How can we change refugee response systems for the better? Evaluating RefugePoint’s impacts on Refugee Response systems

We’re celebrating the launch of Transforming Refugee Response, a series of briefs showcasing how RefugePoint has contributed to important and concrete changes in how the world responds to refugees. Drawing on 20 years of experience partnering with refugees to access life-changing solutions and working with partners to improve broader response systems, we’re proud to highlight eight examples of how RefugePoint

 has helped shift policies, practices, resources, and more to expand access to durable solutions for refugees and make them more equitable. These shifts are not incidental to RefugePoint’s work; they have been at the heart of our approach throughout the agency’s 20-year existence. The three main strategies that structure our work—direct services, field-building, and systems change—are mutually-reinforcing. We use what we learn from providing direct services to build the capacity of the humanitarian sector at large and to positively influence and transform the systems that govern refugee response.   

The three main strategies that structure our work—direct services, field-building, and systems change—are mutually-reinforcing.

We acknowledge that this hardly feels like a moment for celebration. While unprecedented numbers of people have been forced from their homes by conflict, persecution, and violence, many governments are dramatically scaling back resources and resettlement opportunities for refugees. We need systems change more than ever to rebuild, refocus and re-energize refugee response. When refugee response works well, refugees get the support they need to rebuild their lives, reach their full potential and contribute to their communities. In order to meet this unprecedented challenge, clarity about how agencies like RefugePoint can play a positive role in changing refugee response systems is essential. 

Each of the eight briefs in this series focuses on one example of a systems change RefugePoint has contributed to, highlighting:

• What changed
• Why change was needed
• How change came about
• RefugePoint’s unique role in making the change, and
• The relevance of the change for refugees.

From them we can draw important insights about how RefugePoint and partners can approach and achieve systems change — that translates into real change for refugees.

This work summarizes the results of an externally-led evaluation RefugePoint commissioned and participated in late in 2024. External evaluators conducted extensive interviews with RefugePoint partners, colleagues, and other stakeholders, led analysis activities with RefugePoint staff, and reviewed extensive documentation to analyze RefugePoint’s contributions to transforming refugee response. Key takeaways include: 

• RefugePoint has a diverse toolbox for contributing to change. RefugePoint’s convening power among partners and stakeholders and the flexibility that a largely-private funding model affords are powerful tools to help bring about change. Testing out new ideas, highlighting unmet needs in the sector, building capacity of partners, and engaging in evidence-based advocacy are also tools we’ve used to contribute to change.
• Systems change takes time and is best approached in partnership with others. RefugePoint has frequently played the role of lead contributor or primary actor within a partnership or group of partners working towards changing systems, and sometimes also a movement-starting “seed sower”. We have also sometimes approached systems change independently, for example, to pioneer a new approach to refugee self-reliance in Kenya or to advocate for including refugees in Kenya’s national health insurance system. 

Please read on for an overview of key findings from this first installment of briefs, and see the end of this post for links to all eight. We will add more volumes to the Transforming Refugee Response series periodically, featuring future contributions to changing refugee response systems. 

What kinds of systems changes has RefugePoint contributed to?

Systems changes are shifts in one or more of the factors that keep existing refugee response systems from serving refugees adequately and equitably. These factors include policies, practices, resources, relationships between actors, distributions of power, and mindsets (beliefs and ideologies).¹ Looking back on two decades of work in this sector, RefugePoint has aimed to and succeeded in bringing about changes in a wide range of policies, practices and mindsets through our work on resettlement and complementary pathways (third-country solutions), as well as our work in refugee-hosting countries (host-country solutions).  

Within third-country solutions, we’ve played a role in bringing NGOs from the margins to the middle of referring refugees for resettlement, and convened networks of NGOs to help improve access for refugees to resettlement and complementary pathways. We’ve helped standardize the practice of deploying NGO staff expertise to UNHCR to help expand equitable access to resettlement for refugees and worked with UNHCR to improve its policies, practices, and capacities for protecting unaccompanied and separated child refugees. 

In the realm of host-country solutions, we’ve pioneered a unique, holistic, and influential approach to serving urban refugees and facilitating their self-reliance, while also building a global movement to change mindsets within the sector (and beyond) about supporting refugee self-reliance. We’ve also helped strengthen the role of Refugee-Led Organizations (RLOs) in refugee response and worked to elevate the voices of refugee leaders. We also successfully negotiated the inclusion of refugees in Kenya’s National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), and continue to advocate for refugees as Kenya shifts from NHIF to its new Social Health Authority.

