Global Evaluation of Children & Youth Participation in Peacebuilding

Young people constitute the majority of the population in many countries. Well over half of the 1 billion people who live in contexts of conflict and violence are children. Our organizations value the protection and participation of these most vulnerable and creative social groups. Children and youth are already building peace effectively in their communities. We need to explore their potential, and define their contribution; responding to this challenge is critical to our own values. We wish to improve existing peacebuilding practices, and build a rigorous evidence base on Children and Youth participation, developed through a multi-agency, multi-country, multi-donor evaluation, that will work to strengthen the impact and architecture of peacebuilding programs, in order to achieve societal transformation. Such a global evaluation of CYPP has never been carried out; it will focus on Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nepal. The evaluation is a collaborative initiative by the Partnership for Children and Youth in Peacebuilding. The Partnership is composed of agencies, individuals, institutes and organizations collaboratively working to support children and youth effective participation in peace processes, across the individual, community, regional and global levels. The Project Leadership Group, consisting of PATRIR, Save the Children Norway, Search for Common Ground, the United Network of Young Peacebuilders and World Vision, is implementing this project.