Learning and Adaptation Strategy

The UN’s 2017-2020 Peacebuilding Priority Plan (PPP) for Kyrgyzstan consists of three projects which aim to deal with challenges arising from religious radicalization and violent extremism, and was approved by the UN Peacebuilding Fund in December 2017 for implementation by six UN agencies, namely UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA, UNODC, OHCHR and UN Women. As the first comprehensive program to address violent extremism (VE) in Kyrgyzstan it is important that the program is as effective as it can be, and learns from international and local experiences with PVE programming. Furthermore, it is essential that the program is able to carefully consider the program’s impact on the broader conflict context, and able to learn from experience and adapt programme implementation to this learning. Learning and adaptation are particularly challenging since the program is to be implemented by a consortium where different UN agencies and partners are implementing different parts of the program.

In February 2018 a Conflict Sensitivity and Effectiveness of PVE programming workshop was held in Bishkek, which led to the agreement to develop a Learning and Adaptation Strategy, as an integral component of programme implementation. This Strategy presents the main rationale of the Learning and Adaptation Strategy, the ground work that is necessary for learning and adaptation to be conducted on-going basis, the mechanisms that will be established, the process of learning and adaptation, and the responsibilities for ensuring effective learning and adaptation takes place. The Strategy itself is followed by a Part II that presents tools and templates for the preparatory work, and a Part III that presents tools and templates for the ongoing process of learning and adaptation.

The Learning and Adaptation Strategy aims to be a practical and easy-to-use guidance note for conducting effective learning and adaptation, tailored to the specific design and implementation modalities of the PPP of Kyrgyzstan. It draws heavily on the UNDP – International Alert toolkit for improving the impact of preventing violent extremism programming, which all readers of this guidance note are encouraged to use as a key reference.