How to Turn the Tide: Resisting the Global Assault on Gender Rights

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Opinion

Credit: Amanda Perobelli/Reuters via Gallo Images

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Mar 27 2025 (IPS) – This year’s session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69), the world’s leading forum for advancing gender equality, confronted unprecedented challenges. With Saudi Arabia in the chair and anti-rights voices growing increasingly influential in the forum, the struggle to hold onto international commitments on gender equality intensified dramatically. On 8 March, International Women’s Day mobilisations also took on added urgency, with demonstrations from Istanbul to Buenos Aires focusing on resisting the multiple manifestations of gender rights regression being felt in communities worldwide.

CIVICUS’s 2025 State of Civil Society Report shows that hard-won women’s and LGBTQI+ rights are at risk, challenged by coordinated anti-rights movements that use gender as a political wedge issue. But it also provides abundant evidence that civil society is rising to the challenge.

Global regression

They call it ‘child protection’ in Russia, ‘family values’ in several Eastern European countries, ‘religious freedom’ in the USA, and ‘African traditions’ across the continent. The terminology shifts, but the objective is the same: halting progress towards gender equality and dismantling rights. Of course, it isn’t about differences in cultural values – it’s an orchestrated political strategy.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban’s system of gender apartheid has reached its brutal endpoint: women are effectively imprisoned in their homes, barred from education, work and public life, their voices literally silenced by prohibitions on singing or talking in public. Iranian authorities have gone to extreme lengths to maintain control over women’s bodies. In Iraq, lawmakers are considering lowering the minimum marriage age to just nine years old.

These extreme examples exist along a spectrum that includes Ghana’s parliament criminalising same-sex relations, Russia expanding ‘propaganda’ laws to prohibit any positive portrayal of LGBTQI+ identities, and Georgia – a country that says it wants to join the European Union – adopting Russian-style legislation restricting LGBTQI+ organisations under the cynical framing of ‘protecting minors’.

In the USA, Trump-appointed justices overturned constitutional abortion protections, triggering restrictions across numerous states. The second Trump administration has now reinstated the global gag rule, restricting international funding for organisations providing reproductive healthcare. The Guttmacher Institute projects this will deny 11.7 million women access to contraception, potentially causing 4.2 million unintended pregnancies and over 8,300 maternal deaths.

A coordinated transnational movement

Across Africa, there’s an intensifying wave of anti-LGBTQI+ legislation, often driven by political opportunism. Mali’s military junta passed a law criminalising homosexuality as part of its broader crackdown on rights. Ghana’s parliament passed a draconian ‘anti-LGBTQI+ bill’, while Uganda’s Constitutional Court upheld the country’s harsh Anti-Homosexuality Act. In Kenya, a Family Protection Bill that would outlaw LGBTQI+ advocacy remains before parliament.

As recently seen at CSW, the ongoing backlash is transnational in nature. Anti-rights forces share tactics, funding and messaging across borders, with conservative foundations from the USA promoting restrictive legislation in Africa and Russian ideologues exporting their playbook to former Soviet states and beyond. US evangelical organisations and conservative think-tanks are a particularly influential source of anti-rights narratives and funding: they’ve funnelled millions of dollars into campaigns against reproductive rights and LGBTQI+ equality worldwide, while providing intellectual frameworks and legal strategies for adaption to local contexts from Poland to Uganda.

Victories against the odds

Against this daunting backdrop, civil society continues achieving remarkable victories through strategic resistance and persistence. In 2024, Thailand became Southeast Asia’s first country to legalise same-sex marriage, while Greece broke new ground as the first majority Orthodox Christian country to do so. France enshrined abortion rights in its constitution, creating a powerful bulwark against future threats.

A regional trend continued in the Caribbean, with civil society litigation successfully overturning colonial-era laws that criminalised homosexuality in Dominica. Colombia and Sierra Leone banned child marriage, while women’s rights groups in The Gambia defeated a bill that would have decriminalised female genital mutilation.

These successes share common elements: they’re the result of sustained, multi-year advocacy campaigns combining legal challenges, community mobilisation, strategic communications and international solidarity.

