive Framework and Theory and coeditor of Women 

and War: Power and Protection in the 21st Century. 

Jon Kurtz is senior director for research and learning 

at Mercy Corps, where he leads the agency’s program 

research and impact evaluation efforts. His research 

concentrates on identifying how humanitarian and 

development action can best contribute to reducing 

conflict and strengthening resilience in crisis-prone 

contexts. His work includes projects in Afghanistan, 

Pakistan, Mozambique, Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

Amanda Long is the international partnerships assistant at USIP, where she develops and implements 

strategies for engagement with key international 

partners to advance cooperation on policies related to 

conflict prevention and fragility. Previously, she worked 

at the Atlantic Council’s Future Europe Initiative and the 

Council on Foreign Relations. 
USIP.ORG 43

Daniel R. Mahanty is director of the US Program at 

the Center for Civilians in Conflict, adjunct professor 

of human rights and national security at the University 

of Kansas, and a nonresident senior associate at the 

Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has 

written on civilian harm in war, security assistance and 

cooperation, and human rights and national security.

Jonathan Papoulidis is executive advisor on fragile

states at World Vision and a fellow at Columbia 

University’s World Projects initiative. Previously, he served 

with the United Nations and held appointments as a 

visiting scholar at Stanford University and York University’s 

Centre for Refugee Studies, and he has written for the 

Brookings Institution, Harvard International Review, Yale 

Journal of International Affairs, and many other outlets.

Paul Perrin is the director of evidence and learning at 

the Pulte Institute for Global Development and an associate professor of the practice in the Keough School of 

Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame. Previously, he 

served as director for monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning; senior technical advisor at Catholic 

Relief Services; and information officer at USAID. 

Olga Petryniak is senior director of the Resilience and 

Food Security program at Mercy Corps, where she leads 

related strategy and influence efforts, and oversees technical support to the global resilience and food security 

portfolio. Her career has focused on championing innovative, integrated programming that links peace, humanitarian, and development action toward improved resilience 

and food security outcomes in crisis-prone regions.

Annie Pforzheimer is a retired career diplomat, a 

member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a 

public commentator on foreign policy. Previously, she 

served as acting deputy assistant secretary of state for 

Afghanistan. She also directed implementation of the 

2014 Strategy for Engagement in Central America at the 

National Security Council and was the political counselor 

at the US embassies in Afghanistan and El Salvador.

Patrick W. Quirk is senior director of the Center for 

Global Impact at the International Republican Institute 

and a nonresident fellow in the foreign policy program 

at the Brookings Institution. Previously, he served at the 

Department of State on the secretary of state’s policy 

planning staff as lead advisor for fragile states, conflict 

and stabilization, and foreign assistance. 

Sarah Rose is a policy fellow at the Center for Global 

Development, where her work focuses on US government aid effectiveness. Her research encompasses US 

development policy in fragile states, use of evaluation 

and evidence to inform aid policy and programming, 

implementation of country ownership principles, the 

policies and operation of the Millennium Challenge 

Corporation, and aid transition processes. 

Mareike Schomerus is vice president of the Busara 

Center and research director at Secure Livelihoods 

Research Consortium. Her research focuses on violence, political contestation, peace processes, and 

behavioral mechanisms and international engagement 

in violent conflict. She is the editor of two volumes and 

the author of The Lord’s Resistance Army: Violence 

and Peacemaking in Africa. 

Conor Seyle is senior strategic advisor at One Earth 

Future, where he works on developing and promoting 

evidence-based approaches to coordinated multidimensional peacebuilding. A political psychologist by 

training, he has worked for several different international NGOs on issues relating to evidence-based practice 

in social impact.

