Lillian Nabwala Kilwake

Lillian Nabwala Kilwake is a senior development and humanitarian professional with more than twenty-three years of experience working across the Horn of Africa, West Africa, and Europe. She currently serves as Gender and Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) Programme Specialist at UNICEF Kenya, where she provides strategic leadership on gender equality, safeguarding, and gender-transformative programming across both humanitarian and development contexts.  

Her professional work focuses on advancing the rights and wellbeing of children, adolescents, women, and displaced populations through evidence-based policy engagement, programme design, and institutional accountability. In her current role, she leads gender analysis, supports the implementation of Gender Action Plans, strengthens organizational capacity on PSEA, and coordinates inter-agency gender and safeguarding efforts at national and UN Country Team levels. 

Her expertise spans gender equality, child protection, migration, refugee inclusion, and gender-based violence prevention and mitigation.  Prior to joining UNICEF, Kilwake held senior advisory and programme management positions with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, and the UK Department for International Development. In these roles, she managed and influenced large-scale portfolios in migration and protection, humanitarian assistance, and social protection, while contributing to regional strategies, donor coordination mechanisms, and policy dialogue processes. 

She has also held operational leadership roles in refugee camp management, child protection programming, and monitoring and evaluation in complex and protracted displacement settings.  Kilwake is pursuing a  Doctor of Philosophy in Gender Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where her research examines urban refugee women’s participation in durable solutions agendas. She also holds a Master of Arts in Development Studies (Gender/Women Studies) from the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague and a Bachelor of Arts in Community Development from Daystar University, Kenya. Her academic and professional interests include feminist humanitarianism, forced migration, gender-transformative approaches, and accountability to affect

• Development and Humanitarian issues
• Urban refugees
• Feminist politics
• Gender justice
• Children rights and protection/safeguarding