Take Thailand’s marriage equality victory. Success came partly through the campaign’s intersection with the youth-led democracy movement, which connected LGBTQI+ rights to broader aspirations for a fairer society. In Kenya, despite harsh anti-LGBTQI+ rhetoric from political leaders, strategic litigation by civil society secured a court ruling preventing incitement to violence against LGBTQI+ people.

Even in the most repressive contexts, activists find ways to resist. Afghan women, denied basic rights to education and movement, have developed underground schools and created subtle forms of civil disobedience that maintain pressure without risking their lives. Along with their Iranian sisters, they continue to campaign for gender apartheid to be recognised as a crime under international law.

The path forward: intersectionality and solidarity

Progress in realising rights is neither linear nor inevitable. Each advance triggers opposition, so every victory needs defence. To solidify and last, legal changes must be accompanied by social transformation – which is why civil society complements policy advocacy with public education, community organising and cultural engagement.

Advocacy is most effective when it embraces intersectionality, recognising how gender, sexuality, class, race, disability and migration status create overlapping forms of exclusion that need integrated responses. Feminist movements are increasingly centring the experiences of Black women, Indigenous women, women with disabilities and trans women.

Even where progress can feel elusive, civil society is playing a crucial role in keeping hope alive. Organisations defending women’s and LGBTQI+ rights are maintaining spaces where people are allowed to be their true selves, providing support services that nobody else will provide, documenting violations that would otherwise go unrecorded, keeping up the pressure on the authorities and building solidarity networks that sustain activists through difficult times.

International support for these efforts has never been more important. The USAID funding freeze highlights a troubling trend of shrinking resources for gender rights defenders at precisely the moment they’re needed most. This makes diversifying funding sources an urgent priority, with feminist philanthropists, progressive foundations and governments committed to gender equality needing to step up. More innovative funding mechanisms are required to rapidly respond to emergencies while sustaining the long-term work of movement building. Individuals have power: anyone can contribute directly to frontline organisations, amplify their voices on social media, challenge regressive narratives in their communities and demand that elected representatives prioritise gender equality domestically and in foreign policy. In the global struggle for fundamental rights, no one should be a spectator. The time for solidarity is now.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org.

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Will UN be a Possible Target as US Goes on a Rampage?

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UNITED NATIONS, Mar 26 2025 (IPS) – The Trump administration, spearheaded by senior adviser Elon Musk, has been on a wild rampage: mass layoffs of government employees, gutting federal agencies, dismantling the Department of Education and USAID, defying a federal judge and threatening universities with drastic cuts in grants and contracts—decisions mostly engineered by the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Perhaps with more to come.

The cuts were best symbolized with an image of Musk wielding a heavy chainsaw aimed at slashing “wasteful spending”

But the layoffs and subsequent reversals– the on-again, off-again decisions– have triggered chaos in the nation’s capital.

And political outrage is fast becoming the norm.

Musk, the tech billionaire, who acts as a virtual Prime Minister to President Trump, has called on the U.S. to exit the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United Nations.

“I agree,” he wrote in response to a post from a right-wing political commentator, saying “it’s time” for the U.S. to leave NATO and the UN.”

The threat against the UN has been reinforced following a move by several Republican lawmakers who have submitted a bill on the U.S. exit from the U.N., claiming that the organization does not align with the Trump administration’s “America First” agenda.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/no-sane-country-would-stand-this-lawmakers-launch-effort-withdraw-u-s-from-united-nations

What’s next?

The abrogation of the 1947 US-UN Headquarters Agreement?

That 78-year-old agreement helped establish the world body in a former decrepit slaughter house in Turtle Bay New York.

The Agreement is an international treaty, and under international law, treaties are generally binding on the parties that sign them. However, the U.S. has a constitutional process for withdrawing from treaties.

In an article in the Wall Street Journal March 14, titled “The U.N. Is Ripping America Off in New York”, Eugene Kontorovich, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a professor at George Mason University School of Law, points out the U.S. offered to host the newly-created U.N. after World War II, amid a wave of optimism about the organization’s ability to prevent future wars.

John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated the land, and the headquarters was given an interstate-free loan from Washington that would be worth billions today.

The United Nations shall not be moved unless the headquarters district ceases to be used for that purpose, the agreement says. Some U.N. officials have taken this to mean the U.N. can’t be evicted.

