Unsplash Fort of Goree Island, Senegal, was the site of one of the earliest European settlements in Western Africa. Source UN News
The calls for reparatory justice can no longer be ignored, speakers at the fourth session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on African Descent said last April.
They urged greater collaboration between governments, civil society and regional organizations to create a system that would compensate Africa and the African diaspora for the enduring legacies of colonialism, enslavement, apartheid and genocide between the 16th and 19th centuries. “Africa was under siege,” said Hilary Brown, speaking on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) about the 300 years of enslavement and exploitation on the continent. “Her political, economic and social systems thrown into chaotic instability as Europe plundered the continent for her most valuable asset, her people.”
MOSCOW, Mar 13 2026 (IPS) – Professor Jude Osakwe—a Nigerian scholar at the Namibian University of Science and Technology (NUST) and Continental Chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation Africa (NIDOAF)—has reiterated the absolute truth over Reparations for Africa, noting that African governments have consistently expressed only ’emotional solidarity’ over Reparations instead of tackling and addressing, with seriousness, this pertinent issue within the context of diplomacy.
He strongly believes that despite sharp political and cultural diversity influencing developments, African leaders can still adopt a collective strategy in pursuit of advantageous aspirations for sustaining continental sovereignty. The concept of Pan-Africanism is noticeably fragmented while grassroot movements lack strategic coordination.
Here are excerpts from the interview:
How well do African people represent the continent on Reparations and Pan-Africanism?
Professor Jude Osakwe: Honestly, inadequately, but not without effort. Representation is fragmented. The loudest voices on reparations often come from the Caribbean and African-American communities, while continental Africans, remain largely sidelined in that global conversation.
Pan-Africanism as an ideology is more spoken about than practiced. There is emotional solidarity, but very little structural unity. The honest reality is that African governments have not made reparations a serious diplomatic priority, and grassroots movements lack the coordination to pressure them to do so.
Does the diaspora media landscape affect how these topics are viewed in a Western light?
Professor Osakwe: Absolutely.
Western media frames Pan-Africanism as either nostalgic romanticism or a political threat, and frames reparations as a Black American issue, effectively erasing the continental African dimension entirely. As an African in the diaspora, you are constantly navigating between your own lived framework and a media environment that either misrepresents or ignores your perspective.
This creates a psychological burden, you must actively resist the dominant narrative just to maintain an accurate self-understanding. African diaspora media exists, but it remains underfunded and underreached compared to mainstream outlets, which means the Western framing dominates public discourse by default.
What are the measures for upholding African identity in the diaspora, and diaspora contributions amid geopolitical shifts?
Professor Osakwe: Key measures:
• Intentional cultural transmission, language, history, and values must be actively taught, not assumed • Building diaspora institutions that are African-led, not just African-themed • Political engagement both in host countries and in countries of origin • Economic networking through platforms like NIDO that connect diaspora professionals to continental development
On geopolitical contributions: The current moment, with Africa renegotiating relationships with Western powers, China, Russia, and Gulf states, is actually an opportunity for the diaspora. Diaspora Africans sitting inside Western governments, universities, and financial institutions carry real leverage.
The question is whether that leverage gets used collectively or dissipates individually. Remittances already outpace foreign aid to many African countries. What’s needed now is moving beyond remittances to strategic investment, policy advocacy, and knowledge transfer, turning the diaspora from a financial lifeline into a genuine development partner.
Kester Kenn Klomegah focuses on current geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development-related questions in Africa with external countries. Most of his well-resourced articles are reprinted in several reputable foreign media.
Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime. Source: World Population Prospects 2022 report from the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
ST. PAUL, Minnesota, USA, Mar 12 2026 (IPS) – As birthrates continue to decline in many industrialized countries, anxious governments are running out of schemes to keep women procreating.
In the US, millionaires and billionaires are lining up to donate to Trump’s “baby bonus” savings accounts. Trump accounts give parents $1,000 for all babies born between now and 2028, plus whatever private donors add.