Jodi Vittori is a nonresident fellow with the Carnegie 

Endowment for International Peace and the US 

research and policy manager for Transparency 

International’s Defense and Security program. She is an 

expert on the linkages of corruption, state fragility, illicit 

finance, and US national security.
44 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

Notes

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This report reflects the contributions of leading experts from across the policymaking, development, humanitarian, and peacebuilding 

communities. The editor wishes to acknowledge and thank the peer reviewers for their thoughtful comments: Belquis Ahmadi, Kateira 

Aryaeinejad, Jessica Baumgardner-Zuzik, Tyler Beckelman, Alexandre-Louis Berg, Jamille Bigio, Amanda Blair, Richmond Blake, David 

Connolly, Melissa Dalton, Juan Diaz-Prinz, Leanne Erdberg Steadman, Elizabeth Hume, Sarah Holewinski, Tori Holt, George Ingram, 

Rachel Locke, Amanda Long, Alexandre Marc, Alison Milofsky, Marcia Mundt, Laurie Nathan, Jonathan Papoulidis, Maura Policelli, Danielle 

Robertson, Jim Schear, Jennifer Staats, Tabatha Thompson, Calin Trenkov-Wermuth, Rosarie Tucci, Luke Waggoner, and Erol Yayboke. 

The editor also wishes to thank Joseph Hewitt for his invaluable guidance and support, and USIP colleagues Sarah Holewinski, David 

Connolly, and Tyler Beckelman for moderating several of the consultations of the Conflict Prevention and Fragility Working Group.

THEORY OF SUCCESS, QUIRK

Originally published in slightly different form as “The Global Fragility Strategy: Posturing the United States for a Reshaping World Order,” 

by Patrick W. Quirk, Brookings Institution, May 2020, www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/05/15/the-global-fragility

-strategy-posturing-the-united-states-for-a-reshaping-world-order. Published here with the permission of the author and the publisher.

1. US State Department, “The Strategic Prevention Project,” 2019, www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Strategic-Prevention

-Project.pdf.

2. World Bank, “Fragility, Conflict, and Violence,” www.worldbank.org/en/topic/fragilityconflictviolence/overview.

3. Corinne Graff, “Don’t Leave Fragile States Behind in the Fight Against Coronavirus,” Analysis and Commentary, USIP, March 31, 

2020, www.usip.org/publications/2020/03/dont-leave-fragile-states-behind-fight-against-coronavirus.

4. Patrick W. Quirk and Jeffrey W. Meiser, “Creating a Political Strategy to Stabilize Fragile States,” Order from Chaos (Brookings 

Institution blog), January 28, 2020, www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/01/28/creating-a-political-strategy-for

-stabilizing-fragile-states.

5. Securing US interests aligns with the act’s guidance that the global strategy “contribute to the stabilization of conflict-affected 

areas, address global fragility, and strengthen the capacity of the United States to be an effective leader of international efforts 

to prevent extremism and violent conflict.”

6. Patrick W. Quirk, Great Powers, Weak States, and Insurgency: Explaining Internal Threat Alliances (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017).

7. Quirk and Meiser, “Creating a Political Strategy.”

CHANGING STRATEGIC LANDSCAPE, CRENSHAW

1. Jonathan D. Moyer and Oliver Kaplan, “Will the Coronavirus Fuel Conflict?,” Foreign Policy, July 6, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com

/2020/07/06/coronavirus-pandemic-fuel-conflict-fragile-states-economy-food-prices.

2. This does not refer to aid that would necessarily promote good governance or nation-building in general. Under these crisis 

circumstances, the priority should be helping the government and its people get through the worst, which might help the government generally as well. The risk of encouraging dependence is less of a danger.

3. The provision of aid should minimize opportunities for corruption. The World Health Organization and UNICEF have expressed 

concern about schools (see “WHO, UNICEF urge safe school reopening in Africa,” World Health Organization, August 20, 2020, 

www.afro.who.int/news/who-unicef-urge-safe-school-reopening-africa).