“But the agreement is a treaty, and the default rule of international law is that treaties, unless they say otherwise, last as long as the parties wish. If the U.S. cancels the treaty, the entire arrangement disappears, nothing in the treaty’s text prohibits withdrawal. Indeed, had an irrevocable agreement been intended, (the US) Congress, which is needed to approve treaties, would not have allowed the agreement to pass without making it explicit”.

While the treaty refers to the “permanent” headquarters of the U.N., this simply means “durable.” Many international treaties use “permanent” in this way, to mean long-lasting, not eternal. The Permanent International Court of Justice lasted from 1922-46.

“Trump should reopen the 1947 agreement locating its headquarters. It was a terrible real-estate deal”, declared Kontorovich

Dr. Stephen Zunes, a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, told IPS removing the United Nations headquarters from the United States has long been advocated by the far right and generally dismissed as a fringe idea not to be taken seriously.

However, as the Trump administration has already demonstrated, even the most extreme ideologically-driven proposals can indeed end up being implemented as policy, he said.

“The United States has not always upheld its obligations under the treaty, such as in 1988 when the Reagan administration refused to allow PLO chairman Yasir Arafat to address the world body, resulting in the entire General Assembly relocating to Geneva to hear his speech”.

Removing the United Nations headquarters from the United States, he argued, “would symbolize the end of the global leadership we have had since the end of World War II when the victorious allies established the world body.”

Along with the Trump administration’s decision to disestablish the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Fulbright Program, and other symbols of American leadership internationally, it would end any semblance of the United States remaining a preeminent force in international cooperation.

At the same time, the United States has increasingly become an outlier when it comes to the international community rather than a leader or partner.

“This is true even under Democratic administrations, as indicated by Biden’s rogue positions in regard to Israel’s war on Gaza, Palestinian statehood, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and other UN institutions.”

Having the UN headquarters in a more neutral location may end up being for the best, said Dr Zunes, who has written extensively on the politics of the United Nations.

So far, the US has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), while it has warned that two other UN organizations “deserve renewed scrutiny”– the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—a warning seen as a veiled threat of US withdrawal from the two UN agencies.

Meanwhile, the United States has cut $377 million worth of funding to the UN reproductive and sexual health agency, UNFPA.

Giving an indication of UN agencies moving some of their functions out of the US, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters at a briefing last month: “We have been investing in Nairobi, creating the conditions for Nairobi to receive services that are now in more expensive locations”.

“And UNICEF will be transferring soon some of the functions to Nairobi. And UNFPA will be essentially moving to Nairobi. And I can give you many other examples of things that are being done and correspond to the idea that we must be effective and cost-effective,” he said.

Asked about the possible withdrawal of the US from the world body, Martin S. Edwards, Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, told IPS it would not be clear what the intent of this move would be.

In fact, what is certain, he pointed out, is that it would be a mistake of gigantic proportions. The Trump administration, solely to curry favor with some small fraction of its base, would be handing a huge diplomatic victory to China, who would not hesitate to jump at the chance to host the UN.

“And even this White House has to see that, so I don’t see this as advancing US interests in any form. On the contrary, had the White House thought the UN as unimportant, they wouldn’t have designated Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador,” he declared.

A report in the Washington Examiner last January said Stefanik, the fourth-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, and the US Ambassador-elect to the UN, has vowed to utilize her skills as a lawmaker to scrutinize the funding provided to the U.N. and cut the budget provided if necessary.

“As a member of Congress, I also understand deeply that we must be good stewards of U.S. taxpayer dollars,” Stefanik said. “The U.S. is the largest contributor to the U.N. by far. Our tax dollars should not be complicit in propping up entities that are counter to American interests, antisemitic, or engaging in fraud, corruption, or terrorism.”

As the largest single contributor, the US currently pays 22% of the United Nations’ regular budget and 27% of the peacekeeping budget. Still, the US owes $1.5 billion to the UN’s regular budget.

