Handbook: How to design, monitor, and evaluate results in Jobs for Peace and Resilience Programmes

Since its foundation in 1919, the ILO has promoted peacebuilding based on its constitutional principle that lasting peace depends on social justice, and in 2016 it launched the Jobs for Peace and Resilience (JPR) flagship programme to support more peaceful and resilient societies in fragile contexts. Guided by the Employment and Decent Work for Peace and Resilience Recommendation (No. 205), JPR combines employment-intensive investments, skills development, employment services and local economic development in a coherent, context-specific way, aligned with national and international frameworks such as Decent Work Country Programmes (DWCPs), United Nations Development Assistance Frameworks (UNDAFs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

However, in fragile and post-conflict settings, decent employment is often treated as secondary in peacebuilding discussions, partly because its contribution to peace is not always visible or measurable, with limited evidence of causal links between employment, poverty reduction and peacebuilding. As a result, employment–peace linkages, theories of change, conflict analyses, results chains and indicators are often weak or absent, leading to limited monitoring data and evaluability. This guide responds by providing practical, step-by-step guidance and tools to assess conflict sensitivity and integrate peacebuilding outcomes and indicators into employment programmes, particularly JPR initiatives, throughout project design and monitoring, complementing the ILO Development Cooperation manual.