Late last year tech billionaires Michael and Susan Dell donated $6.25 billion to them. The accounts are part of Trump’s far-Right pronatalist agenda, and also part of the broader trend of governments using heavy-handed pronatalist policies, ranging from bribes to outright coercion, to convince women to have more babies and shore up the supply of future workers, taxpayers, and soldiers.
These interventions are notoriously ineffective. A recent Heritage Foundation report recommended using economic incentives to convince American women to have more babies, “with preferences for larger-than-average [families],” while shaming those who choose to have fewer or no children.
A family in South Korea, which has the lowest Total Fertility Rate in the world (0.8).
But it also admitted, “Other nations have tried to reverse declining birthrates through financially generous family policies, none has succeeded. Government spending alone does not ensure demographic success.”
Nor can such policies achieve what Heritage calls “success.” Trying to raise birthrates by incentivizing women to have babies not only undermines hard-won reproductive rights, it’s a waste of money.
Such spending is not a priority for U.S. taxpayers, as most Americans do not see falling birth rates as a crisis. Instead, they overwhelmingly want the government to address untenably high child care costs. But a one-time Trump account infusion makes no dent in high costs of raising children and other barriers to motherhood.
Just as recent cuts to SNAP and Medicaid disproportionately affect marginalized women and children, Trump accounts benefit least those who need help most. By the Administration’s own calculations, the accounts will benefit wealthy parents disproportionately.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Trump accounts and other pronatalist policies aren’t really about empowerment or saving families or supporting children. They are a bid to make more white Americans, part of a larger nativist program which includes cracking down on immigration from African and Muslim countries, detaining and deporting non-white people in huge numbers, and even abandoning former U.S. efforts to fight child exploitation and trafficking.
And even when such policies intend to serve feminist goals–for example Finland’s generous parental leave and child and health care—they fail to raise birthrates. That’s because the biggest factor in childbearing decisions isn’t affordability; it’s empowerment.
Nobel prizewinning economic historian Claudia Goldin has shown high birthrates are no longer tied to economic prosperity, as women increasingly choose education and careers over traditional family roles. In fact, she found an inverse relationship between per capita income and fertility. “Wherever you get increased agency,” she said, “you get reduction in the birth rate.”
Another study across 136 countries confirms this: whenever women achieve reproductive agency, birthrates decline, whether the economy is growing or shrinking.
But hundreds of millions of women and girls are denied this agency. Over 640 million alive today were child brides (including in the US). Over 220 million have an unmet need for contraception. More than half of pregnancies are unintended—121 million annually. Cuts in USAID and other aid programs make the situation more dire.
As median age rises, changing demographics could enable policy shifts that improve wages and conditions for workers and extend job opportunity to billions on the sidelines who want work but don’t have it.
There is no lack of good ideas, from economic models that center wellbeing and rethink growth to radical ecological democracy. Exploring them requires getting off the endless growth treadmill that enriches elites at the expense of the rest of us. We must stop treating women like reproductive vessels for making more people to serve the economy, and start reshaping our economies to serve more people and the planet.
Nandita Bajaj is executive director of the NGO Population Balance, senior lecturer at Antioch University, and producer and host of the podcasts OVERSHOOT and Beyond Pronatalism. Her research and advocacy work focuses on addressing the combined impacts of pronatalism and human expansionism on reproductive and ecological justice.
NEW YORK, Mar 11 2026 (IPS) – I have often been asked a simple but important question: How can we make it sustainable if we are not being compensated for it?
That question sits at the heart of a conversation we do not address enough. Somewhere between exposure and exploitation lies a line we still have not learned to draw clearly. And perhaps that is exactly where the real conversation on “inclusion” begins.
The cost of being seen, is probably the heaviest cost youth have to bear in pursuit of carrying the passion and aspirations they strive for when trying to make an impact.
As conversations around the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs continue to grow, one question remains: how far have we really come in shaping perspectives, and not just numbers?
Too often, inclusion is measured by attendance, representation, and diversity metrics. But inclusion is not just about presence. It is about value. It is about whether people are acknowledged, respected, and taken seriously for their contribution. Inclusion does not live in the excel sheets we fill or the rooms we temporarily occupy during events.