And, between the regular budget, the peacekeeping budget, and international tribunals, the total amount the US owes is $2.8 billion.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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A Test of Humanity: Migrants’ Rights in a World Turning Inward

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Opinion

Credit: Pietro Bertora/SOS Humanity

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Mar 25 2025 (IPS) – The United Nations Refugee Agency faces devastating cuts that may eliminate 5,000 to 6,000 jobs, with potentially catastrophic consequences for millions of people fleeing war, repression, hunger and climate disasters. This 75-year-old institution, established to help Europeans displaced by the Second World War, now confronts an unprecedented financial crisis, primarily due to the US foreign aid freeze – and the timing couldn’t be worse.

As CIVICUS’s 14th annual State of Civil Society Report documents, a series of connected crisis – including conflicts, economic hardship and climate change – have created a perfect storm that threatens migrants and refugees, who face increasingly hostile policies and dangerous journeys from governments turning their backs on principles of international solidarity and human rights.

At least 8,938 people died on migration routes worldwide in 2024, making it the deadliest year on record, with many of the deaths in the Mediterranean and along routes across the Americas, including the Caribbean Sea, the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama and the extensive border between Mexico and the USA. Just last week, six people died and another 40 are missing after their boat capsized in the Mediterranean.

Such tragedies have come time again over the last year. In March 2024, 60 people, including a Senegalese mother and her baby, died from dehydration after their dinghy was left adrift in the Mediterranean. In June, US border agents found seven dead migrants in the Arizona and New Mexico deserts. In September, seven people were found clinging to the sides of a boat that capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa, after watching 21 other people, many of them family members, drown around them.

These tragedies weren’t accidents or policy failures. They were the predictable results of morally indefensible political choices.

The reality behind the rhetoric

The facts contradict populist narratives about migration overwhelming wealthy countries. At least 71 per cent of the world’s refugees remain in the global south, with countries such as Bangladesh, Colombia, Ethiopia and Uganda hosting far more displaced people than most European countries. Yet global north governments keep hardening borders and outsourcing migration management to prevent arrivals. The second Trump administration has declared a ‘national emergency’ at the US southern border, enabling military deployment and promising mass deportations while explicitly framing migrants as invaders – a rhetoric that history shows can easily lead to deadly consequences.

Europe continues its own troubling trajectory. Italy is attempting to transfer asylum seekers to Albanian detention centres, while the Netherlands has proposed sending rejected asylum seekers to Uganda, blatantly disregarding the state’s human rights violations, particularly against LGBTQI+ people. The European Union is expanding controversial deals with authoritarian governments in Egypt and Tunisia, effectively paying them to prevent migrants reaching European shores.

Anti-migrant rhetoric has become a common and effective electoral strategy. Far-right parties have made significant gains in elections in many countries by campaigning against immigration. Demonising narratives played a key role in Donald Trump’s re-election. The mobilisation of xenophobic sentiment extends beyond Europe and the USA, from anti-Haitian rhetoric in the Dominican Republic to anti-Bangladeshi campaigning in India.

Civil society under siege

Civil society organisations providing humanitarian assistance are increasingly being criminalised for their work. Italy has made it illegal for search-and-rescue organisations to conduct more than one rescue per trip, imposes heavy fines for noncompliance and deliberately directs rescue vessels to distant ports. These measures have achieved their intended goal of reducing the number of active rescue ships and contributed to the over 2,400 migrant drownings recorded in the Mediterranean in 2024 alone. Tunisia’s president has labelled people advocating for African migrants’ rights as traitors and mercenaries, leading to criminal charges and imprisonment.

Despite mounting obstacles, civil society maintains its commitment to protecting the human rights of migrants and refugees. Civil society groups maintain lifesaving operations in displacement settings from the Darién Gap to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. Legal aid providers navigate increasingly complex asylum systems to help people access protection. Community organisations facilitate integration through language instruction, job placements and social connections. Advocacy groups document abuses and push for accountability when state authorities violate migrants’ human rights.

But they’re now operating with drastically diminishing resources in increasingly hostile environments. Critical protection mechanisms are being dismantled at a time of unprecedented need. The implications should alarm anyone concerned with human dignity. If borders keep hardening and safe pathways disappear, more people will attempt dangerous journeys with deadly consequences. The criminalisation of solidarity risks eliminating critical lifelines for the most vulnerable, and dehumanising rhetoric is normalising discrimination and institutionalising indifference and cruelty.