4. For a summary, see Thomas Joscelyn, “How Jihadists Are Reacting to the Coronavirus Pandemic,” The Dispatch (blog), 

Foundation for Defense of Democracies, April 6, 2020, www.fdd.org/analysis/2020/04/06/how-jihadists-are-reacting-to-the

-coronavirus-pandemic.
USIP.ORG 45

WOMEN, PEACE, AND SECURITY AGENDA, KUEHNAST AND LONG

1. Further Consolidated Appropriations Act 2020, HR 1865, 116th Cong., 1st sess, March 25, 2019, Sec. 504a(4), www.congress.gov

/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1865/text; Ibid. Sec 504a(5).

2. Our Secure Future, “National Action Plan Map,” https://oursecurefuture.org/projects/national-action-plan-mapping.

3. Kathleen Kuehnast et al., “Lessons from Women’s Programs in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Special Report no. 302, United States 

Institute of Peace, March 2012, www.usip.org/publications/2012/03/lessons-womens-programs-afghanistan-and-iraq.

4. Kathleen Kuehnast and Danielle Robertson, “Gender Inclusive Framework and Theory,” USIP, 2018, www.usip.org/sites/default

/files/2018-08/gender-inclusive-framework-and-theory-guide.pdf.

5. UN Development Program, “Gender Inequality Index,” http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/gender-inequality-index-gii.

6. Saferworld, “Training Materials/Toolkits: Gender Analysis of Conflict,” July 5, 2016, www.saferworld.org.uk/resources/publications

/1076-gender-analysis-of-conflict.

7. Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security and Peace Research Institute Oslo, “Women, Peace and Security Index 

2019/20,” 2019, https://giwps.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/WPS-Index-2019-20-Report.pdf.

8. UN Women, “Facts and Figures: Ending Violence Against Women,” last modified November 2019, www.unwomen.org/en/what

-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures.

LOCAL OWNERSHIP, CZAJKOWSKI

1. The process involved Fambul Tok, Catalyst for Peace, and thousands of leaders and community members who offered countless resources. Each of these groups had different roles, and everyone contributed to the collective experience, learning, and 

success. Fambul Tok has been central and visible in Sierra Leone throughout the process and had both national and district 

staff. At times, Catalyst for Peace was in the background and, at other times, particularly when other international organizations 

and government were involved, in a visible role.

EVERYDAY PEACE INDICATORS, FIRCHOW

1. For more information on Everyday Peace Indicators, see everydaypeaceindicators.org and Pamina Firchow, Reclaiming 

Everyday Peace: Local Voices in Measurement and Evaluation after War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

2. Timothy Donais, Peacebuilding and Local Ownership: Post-Conflict Consensus-Building (New York: Routledge, 2012).

3. Lisa Schirch and Deborah Mancini-Griffoli, eds, Local Ownership in Security: Case Studies of Peacebuilding Approaches (The 

Hague: Alliance for Peacebuilding, GPPAC, Kroc Institute, 2015), www.gppac.net/resources/local-ownership-security-case

-studies-peacebuilding-approaches.

4. Pamina Firchow, “World Peace is Local Peace,” Ethics & International Affairs 34, no. 1 (2020): 57-65.

INNOVATION, CAMPBELL

This brief was originally published in slightly different form as “Implementing the Global Fragility Act: From Policy to Strategy,” by 

Susanna P. Campbell, Mercy Corps, February 2020, www.mercycorps.org/sites/default/files/2020-04/Implementing_the_Global

_Fragility_Act_April2020.pdf. Published here with the permission of the author and the publisher.

1. The findings synthesized in this essay are derived from Susanna P. Campbell, Global Governance and Local Peace: 

Accountability and Performance in International Peacebuilding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

2. Eileen Babbitt, Diana Chigas, and Robert Wilkinson, “Theories and Indicators of Change Briefing Paper: Concepts and Primers 

for Conflict Management and Mitigation,” USAID, January 2013, www.cdacollaborative.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Theories

-and-Indicators-of-Change-Briefing-Paper.pdf.

