PeaceCon 2023: Spotlight on New CRS Instrument for Measuring the "Pulse of Peace"

By Sammy M.

The Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Technical Advisor for Influence and Learning, Edita Colo-Zahirovic is passionate about supporting processes that create stronger social ties and peacefulness in communities. However, her passion turns contagious as she reflects on the Social Cohesion Barometer, a learning and monitoring tool developed by CRS.

Underscoring the foundational philosophy that underpins CRS’s approach to social cohesion, Edita emphasizes the common message that when people and communities are supported in addressing what divides them and building on what unites them, “together they work to build stronger, healthier, and more just social ties." This, she goes on, “is the kind of transformational change that gets results not only in relationships but across humanitarian and development sectors.”

Then comes the big question.

But how do we know that social cohesion actions integrated into other sectors’ projects are meaningful and impactful? To know this, we need to measure the perception of participants about social cohesion, and you can only do that if you have a good tool such as the Social Cohesion Barometer, she says.

“But this is just a premise, so how do we know that what we are trying to measure is meaningful and impactful?” she says. That’s why the CRS Social Cohesion Barometer gains relevance, argues Edita. The SCB helps teams improve their programming, implement conflict-responsive projects, inform much-needed adaptive management, and build evidence that integrating social cohesion aspects in programs enhances both social cohesion in the communities and other sectors' outcomes.

Edita was making a presentation during a digital break-out session presentation on Embedding Social Cohesion Tools Program Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Systems at the PeaceCon 2023: Beyond Fragile Ground: New Peacebuilding Architectures for Today and the Future, which was held in Washington DC, from May 3-5.

Organized by the Alliance for Peacebuilding , PeaceCon 2023 brought together senior officials, thought leaders, policymakers, and practitioners to explore how the field of peacebuilding must evolve, with strategic foresight and innovation, to strengthen existing instruments of peacebuilding and create new strategic approaches and peacebuilding architectures to manage conflict and prevent violence during these times of tectonic geopolitical shifts.

Entering its 11th year, this year’s event was unique. It was held at a time of extraordinary global turbulence. The number of compounding crises facing the field is unprecedented, with Ukraine and Sudan, adding to what Ms. Awa Dabo, Director and Deputy Head, UN Peacebuilding Support Office, describes as "the growing number of active and protracted conflicts, representing the highest number that the world has faced since 1945. The situation is compounded of course, by the SARs-CoV-2 pandemic, as well as the polycrisis"—the complex network of entangled crises that once put together make the task of addressing all of them significantly harder.

But an instrument or barometer to measure social cohesion?

Experts acknowledge the conceptual and practical challenges posed by this methodology. Michael Collins, the Executive Director of The Americas at the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) highlighted this complexity, posing, “how do you measure peace?”

Describing social cohesion as “the glue that maintains society together,” Collins highlighted issues that contribute to “positive peace” including: a well-functioning government, equitable distribution of resources, free flow of information, good relations with neighbours, high-level of human capital, acceptance of the rights of others, low levels of corruption and sound business environment. He also stressed the importance of incorporating systems thinking instead of traditional linear processes during data analysis and interpreting results in specific sociocultural, economic, and political contexts.

As such, positive peace is associated with countries that have high per-capital income, high resilience, better environmental outcomes as well as a higher measure of well-being and better performance on development goals.

On this score, the IEP’s 2022 Global Peace Index offers a mixed bag of outcomes. For instance, while the average level of global peacefulness has deteriorated by 0.3 % (representing the eleventh deterioration in the last 14, years), 90 countries became more peaceful while 71 deteriorated.

The Global Peace Index is a composite index measuring the peacefulness of countries made up of 23 quantitative and qualitative indicators each weighted on a scale of 1-5. The lower the score the more peaceful the country. Iceland, New Zealand, Ireland and Denmark topped the list. The worst performers—unsurprisingly—were Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Russia and South Sudan.

The SCB therefore, adds to the growing tools for measuring social cohesion. It offers great potential to enhance programming, adds to evidence and adaptive management. For instance, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a CRS survey highlighted that integrating social cohesion into programming led to an increase in income-generating activities, joint economic initiatives and generally, greater likelihood of reporting improved economic conditions.

Examples from CRS work in many countries reported similar outcomes.