A different approach is possible

Rather than reactive, fear-based policies, civil society can push for comprehensive approaches that uphold human dignity while addressing the complex drivers of migration. This means confronting the root causes of displacement through conflict prevention, climate action and sustainable development. It also means creating more legal pathways for migration, ending the criminalisation of humanitarian assistance and investing in integration support.

There’s a need to challenge the fundamental assumption that migration is an existential threat rather than a manageable reality than requires humane governance, and an asset to receiving societies. Historically, societies that have integrated newcomers have greatly benefited from their contributions – economically, culturally and socially.

In a world of unprecedented and growing global displacement, the question isn’t whether migration will continue – it will – but whether it will be managed with cruelty or compassion. As CIVICUS’s State of Civil Society Report makes clear, the treatment of migrants and refugees serves as a litmus test: the way societies respond will prove or disprove their commitment to the idea of a shared humanity – the principle that all humans deserve dignity, regardless of where they were born or the documents they carry.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org.

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‘What’s Next?’ Women-led Movements Fear for the Future

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Opinion

Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69)—March 10-21, 2025

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 24 2025 (IPS) – Women rights advocates who gathered at UN Headquarters for the world’s biggest meeting (10 -21 March) on gender equality have been sharing their concerns about the growing backlash against feminism, and how major funding cuts from donor countries could threaten programmes aimed at improving the lives of women and girls.

They came from all over the world for the Commission on the Status of Women, two weeks of discussions, talks and networking. At the opening session, Sima Bahous, the head of UN Women (the United Nations agency for gender equality), told them that “misogyny is on the rise” and, at a townhall convened by António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General said that a “furious backlash” threatens to “push progress into reverse.

UN News met some of the delegates to gauge the mood and find out how they are they are feeling about the backlash against feminism flagged by UN Women, and what the threat of massive funding cuts from some major donor countries could mean for their organisations, and the people they support.

‘We’re going to move backwards before we move go forward’

Grace Forrest is the founding director of Walk Free, Walk Free, an international human rights group focused on the eradication of modern slavery, which produces the Global Slavery Index, considered to be the world’s leading data set on measuring and understanding modern slavery. Credit: UN News/Conor Lennon

“We’re here because women and girls are disproportionately impacted by nearly every form of modern slavery, from forced marriage to forced labour, debt bondage and human trafficking.

Their vulnerability to modern slavery is rising and their rights risk being rolled back throughout the world, so we wanted to come to here to put modern slavery on the agenda, in the context of an authoritarian government in the United States which is trying to ban words such as race, gender and feminism. We won’t be silenced or erased.

Today, we’re seeing misogyny on full display, through social media and through world leaders not mincing their words and people electing leaders who disregard safety and the value of women in the public forum.

We’re extremely concerned by funding cuts from major donors. We’re hearing about frontline organisations, run by people who have survived debt bondage and forced labour, having to take loans to try and keep their organisations afloat. Some of the most effective frontline organisations are being hit hardest and fastest.

Advancing the rights of women and girls is actually quite a tall order right now and it’s a scary fact to face, that we’re actually just going to be hoping to not move backwards. And I think we are going to go backwards before we go forward.

This is a time for systems to step up and directly call out the need for funding on issues like modern slavery.”

Soundcloud

‘We are highly affected by budget cuts’

Moufeeda Haidar from youth NGO Restless Development, speaks in the GA Hall during CSW69. She is the Senior Regional Programme Coordinator at Restless Development, a non-profit global agency that supports the collective power of young leaders. She was a Global Youth Fellow for Gender Equality in 2024. Credit: UN News

“I’m based in Lebanon, and I mainly work on a programme which tackles sexual and reproductive health and rights for young woman living with disabilities, women living with HIV, those who identify as LGBTQ, and displaced woman across nine countries, between Africa, Central America and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The backlash against feminism has always been there. Sometimes it’s very politicised and it’s used to the advantage of the patriarchy, so that women’s rights and gender rights attacked. There’s definitely a rising backlash in Lebanon and the MENA region.

The current political environment is not a surprise for us. We are already highly affected by budget cuts in the MENA region. Funds for youth programmes have been cut for years. In our latest State of Youth Civil Society report, 72 per cent of respondents said that they barely receive any funds for climate action projects.

