USAID/ Burundi funds four multi-year projects designed to reduce the risk of youth participation in violence by supporting youth dialogue and joint activities to increase understanding, appreciation of differences, and collaboration among conflicting groups. USAID also seeks to nurture youth leaders and empower them with appropriate skills to assist their communities with peaceful development. NORC provided an assessment of USAID/Burundi's Youth Support programs to assist the mission in its understanding of the relative effectiveness of different peace-building and violence prevention activities. Findings are expected to be used by the Mission to inform the design of future violence prevention projects and will provide a basis on which to evaluate the relative effectiveness and efficiency of achieving violence and conflict reduction goals by specifically targeting the youth sector.
As part of this tasking, NORC conducted an assessment of the four USAID youth support programs and drew on qualitative data obtained during an August 2018 visit to Burundi where we conducted Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) among members of the CSO donor community to determine best practices that USAID could draw on in the youth violence prevention space. The assessment also included a literature review, exploring best practices based on academic and practitioner literature. This assessment grew from NORC's previous assessment of USAID's Youth for Peacebuilding in Burundi (Y4PBB) project.
The assessment found ample evidence to conclude that USAID's approach to reducing youth violence as broadly executed in the four programs funded by USAID brings many positive benefits to the lives of youth and their communities. These four programs contribute to youth ability to have greater agency and to their ability to resolve conflicts at the family and community level. Furthermore, there was evidence that youth gain at least limited economic benefit from these youth support programs. While the approach contributes to social cohesion, the links to violence prevention are tenuous at best. The success of this approach is limited by structural barriers and the absence of an enabling national policy environment.
