Robinah Rubimbwa: Decolonising Aid, and the World Cup as a Window on America

In this episode of the leadership podcast If You Were In Charge, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini and Kavita Nandini Ramdas sit down with Robinah Rubimbwa, the feminist peacebuilder, poet and mediator who founded the Coalition for Action on Resolution 1325 (CoACT), an alliance of 64 peacebuilding organisations in Uganda. A leadership podcast about people, power and possibilities. Robinah does not hold back. The way international aid is structured today, she says, is colonialism, and it is time to decolonise it. No outsider can empower anyone, she argues. Empowerment grows from within, built on local knowledge, trust and the structures that already hold a community together. Drawing on decades of training women mediators and young peacebuilders across Uganda, she makes the case that funders should talk less about their appetite for risk and more about their appetite for trust. This is women's leadership seen from the ground up. Robinah shares how a single 60,000 dollar grant from ICAN seeded a youth movement that is still going years later, how networks of community women mediators now resolve land disputes and domestic violence cases for free, and what it really costs to prevent violence at the local level. And when Sanam and Kavita ask the question at the heart of the show, she answers without hesitation: if she were in charge, she would build a global Council on Women, Peace and Security, compel governments to fund peace the way they fund weapons, and make care and joy human rights. It is a conversation about money, power and trust, told through a feminist perspective on leadership, and a reminder, in Robinah's words, of "the stubborn insistence that liberation is inevitable." More about Robinah Rubimbwa and her work: Coalition for Action on 1325 (CoACT): https://www.coact1325.org/ Robinah and CoACT at ICAN:  https://icanpeacework.org/map_directory/coalition-for-action-on-1325-coact/ Robinah at Conciliation Resources: https://www.c-r.org/who-we-are/people/robinah-rubimbwa Women Mediators across the Commonwealth:  https://www.womenmediators.org/find-a-mediator/robinah-rubimbwa/ Enjoyed this episode? Follow If You Were In Charge wherever you listen and leave a rating to help more people find the show. Get in touch and stay connected: Email ICAN: [email protected] Sign up to the ICAN newsletter: https://icanpeacework.org/2025/03/sign-up-to-icans-newsletter/ More from us: adapodcasts.com If You Were In Charge is brought to you by ICAN, the International Civil Society Action Network. An ADA Production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices