From 30 June to 2 July 2026, the Global Statelessness Fund’s grantee partners came together for the first live sessions of the Advocacy Lab, one of the collaborative spaces within the Global Statelessness Fund’s Learning Platform. The Learning Platform is tailored to our grantee partners, responding to the organisational needs, priorities and challenges that emerge from their work.
The Advocacy Lab was designed and delivered by the Global Movement Against Statelessness and the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion. The aim was to strengthen advocacy skills and strategies through practical learning, reflection and peer exchange. 40 participants from 25 organisations came together from Sub Saharan Africa, the Americas, Asia Pacific, South West Asia and North Africa, and Europe. Our grantee partners are led by, and work closely alongside, people directly impacted by discriminatory nationality laws and unequal nationality rights. While their political and social contexts differ, the Advocacy Lab created opportunities to recognise shared challenges, exchange practical advocacy strategies, and support one another in advancing the right to nationality.
The Advocacy Lab combined self-paced learning with interactive live sessions. Ahead of the sessions, participants could explore resources and reflection sheets in six languages through a dedicated online platform, giving them time to connect the materials to their own advocacy work. These reflections then informed the live discussions, where grantee partners brought their own questions, experiences and challenges into practical exercises and knowledge-sharing amongst peers.
Accessibility was built into the live sessions, with sessions offered across different time zones and in multiple languages, to ensure that participants could contribute comfortably and engage fully in the discussions. For organisations working in difficult and sometimes isolating environments, these conversations offered something equally important: a sense of connection and solidarity with others facing similar struggles elsewhere. Sharing challenges, lessons and moments of progress across borders helped reinforce that this work is not carried alone, but as part of a wider movement committed to advancing equal nationality rights.
Designing clear and context-driven advocacy strategies
That spirit of shared learning was evident in the first session, which explored how advocacy strategies can remain grounded in the realities organisations face. Participants reflected on where power and influence sit in their own contexts, how strategies may need to change as circumstances shift, and what meaningful progress can look like along the way. Importantly, progress was not limited to legal or policy reform. Stronger communities, new alliances and greater confidence among advocates can also signal that change is taking root. The discussion also recognised a reality familiar to many working on nationality rights: political opportunities do not always come when they are needed. Even during periods of deadlock, organisations can continue gathering evidence, strengthening relationships, testing different approaches, and laying the groundwork for future opportunities for change.
The discussion came to life through the experiences of three GSF grantee partners from Palestine, Kenya and The Bahamas, alongside an external partner from South Sudan. Each shared how their own advocacy strategies had shifted over time. Alicia Wallace, Director of Equality Bahamas, spoke about one of the biggest changes in their approach: “In the beginning, we put significant focus on the government, advocating at the national level. It felt like beating our heads against a brick wall, until we realised that politicians are the people who seem like they have power… They represent power, but the power is really in the people.”
That realisation pushed Equality Bahamas to invest more deeply in public understanding, community confidence and collective agenda setting. As Alicia put it, “We don’t have to wait for them to set the agenda, we can set the agenda together.” Her reflection showed that context driven advocacy is not only about knowing who holds formal authority, but also about recognising where influence can grow. Sometimes, creating the conditions for political change begins with helping people see their own knowledge, voice, and collective power as part of the solution.
Shaping advocacy messages to influence decision-makers
The second session turned to a question many advocates face: how do you communicate a complex reality in a way that is clear, credible, and difficult to ignore? Participants began with three simple questions: Who are we? What are we seeing? What needs to change? From there, the discussion moved into practical ways of shaping messages that stay grounded in organisational identity, lived experience, and a clear ask.
These ideas came through strongly in the reflections of four GSF grantee partners from Syria, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and the Netherlands. Riam, from Stateless Rights Collective in the Netherlands, explained how lived experience had become central to the group’s advocacy: “Instead of just adapting to the existing frameworks, we need to help shape them. We realised that our lived experience is our powerful point.” That principle is also at the heart of their annual Stateless Stories Café, where the message is simple and deeply human: “Stateless people are not just numbers or legal files. We are individuals with hopes and dreams, and with the right to be included in the society that we are living in.” Her reflection showed that a strong advocacy message is not only about choosing the right words. It is also about recognising whose knowledge carries weight, whose experience defines the problem and whose voice should help shape the solution.
Developing digital advocacy
The third and final session explored how organisations can use digital tools strategically while keeping community relationships, safety and trust at the centre of their advocacy. Participants considered how campaign goals, audiences, and organisational capacity should guide the choice of platforms, rather than attempting to follow every digital trend. Participants also discussed the responsible use of artificial intelligence, digital security and the risks of surveillance, misinformation and the growing prevalence of online harassment targeting activists.
Building on this, five GSF grantee partners from Eswatini, Malaysia, Dominican Republic, South Africa, Kenya, and an external partner from Lebanon shared how their organisations engage audiences online, the obstacles they encounter on social media, and the creative strategies they have developed to overcome these challenges and advance their advocacy goals. Zena, from the Nubian Rights Forum in Kenya, shared powerful lessons from the ‘My ID, My Right’ campaign, which combined lived-experience testimony, evidence based advocacy and strategic use of X, Tiktok and Whatsapp to mobilise public support and challenge discriminatory fees and barriers to identification documents. The campaign’s hashtag, #MyIDMyRight, trended on X for more than 24 hours, helping to move the issue beyond affected communities and into national public debate. This sustained advocacy contributed to concrete change, including the reduction and eventual removal of several documentation related fees. Reflecting on the campaign, Zena emphasised that digital visibility alone is not enough, ‘technology can sometimes amplify the campaign, but lasting change comes when digital engagement is also rooted in genuine and sustained action offline.’ Her experience showed that digital advocacy is strongest when it grows from the priorities, knowledge and leadership of affected communities. Rather than speaking for communities, it should create space for them to shape the message and build trust.
Learning continues together
By the end of the sessions, the sense of solidarity across the group was unmistakable. Participants had shared what had worked, what had failed, where they felt stuck, and what they were still trying to change. In doing so, they created a space where people could recognise parts of their own struggle in the experiences of others, and where learning became a form of mutual support. We are excited about creating more spaces where our grantee partners can exchange practical knowledge, strengthen community led advocacy, and build on the collective strength of those embedded in the movement to build a world where everyone can enjoy the right to nationality.