It begins where age, gender, ethnicity, and job titles are not weighed before credibility is given. This matters even more for young people.
A single voice, a single appearance, or a single statement is often framed as an opportunity. And sometimes, it is. But when visibility becomes a substitute for fair compensation, authorship, decision-making power, or real support, exposure stops being empowered and starts becoming exploitative.
Exposure on its own is not empowerment. Visibility can open doors, but it cannot replace fair structures. Being seen is meaningful only when it is followed by trust, ownership, opportunity, and value.
Too often, young people are handed advice when what they really need is access. They are mentored, encouraged, and told to keep going, yet rarely sponsored in the spaces that shape outcomes. If we want inclusion to move beyond symbolism, we must build cultures where support does not end at guidance.
It must extend into advocacy. Because for many underrepresented voices, the issue is not a lack of talent or preparation. It is the absence of someone willing to open the right door and say, this person belongs here.
The goal is not to reject exposure. Exposure can be powerful. But it cannot be the only thing being offered. Real inclusion begins when participation is respected, contribution is valued, and visibility leads to something more lasting. Being seen may open the door, but being valued is what makes inclusion real.
Bisma Qamar is Pakistan’s Youth Representative to the UN & USA chapter under the Prime Minister’s Youth Programme (PMYP). Her work is centered towards learning and development and capability building initiatives, with a strong emphasis on creating inclusive and sustainable opportunities through “Bridging talent with opportunities” by upskilling individuals focusing on SDG 4 ( Education ) and SDG 5 ( Gender Equality )
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Mar 9 2026 (IPS) – Consider what International Women’s Day looked like a few years ago, and what it looks like now: the same date, the same global moment of reflection, but a vastly changed global landscape. Gender rights are facing the most coordinated and wide-ranging attack in decades. Anti-rights forces are dismantling protections secured after generations of struggle, destroying infrastructure built to address gender-based violence and realise reproductive rights and rewriting legal frameworks to roll back rights, with a specific focus on excluding transgender people. This is the result of a deliberate, carefully crafted, handsomely funded and globally coordinated strategy.
Fortunately, resistance is proving harder to extinguish than those driving the backlash had expected. Another International Women’s Day of mobilisation is here to prove it.
A regressive template
While attacks have been building for years, the global landscape shifted quickly in January 2025, when a newly inaugurated Donald Trump signed executive orders imposing a rigid binary classification of sex across federal law, stripping non-discrimination protections for LGBTQI+ people in healthcare and housing, and banning diversity, equity and inclusion policies across the federal government. Because the USA had been the world’s largest bilateral donor, the simultaneous dismantling of USAID and expansion of the global gag rule — blocking US funding to organisations that provide abortions or advocate for abortion rights — had immediate effects on women and girls all over the world, with particularly deadly consequences in conflict zones, rural areas and the world’s poorest countries.
Elsewhere, regressive forces were already mobilising – and Trump’s example only emboldened them. Hungary banned Pride marches and authorised surveillance to enforce compliance. Slovakia and the UK redefined sex as exclusively biological, stripping legal recognition from non-binary and transgender people. Burkina Faso criminalised same-sex relations and their ‘promotion’. Trinidad and Tobago’s Court of Appeal reinstated colonial-era penalties for homosexuality of up to 25 years in prison. Kazakhstan introduced a Russian-style ban on positive LGBTQI+ representation in education, media and online platforms.
It’s striking how consistent the underlying logic is across different political and regional contexts: gender equality is framed as a dangerous ‘ideology’, feminism is demonised as a foreign imposition, LGBTQI+ visibility is portrayed as a threat to children. The similarities reflect a coordinated effort to manufacture cultural conflict to consolidate hierarchies, strengthen elite authority and deflect attention from economic and political failures.
The backlash has reached the international institutions that have long served feminist movements as key arenas for developing a common language, setting a shared agenda and coordinating action across borders. A milestone in anti-rights advances was observed at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women’s 69th session last year, where a well-organised anti-rights bloc succeeded in stripping longstanding references to sexual and reproductive health and rights from the meeting’s Political Declaration.
