Human rights organizations worldwide face their most severe funding crisis in decades as aid cuts, delayed multilateral payments, and restrictive laws targeting civil society decimate both resources and operating space.
The Trump administration’s authoritarian rhetoric, the suspension of USAID, and the delay of regular payments to the United Nations have all heightened uncertainty, increased unemployment, and raised the risk of further job losses. Foreign agent laws and other restrictive funding measures in multiple countries compound these financial pressures. And these factors only add to long-standing challenges with official development assistance (ODA): financial support from developed countries rife with echoes of colonialism and other historical flaws and inefficiencies.
The impacts of cuts and restrictions
While data specific to human rights financing is limited, we can draw important conclusions from general ODA trends; reductions in overall development assistance almost inevitably mean reductions in the resources available for human rights work. The latest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report projected a 9 to 17% drop in official development assistance in 2025, following a 9% decline in 2024. Cuts from France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States are driving this decline, marking the first time in nearly 30 years that all four of these nations reduced their ODA in the same year. The 2025 AidWatch report revealed that the EU and its member states reduced their ODA from 0.53% of gross national income in 2023 to 0.47% in 2024 and that the seven member states responsible for around 75% of global ODA had announced or implemented cuts.
At the same time, restrictive laws introduced by various regimes are shrinking civil society space. These include a recent wave of laws in Eastern Europe including those governing foreign agents and grants and freezing the financial accounts of civil society organizations (CSOs). These measures directly affect how CSOs operate, access funding, and engage with international partners. According to the CIVICUS Monitor, only 40 of 198 countries and territories surveyed currently have what can be understood as an open civic space while 81 fall into the worst categories of restricted or closed civic space. Such numbers reflect widespread repressive acts against fundamental freedoms.
Who can address the problem?
In response to the crisis of shrinking civic space, many civil society organizations, think tanks, and advocacy networks are focused on building stronger coalitions as a strategy of resistance and resilience. Withstanding and recovering from challenges matters, as does restructuring and rethinking the administration and use of funding. For instance, the high level of competition among CSOs for access to funds in the current donor environment undermines both general resilience and the effectiveness of teamwork. Such competition for financial support compromises the essential collaborative character of human rights work.
But expecting solutions from CSOs already navigating authoritarian contexts and financial crises is perhaps not realistic. In some instances, these organizations are already restricted from accepting ODA. Instead, foundations, states, and grant-making organizations must take on the responsibility for transforming human rights work in the face of authoritarian retrenchment and spending cuts. These groups need to reassess how they administer funding and the requirements they impose on grantees. For human rights defenders barely able to operate in authoritarian regimes, the question is not just whether they can apply for funding but how many calls they will need to refuse to comply with restrictive laws.
The way forward
What can foundations, member states, and organizations do to address the challenges of this new reality?
One important step funding sources can take is to focus on understanding country contexts and real needs. Where organizations cannot legally receive grants, foundations can hire service providers and consultants instead—all without compromising transparency and accountability. In such a scenario, funding organizations rather than the grant-receiving NGOs shoulder the greater logistical responsibility. Moreover, there is a clear need to rethink grants designed around competition and to incentivize cooperation instead. Rather than structuring grant announcements and calls for applications around competition and rivalry, grant makers could foreground teamwork and cooperation with other NGOs as an assessment criterion and award additional points to applicants that demonstrate meaningful collaboration.
It is also essential to develop financial mechanisms that support organizational capacity. This includes equipping organizations and defenders with the necessary knowledge, equipment, and security and safety measures to carry out their work. Efforts should also be directed toward strengthening human rights organizations operating outside authoritarian regimes. Support should focus on those working directly with and providing on-the-ground assistance to local human rights defenders, including facilitating emergency relocations. Another practical measure is to manage project finances through NGO headquarters and avoid transferring grant money directly to local organizations that are restricted in accessing financial resources.
Furthermore, it is important not to overprioritize any one region. Instead, intersectional approaches and concrete needs assessments should guide the design of quotas and resource allocation. Criteria for announcing project funding should be based on these assessments rather than location or the priorities of the donor, which may not align with the real needs of CSOs and the communities they serve. Donors must also avoid overprioritizing other policy areas at the expense of human rights financing. Human rights have long-term impacts, and they remain a core element underpinning all other sectors and policy priorities, including security.
Above all, states must remember that international cooperation is a legal commitment they undertook when joining binding international conventions and that when they reprioritize, defund, or fund ineffectively, they undermine that obligation.