We are very worried about how to plan. We work with grassroots organisations, women-led organisations and feminist movements and we have created networks in these countries and seen the amazing work that they have done throughout the years. We are wondering what’s next. How are we going to support this network?”

Linda Sestock is the president of the Canadian Federation of University Women, which awards universiCredit: ty scholarships to women and promotes the participation of women in all aspects of emerging technology and leadership. Credit: UN News

“We’re extremely concerned, especially after seeing what happened with our neighbours to the south of us: we have noticed how alliances have shifted in the United States and we’re very fearful. We want to make sure that it doesn’t happen in Canada as well.

Most Canadians believe in the rights of our fellow women and that we’re going to be able to continue on the same trajectory that we’re on, but we need to be careful and we need to make sure that we don’t backslide.

We need to be hyper focused about ensuring that women are educated and that they’re entering the fields of technology, engineering, science and mathematics, because right now algorithms are slanted towards men and can be used against women.

We’re worried when we see that some words are not allowed anymore, such as diversity, equity and inclusion [a list of words banned or discouraged by the US administration has reportedly been drawn up and circulated].

We have a lot of professors in our organisation, and people are losing grants because they are being asked to remove words like female and gender. They are refusing and so they are losing funding, and we need to make sure that we continue to embrace diversity, equity and inclusion.

It boggles the mind and leaves me speechless.”

These interviews have been edited for clarity and length

Source: UN News

IPS UN Bureau

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Funding Crunch Puts Years of Progress at Risk in Fight Against Tuberculosis

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Health

Mycobacterium tuberculosis drug susceptibility test. Credit: CDC

Mycobacterium tuberculosis drug susceptibility test. Credit: CDC

BRATISLAVA, Mar 24 2025 (IPS) – Governments and donors must ensure funding is sustained to fight tuberculosis (TB), organizations working to stop the disease have said, as they warn the recent US pullback on foreign aid is already having a devastating effect on their operations.

NGOs and other groups that play a critical role in national efforts to stop what is the world’s deadliest infectious disease say the US administration’s recent decisions to first freeze and then cancel huge swathes of foreign aid funding have put countless lives at risk around the world.

And they warn that if that funding gap is not filled, years of progress in fighting TB could be lost.

“The impact of these cuts has been massive. There’s a gaping hole in financing, and if we don’t keep the pressure up on TB it will come back,” Dr. Cathy Hewison, Head of Médecins sans Frontières (MSF)’s TB working group, told IPS.

Every year, 10 million people develop TB, and in 2023 1.25 million died from the disease. It disproportionately affects low- and middle-income countries, with the largest TB burdens being among the world’s poorest states.

While in many states government funding accounts for at least the bulk of first-line treatment, community groups play a crucial and outsized role in national efforts to combat the disease, providing vital diagnosis, prevention, advocacy, and support services.

Many such groups rely heavily or exclusively on foreign funding with financing through US schemes, primarily USAID, predominant. USAID is the largest bilateral donor in the fight to end TB, having invested more than USD 4.7 billion to combat the disease since 2000.

In late January, an executive order from US President Donald Trump put a 90-day freeze on all US foreign aid while a review of funded projects was carried out, and then earlier this month, it was announced that 83% of all USAID projects were to be cancelled.

The effects on community groups on the frontlines of the fight against TB have been immediate and severe.

“Many community organizations have suspended outreach services, such as active case finding, contact tracing, treatment adherence, and psychosocial support,” Rodrick Rodrick Mugishagwe, a TB advocate with the Tanzania TB Community Network (TTCN), told IPS.

“Furthermore, transportation allowances for community health workers conducting home visits have been reduced, resulting in lower TB case detection rates. There have also been job losses among community health workers and peer educators, undermining service delivery,” he added.

Mugishagwe recounted how a woman from the city of Arusha in northern Tanzania who was diagnosed with TB last year had relied on a USAID-supported community programme for transport to a clinic for monthly treatment. But following the funding cuts, her programme shut down, and she could not afford the transport costs.

“She has disappeared from her residence and can no longer be traced, putting her at risk of treatment failure and developing drug-resistant TB, while there is a risk of further transmission to the community,” he said.

