By Emily Hayter and Jojoh Faal. Originally published March 31, 2026 by the Land Portal Foundation. Republished from the original article under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
Related project: The Land Facility.
In the Land Facility Decision Support Unit, we’ve recently been reviewing dozens of examples of policy engagement and influencing efforts from around the world. A summary of some of the key approaches and examples we found is available in this ‘Good Practices for Policy Engagement and Influencing’ resource.
Below we share our six top examples and case studies that really got us thinking, rethinking and talking!
1. Navigating land reform in the Mekong: lessons from a decade of adaptive policy engagement
This is a comprehensive yet also practical learning report that covers over a decade of different influencing tactics at work in diverse contexts. It offers frank reflections and concrete learning points that will resonate for practitioners in any sector. It’s also a nuanced and detailed illustration of the many ways evidence and politics intersect in the land sector.
Why you should read more:
- Cross-country comparisons: the MRLG project worked in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Viet Nam, and the learning report offers reflections on the very different types of policy engagement approaches adopted in each of these contexts—as well as how these evolved over time as policy windows opened and closed with shifting political dynamics.
- Practical reflections: it includes a number of operational details about the project structure and approaches which are often invisible in learning reports but which are critical to enabling effective policy influence approaches, such as on using political economy analysis, key capacities needed in project teams, and aspects of the donor relationship that can maximise possibility for influence.
- Bonus material: Some further reflections and lessons learnt were shared at the recent LINK conference — you can watch the recording here.
2. ‘Our Land is Our Future’ pledge in Sierra Leone
Written by practitioners involved in the campaign, this article charts the story of how the country’s experimentation with ‘community paralegals’ and multi-level stakeholder engagements eventually led to one of the world’s most progressive pieces of legislation on customary land rights.
Why you should read more:
- Fascinating process: ‘Systems change is a process and not an event’, the authors of this article conclude at the end. The article describes how over a decade of activism by female-led community groups led to Sierra Leone passing sweeping legislation to change the way 95% of the country’s land is held and managed.
- Triumph of community engagement: It’s a powerful story of how engagement tactics can combine at multiple levels to achieve change. It’s also a great example of parliamentary engagement: along the way, the organisers brought more than 700 community members to Freetown, many for the first time, to physically attend parliamentary sittings on the bill.
3. The Child Malnutrition Initiative in Peru
Peru’s experience in dramatically reducing malnutrition between 2006 and 2026 is a well-known success story. It’s a compelling example of a multistakeholder national and international effort ‘working with the grain’ of an enabling government environment offered by a period of technocratic consensus and governance reform. Civil society organisations, academics, donors, national and international NGOs all played their part in these sweeping policy changes which had real impact for vulnerable people.
Why you should read more:
- Well-documented by multiple partners: Reports from the World Bank, CGIAR, Institute of Development Studies among others have pointed to Peru’s success in reducing malnutrition between 2006 and 2016. The country became a model for others in this period.
- Maintaining momentum through election cycles: The campaign managed to sustain high level political commitment on malnutrition through three successive election cycles.
- The aftermath: Despite having great success, gains are now reversing as the issue is no longer a priority. There’s a tantalising interview here with the former Minister of Development and Social Inclusion, suggesting an opportunity for further research on how/why this change came about.
4. UNICEF’s approach to influencing for sustainable financing
Many policy influence learning reports and good practice guides point to the need to look beyond the obvious sector ministry for policy influence efforts, and instead start better understanding and engaging ministries of finance.
UNICEF’s report on their ‘Public Finance for Children’ (PF4C) approach provides a great example of how this can work. UNICEF has developed a nuanced approach to understanding and engaging with ministries of finance; and has documented compelling lessons and examples here which are relevant for any sector seeking to influence ministries of finance.
Why you should read more:
- Walks the talk: UNICEF’s comprehensive report details how this works in practice, and describes the internal capacities within the organisation that are required to implement it.
- Know your audience: UNICEF’s approach demonstrates a detailed understanding of the inner workings of public finance actors and processes and the practical challenges and bottlenecks that can emerge at different stages of the policy cycle.
- Communicating evidence: the approach outlines nine different types of evidence and analysis products that UNICEF produces to influence budget allocation and spending decisions. Each of these is tailored to specific stakeholders and types of problems. It also provides a list of types of analysis they want to do less of, explains why, and suggests alternatives.
5. ‘Nine Lessons from issue-based programming’ (Policy Practice)
Focused on lessons drawn from issue-based programming – a development approach which mobilises stakeholders to drive change around locally defined issues – this paper from the Policy Practice examines its application in several countries through case studies of recent FCDO-funded projects. The examples span a wide range of contexts and policy issues, from improving the investment environment in Nepal to spatial planning in Tanzania and seed certification in Malawi.
Why you should read more
- Focused on FCDO-funded programmes: This piece offers some granular examples from project completion reviews and Annual Reviews showing how projects managed to achieve policy change in many different ways (and offering an interesting insight into how recent programmes have reported on policy change).
- Defining key policy issues or ‘problems’: the paper shows how the selection of policy issues to focus on was critical. Although the policy issues were cross sectoral, the report finds that selection generally worked best when the policy issues met three criteria: tangibility, tractability and feasibility.
- Using PEA: the report has some practical examples and suggestions about how to use PEA in practice, as well as reflections on finding space for change in authoritarian political contexts.
6. Short and sweet: rapid response policy influence in Brazil
Many policy influence examples stress the long arc of influence — some of the most compelling stories we read were those which traced years or even decades of engagement. But our last top read is different. This brief case study tells the story of how Brazilian think tank the Veredas Institute managed to influence policy content on children’s screen time in just nine days.
Why you should read more:
- Not everything takes ten years: Veredas’ experience is a striking reminder of how quickly windows of opportunity for policy change can open up.
- Positioning and readiness: existing trusted relationships and strong evidence production and communications capacity are needed to be able to respond this quickly.
Bonus resources to explore
There are plenty of practical guides, toolkits and training materials which can be adapted by practitioners to design and implement policy influence approaches.
The three we’d recommend looking at are:
- ODI’s classic ROMA guide to a participatory process for designing policy influence approaches in adaptive programmes, which is now more than ten years old but still in use (and for good reason);
- Oxfam’s comprehensive Influencing for Impact guide which contains practical worksheets and templates for designing strategies; and
- The Activism, Influence and Change programme at LSE which hosts a blog on influencing and engagement, a series of masterclasses, plus a handy collection of introductory videos and some great graphics.