How has RefugePoint contributed to changing systems?

The evaluation identified a number of tools and capabilities that RefugePoint has used to bring about change, which we refer to as “levers of change”. Levers of change are relatively small changes that actors such as RefugePoint can make that can bring about a bigger change in the overall system.² The evaluation identified three or four key levers behind each change and uncovered some clear patterns in the most important levers used by RefugePoint to help bring about a change in the system (see graph below). The most frequently cited was our ability to convene partners and stakeholders in our sector to build towards change together. 

RefugePoint’s ability to leverage private funding, and limited reliance on government funding, ran a close second. Private funding provides flexibility for program innovation, and—critically—independence from the swinging priorities of institutional donors. Other often-cited levers of change included RefugePoint’s ability to test out new ideas, highlight unmet needs in the sector, build the capacity of partners and engage in evidence-based advocacy. We acknowledge that some of these levers are linked. For example, “testing new ideas” is largely possible thanks to private funding. However, the evaluation elevated these levers as being sufficiently unique to feature separately. 

Source: Authors’ analysis of findings from the Transforming Refugee Response briefs, Vols 1 – 8

What roles has RefugePoint played?

What unique role did RefugePoint play in pulling the levers that helped bring about this change? Drawing on a typology of roles actors can play in advocacy work,³ the evaluation found that RefugePoint has most frequently played the role of lead contributor within a partnership or group of partners working towards changing systems. At times though, we’ve also struck off alone, for example to pioneer a new approach to supporting refugee self-reliance through our programming in Kenya, or negotiating the inclusion of refugees in Kenya’s NHIF. Still, the trend seems to be that there is strength in numbers when it comes to changing systems. In most of the briefs, RefugePoint has been a lead or primary actor, working alongside partners (see graph below). And in one case, establishing a global movement to advance refugee self-reliance, RefugePoint has been a “seed-sower”, initiating a campaign with the Women’s Refugee Commission, which has since taken on a life of its own.

Source: Authors’ analysis of findings from the Transforming Refugee Response briefs, Vols 1 – 8

Telling the story of systems change

Given the complexity and number of stakeholders involved, systems change is notoriously difficult to puzzle out. Many social impact organizations struggle to understand and document the story of systems changes they pursue. The story of the most impactful changes often cannot be told with numerical data alone. The completion of this first set of briefs fulfills a long-held desire to build a base of evidence about the highest-level goals and accomplishments of RefugePoint. We are proud of the significant changes that we—as a relatively small agency— have helped bring about over the past 20 years, all in the service of transforming refugee response systems so they work better for refugees. And we are grateful to all the staff, board members, donors, partners, advisers, and refugee clients who made it possible. Finally, our gratitude goes to all of the colleagues and stakeholders who participated in the evaluation, and to the external evaluators – independent consultant Elizabeth Frank, and Ciara Aucoin Delloue and Walaa Abu Zaiter of Key Aid Consulting – who conducted the evaluation and authored these briefs. Thank you! 

Please read on for more details:

• Vol 1 Normalizing a Role for NGOs in Refugee Resettlement Referrals
• Vol 2 Expanding Access to Resettlement through Staff Deployments to UNHCR
• Vol 3 Building Networks of NGOs Engaged in Third-Country Solutions
• Vol 4 Strengthening Child Protection Capacity for Resettlement
• Vol 5 Pioneering a New Approach to Supporting Self-Reliance for Urban Refugees
• Vol 6 Launching a Global Movement to Advance Refugee Self-Reliance
• Vol 7 Elevating Refugee-Centered Approaches and Support to Refugee-Led Organizations
• Vol 8 Securing Refugee Inclusion in Kenya’s National Health Insurance Fund 

Footnotes:

1: Kania, J., Kramer, J., & Senge, P. (2018). “The Water of Systems Change.”

2: Meadows, D. (2015). “Leverage Points-Places to Intervene in a System.”

3: Coe, J., & Schlangen, R. (2019). “No Royal Road. Finding and Following the Natural Pathways in Advocacy Evaluation.” Center for Evaluation Innovation.