Bruce Tushabe, regional training and capacity strengthening lead at the AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA), which works with partners in South Africa on TB interventions, most of whom were supported through USAID, said treatment and access to TB medication had been stopped. There had also been a breakdown in community-led monitoring tracking progress in treatment access and availability, he said.

“There is a high burden of TB – an incidence rate of 468 per 100,000 of the population—and we now expect to see an increase in deaths, and in the long term, [rising] multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) among the populace, as well as increased TB cases since contact tracing is now paused in many areas and facilities,” he told IPS.

The spread of drug-resistant (DR-TB) and MDR-TB in the wake of the funding cuts is a particular concern, especially in poorer countries where DR TB is often widespread, as it is much harder and costlier to treat, putting an even greater burden on limited resources.

“There is a lot of DR-TB here and when people don’t have the right information and don’t take the right medicine or don’t have support during lengthy, sometimes very hard treatment, they might not be able to finish their course or treat their TB properly, and then the disease spreads. People with TB who had been going to TB centers may now turn up and find there is no one to answer their questions or give them the right advice on treatment, and so they might just turn away,” Atul Shengde, National Youth Coordinator—Global Coalition of TB Advocates, India, told IPS.

While TB often affects the poorest and most vulnerable communities, even within those communities there are some groups which are especially at risk, such as children.

“Children’s immune systems are less developed, which makes them more vulnerable to TB. Figures show 25% of the world is infected with TB, but just because someone is infected it does not mean they will get sick from it. But if your immune system is less developed or compromised in any way you are more likely to get TB, more likely to get ill with TB, and more likely to have more severe TB,” Hewison said.

“Children at risk of having TB are often overlooked, either going undiagnosed or facing delays in diagnosis. Now, with the recent US funding cuts, these gaps in identifying and treating children with TB will only widen further which threatens to roll back years of progress in TB care,” she added.

The World Health Organization has issued stark warnings of the devastating effects of the abrupt cessation of US global health funding, and affected organizations have pleaded with the US to reverse its decision.

But community groups who spoke to IPS admitted it appeared unlikely funding would resume any time soon.

And because US funding played such a large role in global TB efforts, they worry it will be very difficult to plug the current financing gap, certainly in the short to medium term, and possibly even long term, especially at a time when governments in high-income countries, such as the UK, Germany, and France, among others, are reducing foreign aid.

“I see no high-income donor countries stepping in to fill the gap left by the US funding cuts. Countries are faced with a lot of resource pressures at the moment; for instance, defense is a big issue now, and to pay for that, cuts are going to have to be made elsewhere, and that usually starts with healthcare,” Dr Lucica Ditiu, Executive Director of the Stop TB Partnership, told IPS.

“In future, low and middle income countries, especially, will have to relearn the hard lesson, as they did with Covid, that they are on their own. They will have to think about reducing their reliance on external donors for their health programmes and put the resources in themselves,” she added.

Buy while some governments may be able to up their financing of national TB programmes, poorer countries are likely to struggle to do so, and new forms of financing need to be considered, experts say.

“Of course, raising funding is impossible for some low-income countries. Innovative forms of funding need to be looked at—for example, financing from the different international development banks, debt swaps between countries, and others,” said Ditiu.

However, even if the funding gap is plugged somehow, or there is an unlikely dramatic reversal of US policy in the near future, there are fears the damage has already been done.

“We are going to see a massive spread of TB, and especially DR-TB, whatever happens now because cases have been missed, people have gone undiagnosed, and treatment has been interrupted,” said Ditiu.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Civil Society: The Last Line of Defence in a World of Cascading Crises

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Opinion

Credit: Bryan Dozier/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay / LONDON, Mar 20 2025 (IPS) – In a world of overlapping crises, from brutal conflicts and democratic regression to climate breakdown and astronomic levels of economic inequality, one vital force stands as a shield and solution: civil society. This is the sobering but ultimately hopeful message of CIVICUS’s 14th annual State of Civil Society Report, which provides a wide-ranging civil society perspective on the state of the world as it stands in early 2025.

The report paints an unflinching portrait of today’s reality: one where civilians are being slaughtered in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and elsewhere, with perpetrators increasingly confident they’ll face no consequences. A global realignment appears underway, with the Trump administration dismantling longstanding international alliances and seemingly determined to reward acts of aggression. Any semblance of a rules-based international order is crumbling as transactional diplomacy and the dangerous principle that might makes right become normalised.

