Report & support use of findings in FCV settings

Effective reporting and supporting the use of evaluation findings in FCV contexts require careful planning and adaptation to the unique challenges these environments present.

Evaluators must ensure that their reporting processes are not only clear and accessible but also sensitive to the risks inherent in such settings. Balancing the need for transparency with the imperative to protect stakeholders is critical, as is ensuring that findings are relevant, actionable, and tailored to the capacities and needs of diverse audiences.

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Overarching principles

Particularly relevant principles include:

  • Do no harm and ensure conflict sensitivity: Reporting and dissemination processes must avoid exacerbating tensions or putting stakeholders at risk. Conflict-sensitive approaches ensure that findings are shared responsibly, minimising harm and maintaining a neutral stance.
  • Ensure safety and security: It is critical to anonymise sensitive information and carefully assess the risks associated with sharing evaluation data. Reporting methods must be adjusted to protect the identities and safety of all participants.
  • Foster flexibility and adaptability: Evaluation reporting must be adaptable to changing conditions in FCV contexts. Flexible communication plans and reporting schedules allow for real-time adjustments in response to evolving security, political, or logistical challenges.
  • Build trust, transparency, and accountability: Transparent reporting builds trust with stakeholders, but it must be balanced with the need for safety. Tailoring recommendations and findings to each audience, while maintaining accountability, helps strengthen relationships and improve the uptake of evaluation findings.
  • Respect local contexts and involve communities in M&E processes and decision-making: Engaging communities early and tailoring reporting to their needs ensures that findings are relevant and culturally appropriate. However, involvement must be handled sensitively to avoid inflaming local tensions or putting individuals at risk.

See the full list of principles here.

Identify reporting requirements

In Fragile, Conflict-affected and violent (FCV) contexts, identifying reporting requirements demands careful adaption to ensure that reporting processes are effective, safe, and sensitive to the complexities of the environment. Reporting must be designed to mitigate risks, protect all stakeholders, and adapt to volatile conditions inherent in FCV settings.

Adopt a conflict-sensitive approach to reporting and ensure safety and security

To ensure reporting does not exacerbate conflicts or put individuals at risk, it is crucial to adopt a conflict-sensitive and do no harm approach.

  • Continuously monitor the external political environment and conduct regular risk assessments to stay aware of changes that may affect the safety of reporting.
  • Be cautious about the information shared, especially when it relates to the actors, causes, and dynamics of the conflict. Prioritise safety over broad dissemination when the risk of worsening tensions outweighs the benefit of transparency.
  • Recognise that what is safe to disclose today might pose significant risks tomorrow due to the volatile nature of FCV contexts.
  • Anonymise sensitive information to protect data sources and avoid identifying individuals or communities that could be at risk.

Develop a comprehensive communication plan that allows for flexibility

Creating a tailored communication plan is essential to meet the specific reporting needs and timelines of primary users while ensuring safety and conflict sensitivity.

  • Tailor reporting to the specific needs and timelines of key stakeholders, such as donors, partners, and local communities.
  • Focus on sharing findings with the most vulnerable groups where it is safe, ensuring their access while managing risks.
  • Integrate conflict analyses into regular reporting processes to ensure reporting remains conflict-sensitive.
  • Time dissemination to minimise risks by aligning it with the current state of the conflict.
  • Define the purpose of sharing the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) findings with each stakeholder group.
  • Identify the different information needs and expected uses of different stakeholders to customise the reporting accordingly.
  • Consider reporting processes that can be quickly adjusted to reflect changes in the conflict, political landscape, or security situation.
  • Consider staggered reporting schedules, where key information is shared in phases to allow for real-time adjustments based on ongoing risk assessments and feedback.
  • Be prepared to shift reporting methods and formats if security, access, or infrastructure issues arise.

Respect local contexts and involve communities in decision-making where feasible and safe

To ensure that reporting is both contextually relevant and inclusive, it is crucial to engage local communities in the process. This helps to build trust, ensure accuracy, and enhance the practical value of the findings. However, in FCV contexts, this must be done in a way that does not put individuals or communities at risk.

  • Engage communities early in the process to identify reporting needs: Where it is safe and feasible, involve local communities from the outset in identifying key reporting needs and defining how the findings will be used.
  • Co-create dissemination strategies: Work with local communities to develop appropriate, culturally relevant, and safe methods for disseminating findings.
  • Ensure conflict sensitivity in community engagement: Be mindful of the risks of involving certain groups or individuals in the reporting process. In highly contested or divided communities, engaging particular stakeholders may exacerbate tensions or create power imbalances. In such cases, it may be necessary to limit community involvement for safety reasons.

Methods and approaches

  • Conflict-Sensitive reporting: Continuously monitor the political environment and cautiously share information to avoid risks. 
  • Communication plan: Tailor reporting to the needs and timelines of key stakeholders, emphasizing conflict-sensitive approaches.  

Develop reporting media

Developing reporting media in FCV contexts requires balancing the need for clear, accessible communication with the imperative to minimise risks to individuals and communities involved in the evaluation.

Ensuring effective and safe communication of key findings

Developing reporting media in FCV contexts requires balancing the need for clear, accessible communication with the imperative to minimise risks to individuals and communities involved in the evaluation.

  • Select appropriate formats for dissemination, ranging from short summaries and policy briefs to video clips or infographics, depending on the needs and capacities of stakeholders.
  • Balance accessibility with safety, ensuring that the presentation of findings remains clear without disclosing details that could endanger participants.

