Evaluation of the United States Institute of Peace Support to The Day After Project

Transcription

1 Evaluation of the United States Institute of Peace Support to The Day After Project Conducted by the United States Institute of Peace, Learning and Evaluation Team July 2014 United States Institute of Peace Constitution Avenue, NW Washington, DC Contact: Andrew Blum Phone:

2 Acronyms Acronym DRL IAA MEPI MOU NPWJ SWP TA TDA Association TDA project TDA report USG USIP Phrase State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Interagency Agreement State Department, Middle East Partnership Initiative Memorandum of Understanding No Peace Without Justice Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik Travel Authorization The Day After Association The Day After project The Day After report United States Government United States Institute of Peace Executive Summary Overview Any transition to democracy is particularly difficult in the wake of an armed conflict. Dealing with the legacy of a dictatorship, as well as the human, institutional, and economic consequences of violence, can hamper transitions to a peaceful, stable democracy. To assist those Syrians who were struggling with this complex set of challenges in regard to the Syrian revolution, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), in late-2011, helped launch and began supporting The Day After project (TDA project). The TDA project included three distinct phases. 1 In its initial phase, USIP helped convene a series of six meetings to develop a transition plan for Syria. This effort culminated in a report entitled, The Day After Project: Supporting a Democratic Transition In Syria, (The Day After report or The report), which was published in August In the second phase of the project, USIP worked to help establish an independent NGO, eventually titled The Day After Association (TDA Association). The NGO was successfully established in Istanbul in early In the final phase of the project, which is ongoing, USIP is 1 TDA project will be used to describe the overall effort through all three phases. 2

3 providing various kinds of support to The Day After Association as it implements its own projects. This evaluation assesses USIP s efforts in supporting the TDA project through each phase of the project. Its purpose is to provide lessons for USIP in three areas: implementation of the project, effectiveness (i.e. did the project achieve its stated goals), and the partnership model (i.e. how can USIP most effectively partner with an effort like TDA). These lessons are directly relevant to other programming. In particular, the USIP Strategic Plan makes a commitment to strengthening a smaller number of institutions, through deeper, more sustained partnerships. 2 Lessons from USIP s experience with TDA can help inform this broader effort. Key Findings The initial group of Syrians convened was diverse, but the diaspora was over-represented. The initial group, roughly 60 participants, 3 who convened to develop the TDA report, was diverse across a number of important categories including religion/sect, political ideology, home region, and gender. However, the Syrian diaspora was over-represented in the group. The group could have been improved if more individuals from inside Syria and more credible opposition figures participated. The meetings convened to develop the report were productive and well-managed, but more time and more facilitation would have improved the process. USIP successfully managed the meetings where The Day After report was developed. This is evidenced by the fact that the report was finalized without significant delays and without significant factions leaving the process or voicing opposition to the content of the report. Participants indicated that more time for discussions, more time for trust-building, and making more facilitation expertise available would have helped the process. A sense of Syrian ownership was protected. Given the tense, at times hostile, relationship between Syria and the United States over the years, it was inevitable that some would be suspicious of the United States Institute of Peace helping develop a transition plan for Syria. USIP did a good job of managing this challenge, particularly through its willingness to take a low-key role and let others take credit for the process. 2 United States Institute of Peace, Strategic Plan , pp Quarterly Reports list the first full meeting as convening a total of 59 participants in-person and through Skype. Program documentation indicates that the number of attendees fell to around 45 for subsequent meetings, but the evaluation team was not able to find definitive documentation. 3

