The failure of accountability mechanisms to root out the domination logic of global institutions leads to work in complex conflict zones that is designed to fail.

To impact the behavior of local-level stakeholders requires enabling domestic actors to affect change themselves. Despite having this undestanding, our current funding mechanisms do not make emergent programming possible. The system makes recipients accountable to donors, instead of giving beneficiaries the ability to hold implementers accountable for their work [1]. In complex conflict environments, accountability tools that measure success based on linear and static indicators ignore the variety of real decisions that are made on an everyday basis to better the context.

The basis for this dysfunction is rooted in a logic of domination used by international stakeholders as they compete in an environment of perceived scarcety, segmentation and high competition. This dominance expresses itself using the following logic [2]:

We are individuals: the monolithic unitary actor theory misses all the ways we are connected and need each other. How nature, matter, and energy gets recycled among us (ex: you breathe the air I exhale). Our current financial system creates inter-connectedness but replaces relationships with transactions. In reality, we rely on each other to become who we are. Impacts affect the whole and hence require constant re-adjusting of one's programming.

Right and wrong exists: international systems behave with a desire to be “right” which creates in our local communities dehumanizing binaries. Because complex conflict contexts are unpredictable, a multitude of programming options exist that temporally may have been correct at one time, but may need to be suspended at others and revisited at yet another time. Unplanned outcomes are opportunities to learn and grow and provide life lessons just as "getting it right.” Innovation speaks to human resilience.

Material rationalism guides human conduct: global institutions tell us that emotions are irrelevant and their expression is looked down upon as “unprofessional” or “infantile.” This belief stifles facets of our lives and reduces a person’s multi-dimensionality. It misses the non-cognitive self, stress, trauma, or somatic responses, empathic responses, the relational nature of humans, arts and creativity, as well as transcendental responses. Yet, rationalism is the basis for our legal system, our political system and our economic system. Indicators should tap into physical, psychological and spiritual changes.

There is one knowable truth: there may be one experienced truth, events experienced by one person, but not one truth. This logic ignores the cognitive biases, physiology and socialization which creates multiple perspectives. So much of reality is how you interpret it. It is possible then that different “truths” can co-exist without being a threat to the other.

At the systemic level, accountability dynamics need transformation.The dominance of global institutions is visible in small interpersonal interactions happening within a larger structure. Traditional planning and evaluation tools are used to respond to the demands of donors and at the end of the quarter, only what maintains that relationship intact gets reported.

Implementing a program in a war zone is like “walking through a maze where the walls are changing with every step you take” [3].

In environments with a high degree of insecurity and wide pockets of disorder, incremental decision-making, short-term strategies and constant adjusting work best to reduce the gap between project goals and actual achievements.

For this type of programming to occur, the feedback that is gathered at the local-level requires integration within the organization’s way of doing things and must be allowed to change the patterns within which global stakeholders interact. At best, donors will value the changes in programming that emerge from the information gathered from a beneficiary-led program. In its most extreme form, project adaptation to the context is seen as a failure to anticipate or a planning flaw.

It is our responsibility to see our voices counted, as we try to establish a culture of consent inside the peacebuilding world.

In the process of changing our institutions, grant recipients are not victims and choiceless. This is not to say that donors do not hold a tremendous amount of power, but leadership is about our attitude and orientation towards daily life as we take responsibility for the whole.

"Embrace your own power, align your life and self with that which is most important to you, responsibly choose actions that support the needs of all involved and collaborate with others in bringing your shared vision to life in ways that shift the old patriarchal mindset of scarcity, separation, and powerlessness into a future that works for all." [4]

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