Collaborate with local communities to co-create dissemination materials

Engaging local actors in the creation of dissemination materials can enhance the relevance and impact of reporting, making it more aligned with local values and knowledge systems.

  • Work closely with community members to co-create dissemination products that reflect their perspectives, values and knowledge systems. This enhances the relevance of the findings for the particular reporting context.
  • Consider various dissemination formats, such as oral presentations, video content, or infographics, to ensure that materials resonate with the local context and audience.
  • Incorporate stories or quotes from local participants to humanise the findings and make the reports more relatable and engaging, provided it is safe to do so.

Maintaining safety and clarity in the presentation of findings

In FCV contexts, safety is paramount, and evaluators must ensure that reporting does not put anyone at risk.

  • Anonymise direct quotes or use generalised titles for key informants to protect identities while still conveying important insights.
  • Obtain appropriate permissions and conduct risk assessments for photographs and personal stories to ensure that participants' rights are respected and safety is upheld.

Methods and processes

  • Develop reporting media task page: This section of the Rainbow Framework lists a number of options for reporting media.
  • Co-creation of materials: Collaborate with local communities to create dissemination materials that reflect local values and knowledge. 
  • Safety and ethical considerations: Anonymise sensitive information, obtain permissions for personal content, and ensure the safety of participants. 

Resources

Ensure accessibility

In contexts of Fragility, Conflict, and Violence (FCV), ensuring the accessibility of evaluation reports can be challenging for many reasons. Stakeholders, ranging from local participants and government officials to implementing agencies and international donors, often vary widely in their levels of education, language proficiency, access to technology, interests, and perspectives, making it difficult to ensure that they can all access the evaluation. Additionally, the displacement of populations, a common issue in violently divided societies, adds another layer of complexity, as these groups are often dispersed and difficult to reach.  also directly informs the optimal timing for this dissemination.

Making reports accessible

To ensure that all stakeholders can engage meaningfully with evaluation findings, the following strategies are essential:

  • Translate reports into local languages: This makes the findings accessible to a wider audience, particularly for local communities who may not speak the same language as donors or international organisations.
  • Simplify technical jargon to ensure findings are easily understandable. Use plain language and avoid overly complex terms to ensure that non-specialist audiences can easily understand the findings.
  • Adapt report formats so that they are appropriate for the stakeholders’ capacities and preferences. Visual aids such as infographics, summaries, or short videos can make findings more digestible for those with limited time or literacy.
  • Use a mix of dissemination channels, including digital, print, or community meetings, to reach displaced populations or those with limited access to technology.
  • Determining dissemination responsibility: Decide whether a single team should manage all communication or if different groups should disseminate information to specific audiences. This ensures that messaging is appropriately contextualised for each audience group.

Methods and approaches

  • Ensure accessibility: This section of the Rainbow Framework has further guidance on this task.
  • Translation of reports into local languages
  • Simplification of technical jargon

Develop recommendations

In fragile, conflict-affected, and violent (FCV) contexts, developing recommendations requires balancing immediate needs with long-term goals and ensuring that recommendations are both realistic and feasible for implementation. Given the complexities in FCV settings, recommendations must shift from ideal solutions to what is practically possible and safe.

Balance short-term needs and long-term goals by focusing on what is actionable and realistic in the current context. This ensures recommendations are practical and sensitive to the challenges on the ground.

  • Use a participatory approach where possible to foster ownership, but be mindful that in certain FCV settings, this may escalate tensions. Evaluate the risks of participatory methods based on the context, particularly in FCV settings where attempts to promote accountability from the bottom up may unintentionally escalate tensions or endanger participants. 
  • Ensure transparency in recommendations, as long as it is safe and feasible. This is important to build trust and understanding and ensures that everyone involved is informed and can understand the potential changes being considered at higher levels of decision-making. However, recommendations should be tailored based on what is safe and appropriate for each group.
  • Recognise the ongoing impact of violence even after active conflict has ceased. Recommendations should acknowledge that communities cannot simply revert to pre-conflict conditions and must address the long-term challenges that arise from the conflict’s legacy.

Support use

One of the key challenges in using evaluations in FCV contexts is the limited local capacity to act on findings, often due to resource constraints and weak governance. Evaluations can also be misused to promote or suppress specific political narratives, particularly during or after conflicts, which can distort their intended purpose of learning and improvement.

Guiding evaluation use with conflict sensitivity

  • Ensure conflict-sensitive dissemination: Consider how political sensitivity and power dynamics may affect the use of evaluations. Government filters or censorship may distort findings to support political agendas.
  • Assess stakeholders’ capacity to implement recommendations: From the start, evaluate whether users can act on the findings, and adapt recommendations to be practical and achievable.

Promoting social learning and collaboration

In contexts with limited institutional capacity, fostering social learning—sharing experiences, resources, and building connections—can help maximise the utility of evaluations.

  • Encourage collaboration and self-organisation: Support learning through social interactions, helping communities and organisations share knowledge and build capacity.

Balancing participation and safety

While involving stakeholders throughout the evaluation process can increase the uptake of findings, it may not always be feasible or safe in FCV contexts.

  • Limit participation when necessary: In highly contested or conflict-prone areas, broader engagement may exacerbate tensions. A careful, conflict-sensitive approach should guide participation.

Adapting to changing needs

Maintaining flexibility in how evaluations are used is crucial in FCV settings. Evaluations might need to shift focus depending on changing conditions.

  • Shift focus when necessary: Adapt evaluations from long-term development objectives to addressing immediate crises or recovery needs to increase their relevance and impact.

Resources

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