4 The report The Day After Project: Supporting a Democratic Transition in Syria, is a high-quality report that succeeded in shifting the narrative regarding the Syrian opposition. The report produced by the project is a high-quality report that lays out a solid transition plan. This plan reflects both the current state-of-knowledge regarding post-conflict transitions and the specific realities of the Syrian context. In addition, the resport succeeded in shifting the narrative regarding the Syrian opposition and post-transition planning. After the report, the opposition was able to be seen as a viable alternative to the Assad regime, as opposed to merely resistors and protestors. This helped counter the messaging of the Assad regime to Syrians that the choice was between the current regime and chaos. The report is occasionally referenced now, but is not regularly being discussed or used. For the most part, the TDA report is not a live document at the moment. It is occasionally referenced, often in combination with the other Syria transition plans that have been developed, but there is little actual use of the document by those working on Syria. However, many of those who are aware of the report, see it as on the shelf, ready to be taken down if there is more of a genuine transition in Syria. Outreach efforts for the report could have been improved by moving away from a dissemination model and toward an engagement model. USIP did conduct a dissemination effort which created some visibility for the document. However, the report was not designed as an analytic work, but a work designed to directly guide practice. As a result, there should have been less outreach in English, more outreach in or near Syria, and more outreach where participants actively worked with and engaged the content. Better strategies to continue implementation of activities while the organization was established should have been developed. USIP did not take sufficient steps to ensure programming activities would continue while the TDA organization was established. This created a situation where, for over a year, as the organization was being set up, very few substantive, programmatic activities took place, which had a range of negative consequences for the overall project. USIP successfully supported the establishment of an organization, but is not structured to regularly undertake this type of initiative. The TDA Association is a functioning organization with the capacity to operate largely independently of USIP. However, USIP has no staff dedicated to this kind of organizational development effort, nor does it have expertise in the kind of organizational development 4

5 strategies that are necessary to support an organization like the TDA Association. This means first that the process used to establish the TDA Association will be difficult to repeat, and second that USIP will struggle to provide ongoing organizational development support to the TDA Association. Poor project management practices within USIP hurt the effectiveness of the project. Several key project management components were largely missing from the TDA project, including a workplan, a monitoring plan, a reporting plan, and effective contact and document management. This had several negative consequences for the project, including harming the relationship with the funder, hindering the project s ability to leverage additional capacity at USIP, and making it more difficult to sustain the network of Syrians who have participated in the project. There was a lack of flexibility built into the program design during the various phases of the project. The situation in Syria has developed in ways that few predicted. USIP cannot be faulted for not correctly predicting the course of developments within Syria. However, USIP could have built more flexibility into the design of the TDA project. In particular, the project could have shifted some of its focus to aspects of the project that can be leveraged in more flexible ways, including the content of the report (as opposed to the finalized report itself) and the network of participants. Key Lessons Separate project implementation from capacity-building efforts. For future projects that involve project activities and capacity-building efforts, USIP should create separate project strands to implement project activities and to build capacity of the partner organization. These strands can be brought together over time as the partner organization develops its own capacity to implement activities. Build capacity to build capacity. USIP should dedicate resources to, and build capacity in, the expertise required to provide sustained organizational development support, either through the development of dedicated in-house expertise or through strategic partnerships. Always strive to be closer to the ground. USIP projects are stronger when the Institute works directly with those in conflict zones and those directly impacted by conflicts to the maximum degree possible. 5

6 Improve project design and management. USIP should ensure projects develop workplans, monitoring plans, and reporting plans prior to implementing activities. These plans should be updated as necessary as the project evolves and the context changes. The Institute should also strengthen knowledge management systems designed to gather, manage, and share critical information, such as stakeholders contact information and key project documents. Conclusion The TDA effort emerged out of the deep subject matter expertise on Syria at USIP. The subject matter expertise helped the project achieve important results, such as the changing of the narrative regarding the ability of the Syrian opposition to plan and implement a transition strategy. However, at numerous points, the project was hindered by issues requiring non-subject matter expertise, such as project design and management, reporting, organizational development, network maintenance, and knowledge management, among others. Many of these challenges were overcome through the creativity and commitment of the project team and USIP s support staff, for instance, in their successful efforts to establish the TDA Association as an independent, Syrian-led organization. But in many cases, the efforts to overcome these challenges either had negative consequences for other aspects of the project and/or are not repeatable on a consistent basis given USIP s current structure. Thus, the TDA project illustrates the importance of investing in both subject matter expertise and the various kinds of non-subject matter expertise that are crucial for the effectiveness of USIP projects, and then linking and leveraging all the different expertise that a given project requires. This should be done in ways that don t hamstring or constrain the Institute s subject matter experts, but instead promote their ability to maximize the impact of their projects. 6