What resistance looks like
Yet regression is not going uncontested: not in the streets, not in the courts and not even in the world’s most repressive settings.
In Hungary, tens of thousands defied the Pride ban in Budapest, risking prosecution to assert their right to be visible in public space. In South Africa, sustained civil society pressure, including over a million signatures demanding action, compelled the government to declare gender-based violence and femicide a national disaster. In St Lucia, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court struck down colonial-era laws criminalising same-sex relations. Courts in Malawi and Nigeria recognised the right to safe abortion for sexual violence survivors. The UK finally repealed a Victorian-era law that had continued to criminalise abortion in England and Wales. Denmark and Norway improved access to abortion services. Marriage equality came into force in both Liechtenstein and Thailand. At least three European Union member states — the Czech Republic, France and Poland — adopted consent-based definitions of rape.
Even in the most difficult of circumstances, under Afghanistan’s system of gender apartheid, women are maintaining underground schools, keeping solidarity networks alive and documenting abuses, setting their sights on future justice processes.
While the list of advances is impressive, some of the most important contemporary victories are invisible: stalled bills, softened provisions, laws not passed because civil society refused to stand aside. An attempt to repeal The Gambia’s ban on female genital mutilation was blocked. Kenya’s anti-LGBTQI+ Family Protection Bill remains stalled. In Latvia, when conservative forces moved in October 2025 to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, large-scale protests and a civil society petition won what could be a crucial delay. These defensive successes rarely make headlines, but they result from sustained, unglamorous advocacy and coalition work. Without them, the most extreme proposals would advance much further and faster.
Rising to the challenge
Recognition of rights is never permanent. It’s won through sustained struggle and can be reversed through organised opposition from those who perceive other people’s rights as a threat to their privilege. Backlash isn’t a historical anomaly but a predictable counter-mobilisation, and civil society has met it as such, by organising, mobilising, litigating and refusing to concede ground.
This is precisely what CIVICUS’s 2026 State of Civil Society Report, set for release on 12 March, sets out to document. The report examines the state of the world and civil society action throughout 2025 and early 2026 – including a dedicated chapter on women’s and LGBTQI+ people’s rights – and reveals strong patterns of resistance. Across regions and political contexts, it shows how civil society understands the scale of the attack and is responding in every possible way.
As this International Women’s Day will once again make clear, the backlash is organised and strong. But so is the resistance.
Credit: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
NEW YORK, Mar 6 2026 (IPS) – In recent months, the language surrounding the escalating confrontation between the United States, Israel, and Iran has taken on a tone that should trouble anyone concerned with global peace.
Across television studios, online sermons, and political commentary, some American preachers and commentators have begun describing the conflict not merely as geopolitics or national security, but as a “holy war.”
Reporting in outlets such as The Guardian, along with coverage in other international media, has noted the growing number of Christian nationalist and Evangelical voices framing the Middle Eastern conflict in explicitly theological terms.
Certain Evangelical preachers in the United States have long interpreted tensions involving Israel through apocalyptic or biblical narratives. In these interpretations, the confrontation with Iran is sometimes presented as part of a divinely ordained struggle between good and evil.
In sermons broadcast online and amplified through social media, the war is described as a moment in which believers must stand with Israel in a battle perceived as spiritually consequential – even leading to ‘the rapture’.
The rhetoric is not limited to pulpits. Some former military figures and commentators have echoed similar themes, invoking civilizational language that portrays the confrontation with Iran as part of a broader clash between Judeo-Christian civilization and an Islamic adversary.
When such language enters strategic discourse, it transforms political conflict into something far more dangerous: a war imbued with sacred meaning.
History shows that once wars are framed as sacred struggles, compromise becomes nearly impossible. Political conflicts can, at least in theory, be negotiated. Holy wars, by contrast, are perceived as battles for divine truth. In that framing, negotiation is betrayal.
This phenomenon is not unique to the current Middle Eastern crisis. Religious legitimization of war has surfaced repeatedly in contemporary conflicts. At the outbreak of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, for example, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, framed the war in spiritual terms.
In sermons and public statements, he suggested the conflict represented a metaphysical struggle over the moral future of the Russian world. The language of spiritual warfare, cultural purification, and civilizational defence became intertwined with political justification for military action.
Such rhetoric matters. When religious authority sanctifies violence, it grants moral legitimacy to warfare and discourages dissent among believers. Faith communities that might otherwise advocate peace can become mobilized behind nationalistic or militaristic agendas.
We are therefore witnessing something deeply unsettling: the return of explicitly religious language to modern warfare. For decades after the Second World War, global diplomacy attempted—imperfectly but deliberately—to frame conflicts primarily in political and legal terms.
International institutions, treaties, and multilateral frameworks were designed to prevent precisely the kind of civilizational framing that once fueled centuries of bloodshed.
Yet the present moment suggests that these restraints are weakening. Wars are again being narrated as existential struggles between belief systems. Political leaders, clergy, and media personalities increasingly draw upon religious symbolism to rally support.
The danger is not simply rhetorical. When wars are sacralized, they risk becoming limitless conflicts, unconstrained by borders or diplomacy.
The Collapse of Multilateralism and the Silence of Faith Institutions
For years, I have written and spoken about the uneasy relationship between religion, global governance, and peacebuilding. In articles as well as in interviews and public lectures, I have repeatedly warned that governments and intergovernmental entities have failed to develop a coherent framework for engaging religions constructively in international affairs.
Faith-based organizations today are everywhere. They participate in humanitarian work, development programs, diplomacy initiatives, and interfaith dialogues. International institutions increasingly acknowledge the importance of religious actors in peacebuilding and development. Conferences, seminars, department programmes, global initiatives on “religion and …” or “faith and …” are not only commonplace, but proliferating.
Yet despite this apparent proliferation of engagement, the deeper structural problem remains unresolved: religious actors themselves remain profoundly fragmented, as are the political protagonists dealing with them.
Rather than forming robust alliances capable of confronting violence carried out in the name of religion, many faith organizations continue to operate within narrow institutional or theological boundaries. Interfaith initiatives exist, but they often remain symbolic—highly visible yet limited in their capacity to challenge political power or mobilize believers at scale.
I have argued that religious organizations too often underestimate their responsibility in shaping public narratives around conflict, and doing so together. When religion is invoked to legitimize violence, silence from religious leaders becomes complicity.
At the same time, the broader international system that might once have moderated such dynamics is itself under strain. The erosion of multilateralism has been one of the defining features of the past decade. International institutions that once served as mediators of global crises increasingly appear weakened or sidelined.
The United Nations Security Council remains gridlocked. International law is invoked selectively – if at all. Great-power competition has returned with renewed intensity. In such an environment, appeals to universal norms carry less weight.
Alongside this institutional weakening has come a worrying rise in authoritarianism worldwide. Governments across regions have adopted increasingly illiberal practices—restricting civil liberties, marginalizing minorities, and suppressing dissent. In many cases, religion is instrumentalized to reinforce nationalist narratives or legitimize political authority.
This combination—the decline of multilateral governance and the rise of politicized religion—creates a volatile global environment. Without strong international frameworks to mediate disputes, imperialist narratives and actions gain traction – as in Trump’s and Netanyahu’s war against Iran. Religion, ethnicity, and culture become tools through which political conflicts are interpreted and mobilized.
Faith-based organizations, despite their potential influence, have struggled to counter this trend effectively. Some remain focused on humanitarian services rather than confronting the ideological narratives that legitimize violence. Most hesitate to challenge political authorities with whom they maintain close relationships, and seek financial and/or political backing.
As a result, the global religious landscape today is marked by a paradox: religion is increasingly present in global discourse, yet its potential as a force for peace remains under-realized.
Islamophobia and the Seeds of a Wider Religious Conflict
Perhaps the most troubling dimension of the present moment is the resurgence of Islamophobia as a powerful political force in international discourse.
For more than two decades following the attacks of September 11, 2001, narratives portraying Islam as inherently linked to extremism became deeply embedded in political rhetoric and media representation across many Western societies.
Despite sustained efforts by scholars, religious leaders, and civil society actors to challenge these narratives, they continue to shape public perceptions.