3. Conflict Sensitivity Consortium, “How to Guide to Conflict Sensitivity,” February 2012, https://conflictsensitivity.org/wp-content

/uploads/2015/04/6602_HowToGuide_CSF_WEB_3.pdf.

4. Chris Argyis, “Double Loop Learning in Organizations,” Harvard Business Review, September 1977, www.hbr.org/1977/09

/double-loop-learning-in-organizations.

5. Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky, How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland (Berkeley: University 

of California Press, 1984).

6. Susanna Campbell, “International Peacebuilding Really Can Build Peace–But Perhaps Not How You Expect,” Washington Post, 

December 11, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/12/12/peacebuilding-is-tricky-heres-why-bottom-up

-methods-might-be-effective.
46 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

7. Andrew Natsios, “The Clash of the Counter-bureaucracy and Development,” Center for Global Development, July 2010,

www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/1424271_file_Natsios_Counterbureaucracy.pdf.

8. Susanna Campbell, Dan Honig, and Sarah Rose, “Creating an Accountability Framework that Serves the Global Fragility Act’s 

Mission,” Center for Global Development, January 10, 2020, www.cgdev.org/publication/creating-accountability-framework

-serves-global-fragility-acts-mission.

GOOD GOVERNANCE, VITTORI

1. Rachel Kleinfeld, A Savage Order: How the World’s Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security (New York: Pantheon 

Books, 2018).

2. Karolina MacLachlan, “The Fifth Column: Understanding the Relationship Between Corruption and Conflict,” Transparency 

International, July 2017, 52, http://ti-defence.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/The_Fifth_Column_Web.pdf.

3. “Government Defence Integrity Index,” Transparency International, https://ti-defence.org/gdi.

PERCEPTIONS AND BIASES, SCHOMERUS

1. Mareike Schomerus et al., “What Matters to People When Recovering from Conflict,” Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium, 

June 24, 2019, www.securelivelihoods.org/publication/what-matters-to-people-when-recovering-from-conflict.

2. Suleiman Amanela et al., “Part 3: The Mental Landscape of Post-Conflict Life in Northern Uganda,” July 2020, https://securelivelihoods

.org/wp-content/uploads/SLRC-Uganda-Report-03-RethinkingCollaboration-WP90-Jul20.pdf.

3. Aoife McCullough, Antoine Lacroix, and Gemma Hennessey, “Reconstructing our understanding of the link between services and 

state legitimacy,” June 2020, www.odi.org/publications/17060-reconstructing-our-understanding-link-between-services-and-state

-legitimacy; Aoife McCullough and Jonathan Papoulidis, “Why We Need to Rethink Our Understanding of State Legitimacy to 

Address Fragility,” Development for Peace (World Bank blog), January 2020, https://blogs.worldbank.org/dev4peace/why-we

-need-rethink-our-understanding-state-legitimacy-address-fragility.

4. Global Fragility Act of 2019, 116th Cong., S 727, 1st sess., March 7, 2019, 528/29, 531, www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress

/senate-bill/727.

5. Global Fragility Act of 2019.

6. Suleiman Amanela et al., “Part 5: The Mental Landscape of Post-Conflict Life in Northern Uganda: Rethinking Inclusion and 

Fairness,” June 2020, www.odi.org/publications/17249-mental-landscape-post-conflict-life-northern-uganda.

7. Susanna P. Campbell, Global Governance and Local Peace: Accountability and Performance in International Peacebuilding

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

8. Suleiman Amanela et al., “Part 6: The Mental Landscape of Post-Conflict Life in Northern Uganda: Rethinking Idleness, RiskTaking and Agency,” June 2020, www.odi.org/publications/17249-mental-landscape-post-conflict-life-northern-uganda.

DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMING, ROSE

1. World Bank Group, World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security and Development (Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 

2011), https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/4389.

