Innovations in Donor Bureaucracies and the Implications for Peacebuilding Financing

Publication: Policy Brief

Donors face increasing pressure to do more with less, even in the most fragile contexts. This policy brief analyzes how organizational factors within governments create obstacles for good peacebuilding financing—and proposes options for overcoming them.

UK's former Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Photo credit: Flickr/Antonio Acuña (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Several donor countries have recently adapted, or are now starting to adapt, bureaucratic structures and procedures that manage their overseas assistance programs. Indeed, recent reforms in the United Kingdom (UK) and elsewhere create an opportunity to draw early lessons learned from restructuring efforts. Such efforts relate to such as the composition and mandate of different ministries, departments, divisions, teams, and/or agencies, and related institutional procedures, such as reporting lines or sign-off procedures on budget allocations. In this paper, we focus on the implications of these structures and procedures on efforts to improve the coherence of peacebuilding financing strategies, emphasizing appropriate support to the peacebuilding pillar of the “triple nexus” or humanitarian-development-peace (HDP) nexus.

Read the full policy brief: Innovations in Donor Bureaucracies and the Implications for Peacebuilding Financing

Related Reading

Learn more about CIC’s Good Peacebuilding Finance program.

More Resources

  • Publication: Analysis May 17, 2023 CIC Perspectives

    Managing Opportunities, Challenges, and Expectations for the New Agenda for Peace

    Ahead of the policy brief expected from the UN Secretariat in June 2023, this piece provides a historical glance at past UN reforms, identifies the primary challenges and opportunities the UN and its member states face as they undergo this process, and looks forward to the key priorities that can be taken up from a realistic and practical perspective. Highlighted is how the New Agenda for Peace “provides a rare opportunity for the United Nations to examine and reflect upon the totality of the peace and security work of the Organization to uncover and better understand the synergies and contradictions of the existing processes and structures.”

  • Publication: Policy Brief April 24, 2023

    Does the Present Interpretation of the UN Principles Cause Harm in Syria and Yemen?

    This policy brief takes a comparative examination of how the United Nations has adopted a paradoxical interpretation of its guiding principles to address the complex humanitarian crises in Syria and Yemen. It offers approaches that could change the course of international humanitarian operations and protect them from further politicization, weaponization, and diversion.

Stay Connected

Join our mailing list to receive regular updates on our latest events, analysis, and resources.

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.