In the context of the current confrontation with Iran, such narratives risk reinforcing the perception that the conflict is not merely geopolitical but civilizational. When Iran is framed not simply as a state actor but as a representative of a threatening Islamic force, the conflict becomes symbolically larger than any single nation.
The danger is clear: political wars are becoming interpreted as religious wars.
If such framing takes hold, the implications extend far beyond the Middle East. Conflicts that are perceived as religious struggles can mobilize believers across borders. They can radicalize communities, fuel sectarian polarization, and undermine the fragile coexistence of diverse religious populations.
History provides sobering examples. The European wars of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries devastated entire regions, entangling political power struggles with theological disputes. Once religious identity became intertwined with warfare, violence spread across kingdoms and empires.
Today’s globalized world is even more interconnected. Diaspora communities, digital media, and transnational networks allow narratives of conflict to circulate instantly across continents. A war perceived as targeting Islam could ignite tensions in communities thousands of miles away from the battlefield.
Similarly, religious nationalism in multiple regions—whether Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim—has been gaining strength in recent years. When one religiously framed conflict emerges, it can reinforce others. Narratives of civilizational struggle feed upon each other.
As the confrontation between the United States, Israel, and Iran becomes widely interpreted through a religious lens, the consequences may be profound. Christian–Muslim tensions, already strained in many contexts, could escalate dramatically. Such conflicts would not respect national borders. They would unfold within societies, across communities, and through global networks of believers.
Ironically, this escalation occurs at a time when religious leaders frequently emphasize the peace-promoting teachings of their traditions. Interfaith initiatives celebrate dialogue, coexistence, and shared values. Religious texts across traditions contain powerful injunctions toward compassion, justice, and reconciliation.
Yet these ideals remain fragile when confronted with political realities.
If religious institutions fail to challenge narratives that sanctify violence, they risk becoming spectators to a new era of religious conflict. Worse still, they may be drawn into it.
Are “Religions” Truly for Peace?
We may therefore be standing at the threshold of a profoundly dangerous historical moment.
Religious language is once again being used to justify war. Political conflicts are increasingly framed as civilizational struggles. Multilateral institutions that once mediated global disputes appear weakened. And faith communities—despite their moral authority—have yet to mount a unified challenge to the narratives that sacralize violence.
None of this means that religion inevitably leads to war. On the contrary, religious traditions contain some of humanity’s most powerful ethical teachings about peace, justice, and compassion. Faith communities have played vital roles in reconciliation processes, humanitarian action, and social movements for justice.
But these possibilities are not automatic. They depend on conscious choices by religious leaders, institutions, and believers.
If religious actors allow their traditions to be mobilized in support of political violence, then religion will become part of the problem rather than the solution.
The question confronting us today is therefore both urgent and uncomfortable.
At a moment when wars are increasingly described as sacred struggles, when geopolitical conflicts are interpreted through religious narratives, and when Islamophobia and other forms of religious prejudice continue to spread, we must ask ourselves: How are religions truly forces for peace?
Prof. Azza Karam, PhD. is President, Lead Integrity
Civil society organizations (CSOs) are non-state, not-for-profit, voluntary entities formed by people to address social, political, or environmental issues.
BOGOTA, Colombia, Mar 4 2026 (IPS) – A year has passed since a 90-day freeze on U.S. foreign assistance signaled the deepening of a structural dismantling of international solidarity. Today, the “existential threat” to the freedom of association I warned of in my report to last year’s General Assembly (A/80/219) is no longer a warning; it is a lived reality.
Thousands of civil society organizations (CSOs) worldwide have been reduced to their minimum or are completely vanishing, while others are forced into transformations that compromise their core missions. This is not only creating more victims of human rights violations but has also left prior victims alone.
For the freedom of association, the impact is devastating. The dismantling of USAID, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), and other dedicated funds from other countries has cut the lifelines for NGOs that served as democratic watchdogs worldwide (Refugees International).