Climate change continues to accelerate. 2024 was the hottest year on record, yet fossil fuel companies keep banking record profits, even as they scale back renewable energy plans in favour of further extraction. The world’s economies are reaching new levels of dysfunction, marked by soaring inequality and worsening precarity, while billionaires accumulate unprecedented wealth. Tech and media tycoons are no longer content just to influence policy; increasingly they want to control politics, raising the risk of state capture by oligarchs. Democracy is under siege, with right-wing populism, nationalism and autocratic rule surging. Democratic dissent is being crushed.

These compounding crises create a perfect storm that threatens the foundations of human rights and democratic freedoms. But in this precarious moment, precisely when civil society is needed most, it faces an accelerating funding crisis. Major donor agencies have cut back support and aligned funding with narrow national interests, while many states have passed laws to restrict international funding for civil society. The malicious and reckless USAID funding freeze has come as a particularly heavy blow, placing many civil society groups at existential risk.

At times like these it’s worth thinking about what the world would look like without civil society. Human rights violations would flourish unchecked. Democracy would erode even faster, leaving people with no meaningful agency to shape decisions affecting their lives. Climate change would accelerate past every tipping point. Women would lose bodily autonomy. LGBTQI+ people would be forced back into the closet. Excluded minorities would routinely face violence with no recourse. Whole communities would live in fear.

As events during 2024 and early 2025 have shown, even under extraordinary pressure, civil society continues to prove its immense value. In conflict zones, grassroots groups are filling critical gaps in humanitarian response, documenting violations and advocating for civilian protection. In numerous countries, civil society has successfully mobilised to prevent democratic backsliding, ensure fair elections and challenge authoritarian power grabs.

Through strategic litigation, civil society has established groundbreaking legal precedents forcing governments to take more ambitious climate action. Struggles for gender equality and LGBTQI+ rights keep being won through persistent advocacy, despite intensifying backlash. Across diverse contexts, civil society has employed a wide range of ever-evolving and creative tactics – from mass mobilisation to legal action – and proved it can and will hold the line even as civic space restrictions intensify and funding is slashed.

The message is clear: civil society represents a vital source of resistance, resilience and hope. Without it, many more people would be living much worse lives.

But if civil society is to keep doing this vital work, it may need to reinvent itself. The funding crisis demands innovation, because even before the USAID catastrophe, the donor-reliant model had reached its limits. It has long been criticised for reproducing economic and political power imbalances while constraining civil society’s ability to confront entrenched power. More diverse and sustainable resourcing models are urgently needed, from community-based funding approaches to ethical enterprise activities that generate unrestricted income.

To thrive in this changing and volatile context, civil society will have to embrace a movement mindset characterised by distributed leadership, nimble decision-making and the ability to mobilise broad constituencies rapidly. Some of the most successful civil society actions in recent years have shown these qualities, from youth-led climate movements to horizontally organised feminist campaigns that connect people across class, race and geographic barriers.

Civil society must prioritise authentic community connections, particularly with those most excluded from power. This means going beyond traditional consultations to develop genuine relationships with communities, including those outside urban centres or disadvantaged by digital divides. The strength of the relationships civil society can nurture should be one key measure of success.

Equally crucial is the development of compelling narratives, and infrastructure to help share them, that speak to people’s legitimate anxieties while offering inclusive, rights-based alternatives to the widely spread and seductive but dangerous appeals of populism and authoritarianism. These narratives must connect universal values to local contexts and concerns.

In this current cascade of global crises, civil society can no longer hope for a return to business as usual. A more movement-oriented, community-driven and financially independent civil society will be better equipped to withstand threats and more effectively realise its collective mission of building a more just, equal, democratic and sustainable world.

The 2025 State of Civil Society Report offers both a warning and a call to action for all concerned about the shape of today’s world. Civil society represents humanity’s best hope for navigating the treacherous waters ahead. In these dark times, civil society remains a beacon of light. It must continue to shine.

Inés M. Pousadela is Senior Research Specialist and Andrew Firmin is Editor-in-Chief at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation. They are co-directors and writers for CIVICUS Lens and co-authors of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org.

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