11 commandments of international campaigns – for children and youth participation in peacebuilding

Matthew Scott, the director of Peacebuilding at World Vision, and an experienced campaigner, shared his experiences of campaigning in order to support the team’s campaign for a Security Council resolution!

1. Invest in relationships. Across the ‘boundaries’ of civil society, government, academia, private sector, and much more, strong relationships will get a campaign through the hard times that always come. One of the best parts of this approach is the opportunity to form deep and lasting friendships with gifted professionals from so many different backgrounds. Many will remain friends long after the campaign has run its course.

2. Strong and shared leadership. A campaign with indecisive or weak leadership will not last. At the same time, a campaign with one dominant personality will be ineffective. A good leadership team must make hard decisions quickly and frequently. But that leadership also needs to constantly earn the confidence of its members, otherwise there will be back-biting and infighting.

3. Know the structures you are aiming to change, but don’t be defined by them. Most transnational advocacy campaigns have to navigate the complicated arrangement of international organisations, treaties, norms, and standards. Unless a campaign knows these paradigms well, it will not be taken seriously by the policymakers it seeks to change. At the same time, if the paradigms simply won’t let a campaign achieve its objectives, then create new paradigms!

4. Find a government partner (or a few). Most successful campaigns have a national government that will champion the cause and expend political capital to acheive its goals. As powerful as civil society may be at harnessing popular sentiment, governments are still the ones passing laws and their help is critical for any campaign.

5. Tell the story. To succeed, campaigns must have a core message, a human face, and a short slogan.  Even better, a visual brand for a campaign will help make the campaign message compelling, memorable, and unique. Even policy-makers can be won over by compelling stories of courage and perseverance in the face of inustice.

6. Wield your evidence. Anecdotes are heart-warming, but data makes policy. Without evidence, a campaign only has empty rhetoric and flowery promises. Evidence should be time-specific, logically coherent, and compelling for donors to justify expenditure and investment.

7. Use technology better than anyone else. Transnational campaigns have huge challenges in managing all the communications, documents, events, and so forth. It takes good technology to manage all that information well and communicate with all the network members constantly (frequent) and clearly (not repetitive). Civil society seems better – right at this moment – than others in using social media. Use this advantage to mobilise the global constituency for children and youth peacebuilding.

8. Evolve your strategy. Any transnational campaign has to have specific plans to accomplish its objectives. It takes time to evolve those objetives by consultation. But sudden developments and quick changes in the context require quick adaptations. Don’t stay fixed to a plan that was good when it was written but no longer applies. If you accomplish your objectives sooner than expected, then raise your standards. If you encounter unexpected obstacles, then form a new strategy to address them as soon as they arise.

9. Ruthless focus. Peacebuilding is almost be definition connected with nearly everything, and this can be a trap. A campaign cannot ‘boil the ocean’ even if it has tens of thousands of determined supporters. Once your strategy has been defined, and adapts to the context, then don’t try to add new things later.  Agree to follow up other issues later if they threaten to derail your immediate goal.

10. Set concrete deadlines. Governments and international organisations almost seem to need an impending deadline to get moving. Be clear with your campaign partners about when you want to accomplish your goals, as well as the consequences of not meeting the deadline. In general, civil society networks tend to over-estimate what they can do in 1 year, and under-estimate what they can do in 5.

11. Keep a sustainable pace. Campaigns are marathons, not sprints. Not everyone who starts a campaign will stay with it to the end. Be prepared for transition, turnover, and changes in key personalities. Effective, lasting, sustainable change, takes years to accomplish, not weeks. There are often short bursts of intense effort, usually around big meetings and conferences. But the best campaigns are patiently persistent, going at a pace that most participants can sustain. As the African proverb goes, “if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”.