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The international community is paying increased attention to the 25 percent of the world's population that lives in fragile and conflict affected settings, acknowledging that these settings represent daunting development challenges. To deliver better results on the ground, it is necessary to improve the understanding of the impacts and effectiveness of development interventions operating in contexts of conflict and fragility. This paper argues that it is both possible and important to carry out impact evaluations even in settings of violent conflict, and it presents some examples from a collection of impact evaluations of conflict prevention and peacebuilding interventions. The paper examines the practices of impact evaluators in the peacebuilding sector to see how they address evaluation design, data collection, and conflict analysis. Finally, it argues that such evaluations are crucial for testing assumptions about how development interventions affect change-the so-called "theory of change"-which is important for understanding the results on the ground.

Conflict analysis --- Conflict prevention --- Encouragement design --- Ex-combatants --- Experimental design --- Fragile states --- Impact evaluation --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Peacebuilding --- Post Conflict Reconstruction --- Poverty Impact Evaluation --- Poverty Monitoring & Analysis --- Public Sector Development --- Quasi-experimental design --- Science Education --- Scientific Research & Science Parks

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States and aid agencies use employment programs to rehabilitate high-risk men in the belief that peaceful work opportunities will deter them from crime and violence. Rigorous evidence is rare. We experimentally evaluate a program of agricultural training, capital inputs, and counseling for Liberian ex-fighters who were illegally mining or occupying rubber plantations. 14 months after the program ended, men who accepted the program offer increased their farm employment and profits, and shifted work hours away from illicit activities. Men also reduced interest in mercenary work in a nearby war. Finally, some men did not receive their capital inputs but expected a future cash transfer instead, and they reduced illicit and mercenary activities most of all. The evidence suggests that illicit and mercenary labor supply responds to small changes in returns to peaceful work, especially future and ongoing incentives. But the impacts of training alone, without capital, appear to be low.

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This paper examines women's power relative to that of their husbands in 23 Sub-Saharan African countries to determine how it affects women's health, reproductive outcomes, children's health, and children's education. The analysis uses a novel measure of women's empowerment that is closely linked to classical theories of power, built from spouses' often-conflicting reports of intrahousehold decision making. It finds that women's power substantially matters for health and various family and reproductive outcomes. Women taking power is also better for children's outcomes, in particular for girls' health, but it is worse for emotional violence. The results show the conceptual and analytical value of intrahousehold contention over decision making and expand the breadth of evidence on the importance of women's power for economic development.

Africa Gender Policy --- Gender --- Gender and Development --- Gender and Social Development --- Gender Innovation Lab --- Health --- Household Wellbeing --- Inequality --- Living Standards --- Poverty Reduction --- Power --- Women's Empowerment

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Violence against women is increasingly being recognized as an urgent public health priority and a significant human rights concern, as well as a major threat to social and economic development. Globally, an estimated 20 percent of all women will face some form of violence during their lifetime, including emotional coercion, physical violence, and sexual violence. The overall objective of the impact evaluation is to identify low-cost and scalable interventions, which demonstrate improvements in social, psychological, and economic functioning of sexual violence survivors in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). To this end, the authors conducted an impact evaluation of a village savings and loans association (VSLA) program to understand its impact on economic, social, and psychological outcomes for a sample of female sexual violence survivors. The impact evaluation had four components: (1) a qualitative needs assessment; (2) a quantitative baseline assessment; (3) a qualitative post-program assessment; and (4) a quantitative post-program assessment. This report presents a brief description of components 1 and 2 and then a full description of the method and results of the impact evaluation focusing on components 3 and 4. In terms of improving the psychological, social, and economic well-being of survivors of sexual violence, this study shows important results in some of the social and economic outcomes, but fewer results than expected for psychological outcomes. One recommendation from these results will be to explore the idea of pairing VSLA with other interventions to work more specifically on the certain outcomes that VSLA may not change on its own.

Gender --- Gender and Economics --- Gender and Social Policy --- Law and Development --- Mental Health --- Villages