“ Broadly, the involvement of communities and grassroots organisations with lived experience in the design and implementation of projects, with the provision of some training and support, had an impact on those community members with capacity building and skills enhancement. This has strengthened their capacity to do their statelessness work on the ground, and to feed this work into coordinated advocacy initiatives”. PURSUING STRUCTURAL CHANGE WHILE MEETING HUMANITARIAN NEED – A NEW THEORY OF CHANGE The work of the Consortium deepened our understanding of the structural nature of the exclusion and marginalisation faced by stateless communities. It also forced us to think differently about ‘change’ and about the often artificial and unhelpful siloing of ‘human rights’ and ‘humanitarian’ intervention. The aim of the CESF was to identify and work towards systemic solutions targeting structural change. The Fund was not intended to meet humanitarian needs for stateless people. However, given the nature of the COVID-19 crisis, the model adopted for the CESF provided that “where humanitarian needs are identified by partners on the ground and there are no other means to address them swiftly, humanitarian relief can also be provided…in order to offer short-term relief while working towards a structural solution”. The criteria for projects under the fund reflected this dynamic, with baseline conditions that projects, partners and activities must operate within the framework of wider structural statelessness issues, with the possibility to address humanitarian needs where this contributed towards systemic solutions. As noted in the CESF Independent Evaluation Report: “ This fund was particularly well placed because it had the humanitarian angle, but also the wider advocacy and structural aspects. These after often not addressed through the same funding streams but is a useful approach in the circumstances to do so and demonstrated how the two aspects interact to improve outcomes.” … “The success of the model is inevitably steeped in the sought outcome of structural solutions for statelessness issues” […] “Partner organisations were keen to provide examples of the way in which they were able to use the model and fund in the contexts in which they were working.” “Indeed, participants reported the model supported new programming and existing work at a critical time and strengthened their ability to do advocacy. This work emphasised the fact that activism can be as effective in emergency periods, when it is particularly important to ‘counter the toxic narrative’ and raise awareness on statelessness issues. Partner organisations tied this into public health and community development outcomes that they witnessed.” The structural-humanitarian coordinated approach allowed for practical responses to urgent need while providing a solid basis for evidenced-based advocacy initiatives built on first-hand knowledge and understanding which strengthened the impact of engagement with decision-makers and stakeholders for change. As different Consortium members reflected: “ The possibility of giving relief food in a human rights project…allowed us to address urgent needs caused by Covid 19… [but] it was a short time to have an advocacy goal, thus the need to have a longer life cycle of the project.” “It enabled us to highlight the exceptional situation, to have humanitarian funds and do some research that enabled us to go to policy and advocacy.” In thinking about these differing aspects of the fund, a CESF Committee member suggested conceptualising structural change as a ladder, in which humanitarian impact is a rung of a ladder from which steps are built to lead to systemic impact. By approaching it in this way, as a holistic interaction between these approaches, the model was able to bridge the sometimes sharp division between people who do service, and those who support systemic change and advocacy. Furthermore, by doing so the model managed to bring in and meaningfully include more actors with lived experience, that a stricter emphasis on advocacy may have left behind. Significantly, this approach helped generate stronger commitments from government and humanitarian actors, to provide humanitarian relief (economic, healthcare, food etc.) to stateless people who had previously been excluded – highlighting the importance of pursuing this dual strategy. The work of Phiren Amenca/Walk with Us illustrates the impact of using researchbased advocacy which identified and focused attention on the humanitarian need of the Roma community as a basis for the active engagement of decision-makers, leading to faster resolution of the legal status of cases. In Lebanon, Oummal’s direct work to assist 1,202 stateless people with documentation, registration and access to their own piloted mobile vaccination clinic formed the foundation of targeted meetings with the Minister of Health who later announced that stateless people can be ensured hospital admissions connected to COVID-19 and a simplification of the process to access vaccinations. In North Macedonia as well, Bairska Svetlina successfully used its direct humanitarian and practical support to more than 1,000 members of the Roma community to engage and develop relationships and advocacy work with the Ministry of Justice, Assembly of the Republic of Northern Macedonia, Advisor of the Prime Minister for Roma Inclusion and International Initiative for Roma Integration. 29