During the 2025 Fall semester, AfP partnered with students in the American University School of International Service to produce research on two interconnected research tracks exploring critical gaps and opportunities in locally-led peacebuilding: (1) examining the perspectives of community and local leaders on what barriers exist and what changes are needed for locally-led peacebuilding to succeed; and (2) investigating how development, philanthropy, and policy leaders perceive the challenges and future pathways for locally-led approaches. Through a literature review and interviews, the students authored the following report, including recommendations for peacebuilders, funders, and international NGOs. 

The purpose of this research was to assess the effectiveness of interfaith cooperation programming across the peacebuilding landscape. This report explored the general characteristics of five interfaith cooperation programs – including explicit indicators, common measurement trends, and indicator examples – to determine what these interfaith cooperation programs were seeking to change, how they sought to do it, how they measured their success, and the degree of confidence in which we hold the reliability of the indicator. This report curated and analyzed reports covering five programs related to interfaith cooperation, using their evaluation reports.

At a time of increasing conflict around the globe and uncertainty about resources for peace efforts, developing robust evidence of dialogue effectiveness is needed to demonstrate dialogue’s impact and value. This guide, developed over several years with the input of numerous colleagues and partners, merges theoretical insights with practical tools to present an innovative dialogue monitoring approach designed to help practitioners and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) professionals identify and track meaningful progress made by dialogue programs in conflict-affected contexts. It supports a shift toward more systematic, evidence-based monitoring practices necessary to document the complexities and impacts of a diverse range of dialogues.

This guide can also be a resource for funders and implementing organizations as they strive to increase accountability for the design and implementation of effective dialogue programs. Learning at an organizational level requires a shared framework to analyze comparable data across diverse programming contexts and interventions. This guide will encourage the kind of comparable data collection needed to enable peacebuilders to better assess and document dialogue outcomes in more standardized ways. By helping funders and implementers gather and analyze data about dialogue outcomes across programs and types of interventions, the guide will facilitate the assessment of intervention effectiveness and identify areas for growth.

The purpose of this guide is to:

• Equip dialogue practitioners to monitor dialogue projects;

• Facilitate project- and organizational-level adaptation and learning about dialogue program implementation; and

• Contribute to evaluation and scholarly study of dialogue practice and effectiveness by developing the evidence base for tracking contributions of dialogue to peaceful conflict resolution.

LEARNING AND EVALUATION

The American University Conflict Mitigation and Peacebuilding Practicum team partnered with Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP) to explore the challenges of measuring progress in the attainment of Sustainable Development Goal 16 (SDG 16) and potential lessons for the design of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.