2. Treatment of religious practices and interactions with security forces, for example, have been shown to strongly influence perceptions of the state.

3. These may include pressuring elites to advance inclusivity, advocating for the inclusion of legitimate actors contesting political 

space, and encouraging or mediating negotiations among contesting parties.

4. Thomas Carothers, “Closing Space and Fragility,” Fragility Study Group, October 2016, www.usip.org/sites/default/files/Fragility

-Report-Policy-Brief-Closing-Space-and-Fragility_0.pdf.

5. Judd Devermont, “Focusing on Fragility: The Future of U.S. Assistance to Fragile States,” remarks at public event, Center for 

Global Development, October 22, 2019, www.cgdev.org/event/focusing-fragility-future-us-assistance-fragile-states.

6. Sarah Rose, “Focusing on Fragility: The Future of U.S. Assistance to Fragile States,” moderator at public event, Center for Global 

Development, October 22, 2019, www.cgdev.org/event/focusing-fragility-future-us-assistance-fragile-states.

7. Susanna Campbell, Dan Honig, and Sarah Rose, “Creating an Accountability Framework that Serves the Global Fragility Act’s 

Mission,” Center for Global Development, January 10, 2020, www.cgdev.org/publication/creating-accountability-framework

-serves-global-fragility-acts-mission.

8. The conditions discussed here refer only to those whose completion is critical for achieving shared Global Fragility Act (GFA)/

partner country objectives—often those supported by aid programs. They do not describe efforts to tie aid to US foreign policy 
USIP.ORG 47

objectives unrelated to the achievement of GFA objectives (for example, United Nations voting alignment).

9. Desha Girod, “How to Win Friends and Influence Development: Optimising U.S. Foreign Assistance,” Survival 61, no. 6 (2019): 

99–114, www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2019.1688572.

10. The GFA states that “the Department of State is responsible for leading the drafting and execution of the strategy, establishing 

United States foreign policy, advancing diplomatic and political efforts, and overseeing the planning and implementation of security assistance and related civilian security efforts; USAID is responsible for overseeing prevention programs, and is the lead 

implementing agency for development, humanitarian, and related non-security program policy; activities undertaken or supported by the Department of Defense in relation to the Global Fragility Strategy are established through joint formulation and with 

the concurrence of the Secretary of State; and other relevant Federal departments and agencies support the activities of the 

Department of State and USAID as appropriate” (Further Consolidated Appropriations Act 2020).

11. Sarah Rose, “A Promising U.S. Fragile States Strategy Is Taking Shape, but Key Questions Remain,” Center for Global Development

(blog), March 28, 2019, www.cgdev.org/blog/promising-us-fragile-states-strategy-taking-shape-key-questions-remain.

12. Rachel Kleinfeld, “Fragility and Security Sector Reform,” Fragility Study Group Policy Brief no. 3, United States Institute of

Peace, September 27, 2016, www.usip.org/publications/2016/09/fragility-and-security-sector-reform. USAID’s deputy assistant

administrator-level countering violent extremism coordinator is a good example. The position, which is supported by a

high-level steering committee and a working level council, has improved the coherence of USAID’s related planning and

messaging (Rose, “Focusing on Fragility”).

SECURITY SECTOR REFORM, MAHANTY

This brief was originally published in slightly different form as “U.S. Support to Security Sector Reform in Fragile States,” by Daniel 

Mahanty, Center for Strategic & International Studies, August 2020, www.csis.org/analysis/us-support-security-sector-reform-fragile

-states. Published here with the permission of the author and the publisher.

1. Roland Paris, At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 7.

2. Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast, Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for 

Interpreting Recorded Human History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 149–51.

3. DCAF, “The Contribution and Role of SSR in the Prevention of Violent Conflict,” Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance, 

April 2017, https://issat.dcaf.ch/download/115130/2101437/SSR%20contribution%20to%20Preventing%20Violent%20Conflict

%202017_Final.pdf.

