Indicators +: A proposal for everyday peace indicators

Many of the approaches to measuring peace favoured by international organisations, INGOs and donor governments are deficient. Their level of analysis is often too broad or too narrow, and their aggregated statistical format often means that they represent the conflict-affected area in ways that are meaningless to local communities. This article takes the form of a proposal for a new generation of locally organised indicators that are based in everyday life. These indicators are inspired by practice from sustainable development in which indicators are crowd sourced. There is the potential for these to become ‘indicators +’ or part of a conflict transformation exercise as communities think about what peace might look like and how it could be realised. The article advocates a form of participatory action research that would be able to pick up the textured ‘hidden transcript’ found in many deeply divided societies and could allow for better targeted peacebuilding and development assistance.

► Construction of guidelines for new bottom-up peace indicators.
► Article goes beyond merely critiquing existing evaluation and measurement techniques.
► Everyday peace indicators have potential to see ‘hidden transcript’ of peacebuilding.
► Everyday peace indicators have potential to be conflict transformation tool.