Establishing a bold influencing agenda aimed at changing policies, practices, and investments at national, regional, and global levels by encouraging adoption of program evidence and learning.
Our aim is to ensure that Re:BUiLD’s scope of change extends across Kampala and Nairobi, and beyond to any city hosting refugees. The specific outcomes for our Influence and Adoption pillar are focused on two levels:
- Enabling policy change through national, regional and global policy makers.
- Sector change within the humanitarian and development community, who in turn must engage local private sector stakeholders.
- Using our evidence and learnings, we promote the value and effectiveness of urban refugee livelihoods programming.
Campaigns
Campaigns are tools employed by Re:BUiLD to influence policy and practice at a global, regional, national and community level.
We have officially begun the campaign titled "Revolutionizing Refugee Rights: Access to Documentation Campaign in Kenya and Uganda" for the year 2025. Currently, we are in the process of finalizing the reviews of the Concept Note and we intend to begin the formation of the Advisory/Planning Committee. We are also looking to onboard partners who are aligned with our mission and goals for this campaign.
On 15th and 16th October 2024, Re:BUiLD held a Policy and Research Symposium in Nairobi, which was a result of the collaborative effort between the Re:BUiLD program, the IKEA Foundation, and the World Bank, in collaboration with other partners. The Symposium sought to challenge traditional paradigms, foster innovative approaches to confront the complex issues surrounding forced displacement in the region and offered a networking opportunity for practitioners, refugees, donors, academia, private sector, policy makers and researchers from Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia, with focus on four key themes: Access to Finance and Micro-enterprises; Access to Jobs and Skills Development; Access to Justice and Legal Identity; and Access to Social Protection. Presentations of research papers were done to set the tone for evidence-driven dialogue combined with insights from those with lived experiences in forced displacement, to inform policy making. You can find the full recordings of the sessions here, the post-event report here, and the blog on the Policy and Research Symposium Roadmap
In 2023, Re:BUiLD conducted a six-month long campaign on ‘Decent Work’ to promote refugees’ access to decent work in Nairobi and Kampala. The campaign aims to ensure that employers, governments, the private sector , humanitarian, and development actors understand the regulatory framework governing the type of employment that refugees can access and adopt strategies and practices that address barriers to refugee access to the formal and decent work.
In 2022, Re:BUiLD conducted a campaign on the cost-of-living crisis for urban communities in Kampala and Nairobi which climaxed with the launch of a policy brief in October of the same year. The brief was launched during the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) conference on the Kampala Declaration held in Nairobi. The brief called on donors and host governments to provide humanitarian assistance and national social protection on the basis of a human right without discrimination based on refugee status and location. Globally, the Re:BUiLD brief was presented at the UNHCR’s dialogue on protection challenges in Geneva.