4. Sean McFate, Building Better Armies: An Insider’s Account of Liberia (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US War College, 2013).

ALIGNING ACTION, PETRYNIAK AND KURTZ

This brief was originally published in slightly different form as “Towards Resilience: Aligning Humanitarian and Development Action 

Behind the Global Fragility Act,” by Olga Petryanik and Jon Kurtz, Mercy Corps, May 2020, www.mercycorps.org/sites/default/files

/2020-06/Towards_Resilience_Policy_Brief.pdf. Published here with the permission of the author and the publisher. 

1. Olga Patryniak, Keith Proctor, and Jon Kurtz, “Towards Resilience: Advancing Collective Impact in Protracted Crises,” Mercy 

Corps, May 2020, www.mercycorps.org/sites/default/files/2020-06/Towards_Resilience_Full_Report.pdf.

2. Lauren Van Metre and Jason Caleder, “Peacebuilding and Resilience: How Society Responds to Violence,” Peaceworks no. 121, 

October 2016, www.usip.org/publications/2016/10/peacebuilding-and-resilience-how-society-responds-violence.

3. Nancy Lindborg, “The Coronavirus is a Call to Build Resilience in Fragile States: How the Global Fragility Act can pave a path 

forward,” USIP, April 9, 2020, www.usip.org/publications/2020/04/coronavirus-call-build-resilience-fragile-states.

4. Danjuma Saidu Dawop, Lisa Inks, and Rebecca Wolfe, “Does Peacebuilding Work in the Midst of Conflict?,” Mercy Corps, May 

2019, www.mercycorps.org/sites/default/files/2020-01/PRG_NigeriaImpactEvaluation_R_lo_FINv3_Web.pdf.

5. Mercy Corps, ”Community Mobilization Essential for Halting Ebola Spread in DRC: Mercy Corps publishes new analysis on 

ways to overcome mistrust,” press release, May 30, 2019, www.mercycorps.org/sites/default/files/2019-10/NR_Community%20

Mobilization%20Essential%20-%20FINAL.pdf.

6. Jeeyon Kim et al., “The Currency of Connections: Why Do Social Connections Matter for Household Resilience in South 

Sudan?,” Mercy Corps, August 2020, www.mercycorps.org/sites/default/files/2020-08/CoC-Final-Report-0927.pdf.

7. Marian Tankink, Friederike Bubenzer, and Sarah van der Walt, “Achieving Sustainable Peace Through an Integrated Approach 

to Peacebuilding and Mental Health and Psychosocial Support,” Institute for Justice and Reconciliation and the War Trauma 

Foundation, December 2017, www.ijr.org.za/home/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/IJR-Peacebuilding-Lit-Review.pdf.
48 PEACEWORKS | NO. 170

8. Sarah Henly-Shepard et al., “The Next Frontier: Priming Resilience in a Protracted Crisis,” USAID, May 2019, www.fsnnetwork.org

/risk-and-resilience-assessment-case-study-series-northeast-nigeria-next-frontier%E2%80%94-priming-resilience.

COUNTRY-LEVEL COORDINATION, PAPOULIDIS

1. See UN Secretary-General, “As COVID-19 Fuels Conflict, Threatens International Security, Global Unity to Fight Terrorism 

Needed More Than Ever, Secretary Tells Aqaba Process Meeting,” press release, September 2, 2020, New York, www.un.org

/press/en/2020/sgsm20227.doc.htm.

2. Arne Bigsten and Sven Tengstam, “International Coordination and the Effectiveness of Aid,” World Development 69 (2015): 75–85.

3. Asbjorn Wee, “Recovery and Peacebuilding Assessments —a tool to prevent conflict and promote peace,” Development for 

Peace (World Bank blog), January 7, 2020, https://blogs.worldbank.org/dev4peace/recovery-and-peacebuilding-assessments

-tool-prevent-conflict-and-promote-peace.

