A New Approach to Peacebuilding
The Problem
The human and economic cost of armed conflict is enormous. Because many believe that it is inevitable, they are reluctant to spend money to reduce it. As a result, resources devoted to promoting peace are a tiny fraction of what is spent on warfare. Moreover, much of the activity that is funded fails to produce concrete results.
Operating independently, organizations working to reduce warfare are groping for ways to achieve their objectives. They tend to operate independently, with little strategic coordination. They identify many different “root causes” and seek to address them. They focus on the need for sustainable peace and engage in statebuilding and other methods that may foster political stability in the long term, but with uncertain results. Handicapped by the difficulty of measuring results, they pursue many different approaches, hoping that they will do some good. A better approach is clearly needed.
A better approach is clearly needed!
The Better Evidence project
Collaborators in BEP's First Planning Meeting in February, 2020
The Better Evidence Project (BEP) promotes basing resource allocation on evidence of what has been demonstrated to be effective in stopping or preventing warfare. It gathers and produces such evidence and facilitates its use by making it easily available to donors, practitioners, policymakers, and scholars .
BEP is establishing a “hub” that helps to access relevant research and to initiate both formal and informal partnerships with experts through its referral network. It aims to identify, to develop, and to fund research on how to prevent war effectively and to bridge gaps between research, practice, policy, and giving.
The hub helps donors, practitioners, policymakers, and scholars to collaborate in their efforts to promote peace. Understanding that duplicative efforts have splintered the field of peacemaking and siloed individual efforts, the BEP hub instead works as a force-multiplier for collective, ongoing efforts to promote evidence-based peacemaking. Its Resource Library will provide the ability to identify, develop, and fund research on how to prevent war and bridge gaps between research, practice, policy, and giving.
BEP’s hub convenes peacemakers, partners, associates, evaluators, and trusted colleagues for the purpose of developing relationships based on the shared goals of preventing and ending wars. It creates a space for people to find guidance, to stimulate conversation, and to translate evidence-based research to be useful to practitioners. By bringing professional networks together in its hub, BEP intends to contribute to a significant reduction of armed conflict through global evidence-based research, funding, and action.
More information on it is available at the Better Evidence Project website
and our newsletter BEP Newsletter Spring 2021
