PeaceNexus supports Nonviolent Peaceforce’s organisational development process by strengthening their human resources, monitoring and evaluation, and strategic planning processes
As the recipient of the 2018 Luxembourg Peace prize for its outstanding contribution to peace, Nonviolent Peace force (NP) works in violent conflict contexts to protect civilians through unarmed strategies and accompaniment, working side by side with local communities and advocating for the wider adoption of these approaches. Guided by principles of nonviolence, non-partisanship, primacy of local actors, and civilian-to-civilian action, NP envisions a worldwide culture of peace in which conflicts within and between communities and countries are managed through nonviolent means. Selected through PeaceNexus’ Call for Proposals in 2018, our support to NP’s organisational strengthening process focused on three issues: human resources, monitoring and evaluation, and strategic planning.
The Results
As our partnership draws to a close, the organisation can reflect on remarkable progress. Centralized human resources management support is now provided, ensuring faster, more consistent, professional processes. Now with dedicated staff, NP will continue to invest in the introduction of software that further improves data management and collaboration. A series of Guidance Notes have been developed and, thanks to new templates and staff training, NP can now report against a set of shared core competencies across its different programmes. The work done is this area has provided NP with a shared language for programme development and proven to be “immensely useful” for external stakeholders. It has also given NP a starting point to achieve further programmatic and operational coherence in its new strategy, which was developed through a highly participatory process in 2020. Additional work to align NP’s governance structure to its strategic priorities is ongoing.
Five years after the PeaceNexus partnership, NP has significantly strengthened its organisational foundations. What began as the creation of a basic HR function has evolved into a full People Culture and HR structure with dedicated staff at headquarters and country level supported by its own HR online platform that brings greater consistency, equity and oversight. NP’s organisational values have also become more deeply embedded across support functions, fostering a stronger connection between programming and operations.
At the same time, NP’s monitoring, evaluation and learning capacity has expanded markedly. Its first five‑year strategic plan, developed in 2021, set a unified direction that now guides both global and country strategies.NP now has a centralised MEAL system based on the Peace Impact Framework and dedicated Impact Analysts harmonising data across the organisation. This strengthened strategic clarity has reinforced NP’s sector leadership and contributed to its resilience. Unlike many other organisations NP`s annual budget has remained stable with a slight increase in recent years.
Nonviolent Peaceforce received PeaceNexus accompaniment support from 2018 to 2021.