Redefining Success in Peacebuilding
And How to Measure It
The idea that peace is the absence of war has left peacebuilders spending decades trying to prove a negative: “We did this thing, and then violence didn’t happen.”
This concept of what “success” is for peace, and the ensuing logic of how to measure it, has shaped peacebuilding funding proposals, programs, evaluations, and careers. But in a world defined by complex systems, polycrises, and persistent injustice, this definition of success is not only woefully inadequate, it’s a major impediment to fund work that actually matters. Work that is actually successful.
To live in a world where peace is a force for thriving rather than just surviving, we need to think bigger. In this final piece of the series, I explore three shifts that can redefine how we pursue peace, and how we know when we’ve succeeded.
1. Defining success in peacebuilding as expansive and generative
2. Why our current attribution and accountability mindset is stifling innovation
3. Measuring what matters
A richer, generative definition of peace
For the past four years, I’ve practiced equine-assisted psychotherapy with active military and veteran populations.
Their number one goal for coming to therapy? Peace. And they’re not talking about the absence of war. They’re describing being present, building trust, reconnecting with others, and gaining freedom from old habits and patterns that keep them stuck.
Their definition aligns more closely with how wisdom traditions understand peace than with how many policy makers, donors, and even some peacebuilders have historically defined it.
Traditionally, peacebuilding success has been framed narrowly: violence was stopped or didn’t happen. But this outdated definition is more about containment than transformation. And while it may be technically “correct,” it’s not sufficient.
An updated definition of success should reflect more along the lines of what my clients mean: creating the conditions for a flourishing, connected, and resilient social life. Tools like the Positive Peace Index (PPI) and Peace Impact Framework (PIF) give us practical ways to assess this, with “vital signs” that include personal agency and strong relationships with neighbors.
If we adopt this broader lens, peacebuilding becomes more than crisis response: It becomes generative.
It shifts how we think about success:
Centering the perspectives of those directly affected by violence
Breaking out of short-term, project-based cycles
Strengthening systems thinking to understand and influence what sustains violence
I know these ideas aren’t new to many of you. But I still find myself in weekly conversations with experienced professionals who equate peacebuilding with simply stopping or preventing war, declaring ceasefires “mission accomplished.” That mindset is quietly shaping funding, program design, metrics, evaluation, and strategic priorities, all while keeping us from doing what actually works.
If we want peace to take root and grow, we need to normalize a richer, more generative understanding of success.
Measurement that’s stifled the field
The old definition of success has left many peacebuilders stuck in a paradox.
We are held accountable for outcomes that no one can control. We are working in complex systems with tools designed for linear processes, where adaptation is penalized or hampered by bureaucracy, and performative compliance is rewarded. All while being asked to prove a counterfactual.
These systems ask: Did you do the thing? Did it cause the outcome? Can you isolate your impact?
Peace does not unfold in that kind of linear logic. It is emergent, relational, iterative, and shaped over time by many actors in constantly shifting conditions. Trying to isolate the impact of one project misconstrues how real change happens.
And yet, that is the logic baked into most of our accountability frameworks.
This fixation on attribution has led to real consequences:
It rewards small, measurable actions – often framed as "manageable interests” – over bold, transformative ones
It discourages experimentation, since anything that might fail is seen as too risky
It creates the illusion of success, because programs can meet all their targets while failing to address root causes of the conflict or move the needle at a level of scale that would affect real change in the system
Even worse, it creates perverse incentives.
Programs focus on outputs because they are easier to measure than meaningful outcomes. Local partners are buried in compliance reporting rather than trusted for their insight and expertise. Reports are produced to justify funding, not to improve practice.
Many of us recognize this dynamic and have probably experienced it firsthand, and yet it persists.
To change it, we need to not only redefine success in peacebuilding, we need to shift how we think about success and how we measure it.
3. Measuring what really matters
So what does meaningful measurement for peacebuilding look like when we adopt richer, generative definitions of success and move beyond attribution?
In his Substack Measuring What Matters, Julian King reminds us that outcomes are not inherently meaningful. They must be connected to shared values, intended purposes, and the public good. In peacebuilding, different stakeholders will often define success differently—and that’s not a problem to solve, it’s a reality to embrace to help us truly understand what’s going on and how to create change.
This kind of evaluative thinking is essential for navigating complexity and making peacebuilding more effective.
Here are four ways to build measurement systems that reflect what truly matters in peace work:
Use values-based, contribution-oriented evaluation: Ask what value was created, for whom, and how we know. Focus on how efforts contributed to change, even if they weren’t the sole cause. Evaluative rubrics can help make those judgments explicit, transparent, and shared.
Track the presence of positive peace indicators: Instead of only measuring whether violence occurred, assess trust between people and institutions, whether people feel agency over their lives, whether justice is accessible, whether disputes are resolved without violence, and whether communities are working to bridge what divides them (see the PPI and PIF examples above).
Elevate multiple forms of evidence: Use quantitative data to identify trends, qualitative data for depth and meaning, and sensemaking processes to interpret results in real time. Combine these with developmental evaluation to support learning and adaptation.
Honor local knowledge as valid evidence: As Sebene Selassie writes in You Belong,[1] western science has often dismissed Indigenous wisdom as belief rather than knowledge. If we treat only externally defined indicators as valid, we risk ignoring the relevant signals that matter most to people living in conflict.
Measurement’s first priority should be to help us make better decisions and improve, not serve as a command-and-control mechanism to maintain funding.
By measuring what matters most to the people most affected, we increase our chances of making peace real and lasting.
Redefining peace
This final piece of the three-part series has made the case for redefining success in peacebuilding from a narrow focus on preventing violence to a broader vision of building the conditions for people and communities to thrive.
This shift is already underway in many corners of the field. But for it to take hold more broadly, it needs to show up not just in a few different organizations who are leading the way, but in how international policy makers, funders, and all peacebuilders design programs, allocate funding, define and measure results, and learn from our work.
The good news is: we have the tools, frameworks, and allies to do this. What we need now is courage to shift how we define success, how we pursue it, and how we measure what matters most.
[1]Selassie, Sebene. 2020. You Belong: A call for connection. New York, NY: Harper One.