Therefore, this is not merely a budgetary shift but a coordinated attack on the infrastructure of dissent. In the U.S., for example, foundations and nonprofits are facing “three overlapping crises” (Maecenata Stiftung, Refugees International, other):
• Policy Threats: Executive Orders targeting DEI and redefining “charitable” status to strip tax exemptions.
• Organizational Targeting: Explicit vilification of networks like the Open Society Foundations and investigative letters targeting major funders like the Gates and Ford Foundations.
• Mass Closings: Organizations are laying off up to 95% of staff, leading to a “generational funding collapse” of the humanitarian system.
In the meantime, worldwide we also see ultra-conservative anti-rights groups and autocratic regimes rushing to fill the vacuum left by established aid agencies. These groups are, among others, reshaping the global health landscape with actions that restrict reproductive rights and LGBTQI+ protections (The Guardian). In the Asia-Pacific region alone, 240 million young girls are facing a “coordinated global backlash” as programs focused on education and gender equality are the first to be cut (Women’s Agenda).
As I reported to the UN General Assembly last year, the right to association is an integral part of human nature. When states vilify aid as “criminal” or “corrupt,” they dismantle the lifelines that keep civic space alive (United Nations). We must restore a sustainable aid architecture that serves human dignity and the planet rather than private profit or political control.
But the impact on communities and individuals is far too grave. The data emerging in early 2026 is devastating. Since the 2025 freeze, researchers estimate the dismantling of U.S. foreign aid alone has already caused 750,000 deaths, over 60% of whom are children—a rate of 88 preventable deaths every hour (different sources).
Projections indicate that without restoration, 22.6 million people could die from preventable causes by 2030 (The Guardian).
The “hammer” thrown at the aid system has undone decades of progress:
• Access to justice: Deeply affected by terminated grants funding for community violence intervention programs, legal assistance for crime victims from underserved communities, court-appointed advocates for children in cases of abuse or neglect, services for victims of hate crimes, shutting down the safety net for domestic violence survivors and closing of shelters and hotlines, etc. (CIJ, LLF).
• Democracy and rule of law: Crisis in independent media and civil society reduces the critical voices that speak truth to the power and weakens checks and balances in democracies and hybrid regimes, while in authoritarian context the constraints of dissenting voices increases repression, especially against the most vulnerable groups (Global Democracy Coalition).
• Human rights: global and regional mechanisms of human rights protections have seen drastic cuts of funding, which jeopardize the human rights protections worldwide. The OHCHR received a 16% cut of its budget for 2026 and several Human Rights Council mandates are also being defunded, many tied to HHRR violations investigations in authoritarian states (ISHR).
• Global Health: Access to PrEP and life-saving HIV drugs has been halved for 80% of community organizations. Cholera deaths in the DRC alone surged by 361% in 2025 after essential water projects were halted (Oxfam).
• Education: The abrupt cancellation of nearly 400 USAID-funded education programs in 58 countries risks leaving millions of children—predominantly girls and refugees—without access to quality learning (ETF).
• Food Security: In West and Central Africa, 55 million people are expected to endure crisis levels of hunger, or worse by the end of the first semester of 2026, including over 13 million children are also expected to suffer from malnutrition during the year 2026 (WFP). In Afghanistan, monthly reach for emergency food aid plummeted from 5.6 million people to just 1 million (Refugees International).
Perhaps most alarming is the collapse of data collection systems. As USAID programs disappeared, so did the reporting requirements that tracked disease, death, and human rights violations (The Japan Times). We are entering a period where the true scale of suffering and needs may never be fully known (Refugees International).
Besides the cut of funding, the existential threat is also related to the reduction of possibilities of civil society organizations to collect new funding due to the increase of mis/disinformation about CSO work that lead to lack of trust in communities and therefore increases the shrinking civic space, already heavily affected by anti-NGO laws and persecution (Global aid freeze tracker).
We cannot allow a world without civil society. It is a world without hope, where the most vulnerable are left alone to face the most pressing human crises and wars. The international community must move beyond “business as usual” to restore a sustainable and just aid architecture that empowers civic engagement rather than advancing its suppression.
Gina Romero is UN Special Rapporteur, Freedom of Assembly and of Association.
