Project Coordinator: Susanna Campbell
Principal Collaborators: Anne Marie Bihirabake, Tracy Dexter, Michael Findley, Stephanie Hofmann, Josiah Marineau, René Manirakiza, and Daniel Walker
Between 2007 and 2013, the UN Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) allocated US$ 44 million from their Peacebuilding and Recovery Facility (PRF) and US$ 5 million from their Immediate Response Facility (IRF) to help consolidate peace in Burundi. This makes Burundi the top recipient of PBF funds out of the 23 countries that the PBF has supported. Burundi was also one of the first two countries, along with Sierra Leone, to receive PBF funding and be included on the agenda of the UN Peacebuilding Commission (PBC). The duration and magnitude of the PBF’s support to Burundi make it an important case to study and understand.
The mandate was completed in early 2014 with the publication of the evaluation report in English and French. This evaluation is different from the other evaluations that the PBF has commissioned because it assesses the contribution of the PBF support to Burundi’s post-war transition for the entire period of PBF support to Burundi (2007 – 2013), which includes two tranches of PBF funding (PBF I and PBF II) and the preparation of a third one (PBF III), and draws lessons for the PBF based on its support over this entire period. The same lead evaluator that evaluated the first PBF tranche in 2010 also led this evaluation, enabling the evaluation team to conduct an in-depth comparison of PBF support in different sectors, with different staff, and to different configurations of the UN at the country level. To do this, the evaluation employed an innovative research design that is grounded in a household-level survey of over 250 households from randomly sampled towns with and without PBF involvement, and over 165 semi-structured interviews, 90 of which are drawn from the randomly sampled towns, as well as a detailed document review. This evaluation was conducted by a team of thirteen researchers and research assistants.