Updated October 2026: this post was first published in May 2018 to share our 2017 annual report. We have expanded it with a summary drawn from the report.
2017 was the first full year of the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF), and across East Africa and the Horn of Africa governments, agencies and donors were working out what longer-term responses to displacement would look like in practice. ReDSS, then a coalition of 12 NGOs (ACTED, CARE International, Concern Worldwide, DRC, IRC, INTERSOS, Mercy Corps, NRC, Oxfam, the Refugee Consortium of Kenya, Save the Children and World Vision, with DRC, IRC and NRC on the steering committee), set out to support that work with evidence, training and spaces for joint reflection. Our annual report gives a picture of what a small secretariat can contribute when policy is moving quickly.
Building skills and shared understanding
We delivered nine trainings to 233 participants: 97 in Somalia across three trainings, 71 in Ethiopia across three, 25 in Turkana in Kenya, and 40 in Tanzania across two. Five learning events brought together 268 participants, and a separate half-day event in Somalia gathered 63 stakeholders. We also developed a guidance package on the durable solutions framework and our first online durable solutions tutorial, a five-minute animation, so that practitioners could use the framework without attending a training.
Evidence for programming and policy
We disseminated the findings of our early solutions study, and the report notes that the World Bank referenced early solutions in its IDA refugee sub-window for 2018. Area-based solutions analyses covered Lower Juba, Bay and Benadir in Somalia, the local integration of naturalised Tanzanians, and refugees who had lived in Ethiopia for 20 years or more. A regional urban solutions study covering Nairobi, Mogadishu and Baidoa was under way, and a drought and displacement initiative in Somalia led partners to include displacement as a variable in their drought response.
Bringing communities into policy
We produced seven policy briefs and one-pagers; our brief for the May 2017 London Conference on Somalia had more than 18,000 views and downloads. We coordinated a CRRF working group of 54 members and partners. Community consultations on the CRRF reached 456 displacement-affected people across four countries, and 60 participants from agencies, the UN, government and civil society were trained in listening to communities. Our mailing list grew from 600 contacts to more than 880 in the first half of the year, we published six bi-monthly updates, and our website recorded 36,739 views by the end of 2017.
Looking ahead to 2018
As we looked ahead, the year pointed us towards deepening the direct and meaningful engagement of displaced people in the decisions that affect them, so that growing policy openness stays connected to realities on the ground. It also pointed us towards a stronger focus on internally displaced people, starting with an IDP strategy developed with IDMC to mark the 20th anniversary of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. Our plans included solutions analyses in Puntland and Somaliland, a Somali translation of the tutorial and a new tutorial on housing, land and property, testing and refining our solutions tools with partners, and a common collective outcomes framework in Somalia and Ethiopia, recognising that agreeing on collective outcomes takes time and new ways of working.
To meet the growing interest from other actors, we planned a new ReDSS+ membership tier and country units in Ethiopia and Somalia, alongside a stronger monitoring and evaluation system with continuous learning built in. This will enable ReDSS to support more partners closer to where solutions are planned and delivered. Our work in 2017 was made possible by our members and by funding from the European Union, ECHO, Danida and DFID.
Read the 2017 annual report.
References
ReDSS (2018). Annual report 2017: key achievements, challenges and way forward for 2018. https://www.regionaldss.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ReDSS-ANNUAL-REPORT-2017-EXT.pdf