4. David Cortright, Daniel Fahey, and Maura Policelli, “Principles and Methodologies for Strategic Monitoring in Fragile States,” 

University of Notre Dame, June 2020, https://keough.nd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Principles-and-Methodologies-for

-Strategic-Monitoring-in-Fragile-States-2020.pdf.

5. Jonathan Papoulidis, “Confronting the Aid Architecture Challenge,” HIR, February 24, 2020, https://hir.harvard.edu/towards-a

-new-paradigm-of-international-engagement-in-fragile-states.

6. Jonathan Papoulidis, “Country Platforms in Fragile States: A New Path for Development Cooperation,” Global Delivery Initiative

(blog), March 2, 2020, www.globaldeliveryinitiative.org/blogs/country-platforms-fragile-states-new-path-development-cooperation.

7. George Ingram and Jonathan Papoulidis, “Fragile States and the Search for ‘What Word,’” Future Development (Brookings Institution 

blog), November 8, 2018, www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2018/11/08/fragile-states-and-the-search-for-what-works.

8. Asbjorn Wee, “Recovery and Peacebuilding Assessments: A Tool to Prevent Conflict and Promote Peace,” Development for 

Peace (World Bank blog), January 7, 2020, https://blogs.worldbank.org/dev4peace/recovery-and-peacebuilding-assessments

-tool-prevent-conflict-and-promote-peace.

9. United Nations and World Bank, Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches for Preventing Violent Conflict (Washington, DC: 

World Bank, 2018).

10. Jonathan Papoulidis, Corinne Graff, and Tyler Beckelman, “Amid COVID, We Need Enhanced International Coordination to Build 

Peace,” United States Institute of Peace, July 23, 2020, www.usip.org/publications/2020/07/amid-covid-we-need-enhanced

-international-coordination-build-peace.

11. Greg Larson, Peter Biar Ajak, and Lant Pritchett, “South Sudan’s Capability Trap: Building a State with Disruptive Innovation,” CID 

working paper no. 268, Harvard University, October 2013, https://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/files/bsc/files/268_sudan-pdia.pdf.

IMPACT, SEYLE

1. See, for example, the United Nations and World Bank, Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018), https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/28337.

2. Further Consolidated Appropriations Act 2020.

INDICATORS, PERRIN

1. USAID, “Considerations for Using Data Responsibly at USAID,” May 2019, www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/15396/

USAID-UsingDataResponsibly.pdf.
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Making Peace Possible

NO. 170 | December 2020

In May, June, and July of 2020, the United States Institute of Peace convened a series of 

consultations with experts on implementation of the 2019 Global Fragility Act, which called for 

an interagency initiative to stabilize conflict-affected areas and prevent violence globally. This 

report examines the key lessons the peacebuilding field has learned about how to support 

vulnerable countries in preventing conflict and violence, and offers practical policy solutions for 

how to overcome the obstacles that have plagued past US efforts. It assesses the current global 

strategic environment for preventing internal conflicts and addresses how to promote local 

ownership and inclusion, ensure accountability, align US activities across diplomacy and development, establish mechanisms for closer international coordination, and measure progress.

• Looking for Trouble: Sources of Violent Conflict in Central Asia by Gavin Helf 

(Special Report, November 2020)

• Constitutional Issues in the Afghan Peace Negotiations: Process and 

Substance by Barnett R. Rubin (Special Report, November 2020)

• Pathways for Post-Peace Development in Afghanistan by Khyber Farahi and 

Scott Guggenheim (Special Report, November 2020)

• The Arakan Army in Myanmar: Deadly Conflict Rises in Rakhine State by David 

Scott Mathieson (Special Report, November 2020)

• What Works in Youth Projects? Lessons for the Youth, Peace, and Security Field

by Rebecca Ebenezer-Abiola and Jeremy Moore (Special Report, October 2020)

OTHER USIP PUBLICATIONS