In January 2025, the sudden and unprecedented USAID Stop Work Order sent shockwaves through the development, humanitarian, and human rights ecosystems.
Even before these developments, feminist movements and rights defenders were already contending with a changing resourcing ecosystem influenced by the global shift rightwards: the redistribution of resources from civil society to government, significant reductions in foreign aid, and even closure of private foundations who held up much of the support for our shared work. Before 2025, we were already concerned that there was no clear funding stream or institution who could “fill the gap” for our vital work.
While new attention to the the anti-rights threat from funders has made significant contributions to expanding the base of informed advocates who are better able to anticipate risks and prepare to
respond, much more needs to be done to bring this work to scale and create a sustainable movement that can resist for the long term.
This brief provides recommendation from the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs) to funders, outlining the ways they can make a difference by supporting the resistance to fascisms, fundamentalisms, authoritarianism, and anti-rights threats.
As global anti-rights threats can no longer be ignored, and more attention turns to how best to resist, we believe it is more important than ever to have a clarified political approach to these issues, based on shared values and red lines.
Over 2023 and 2024 the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs) undertook a collective process to reaffirm our mandate and the principles that act as the foundation for our work to counter fascist, fundamentalist, and anti-rights trends. This document outlines the following:
- Who are we?
- What do we work for?
- Where do we work?
- Who do we work with?
- What do we believe in? What guides our work?
- Our shared values
It also lays our our collective stances on:
- Countering Religious Fundamentalisms and Co-optation of the Right to Freedom of Religion or Belief
- Market Fundamentalism
- Double Standards
For French and Spanish versions, please get in touch .
Protego is a project of the Institute of Women’s Health, which is led by former Trump administration official Valerie Huber.
This brief from Ipas details the Protego project. Protego is designed to operationalize the non-binding, anti-abortion Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD), which was created in 2020 by Huber under the Trump administration. Protego aims to supplant science-based, rights-respecting education, health, and foreign policy. Piloted in Guatemala in 2023 and formally launched in Uganda in February 2024, Protego is a threat to existing international human rights frameworks.
“Gender ideology” narratives are increasingly present in public discourse and policy-making spaces,
posing a significant threat to human rights.
The malleable concept of “gender ideology” casts
advocates of gender and social justice as illegitimate proponents of a nefarious agenda.
For decades, feminist scholars and advocates have articulated important concepts related to gender
to understand and challenge oppression and discrimination. Those concepts have now become
the target of anti-rights actors who claim that oppressive patriarchal gender roles are “common
sense”, strategically painting all other ideas, cultural norms, and forms of social life as a dangerous,
conspirative ideology.
Anti-rights actors’ infiltration of the UN – Spot key groups and debunk their narratives
In human rights systems, anti-rights actors are now operating with increased frequency, coordination, resources, and impact. These actors are chipping away at the very content and structure of our human rights concepts, institutions, and protections – with disastrous consequences for human rights and gender justice. Anti-rights actors form a complex web across national and international spaces. They are often able to sustain their work through large budgets, in many cases from obscure sources.
Anti-rights actors are moving away from using explicitly regressive language, and co-opt human rights language and social justice issues to gain legitimacy. This primer is designed to help you spot some of the key anti-rights groups active in international spaces, and recognize and debunk some of their common discourses. The primer is derived from the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs) Trends Reports, Rights at Risk and Rights at Risk: Time for Action.
The Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs) Trends Report 2021
Today, a complex and evolving network of anti-rights actors is exerting more influence in international and regional spaces as well as domestic politics. Anti-rights actors are entering multilateral spaces (spaces where multiple countries come together for international collaboration) to transform and undermine them from the inside out. They employ a range of persuasive discourses to gain legitimacy, often co-opting the language of rights and justice to hide their true agendas.
This report is the second in a series on human rights trends reports produced by the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs). As well as analysis of key anti-rights actors, discourses, strategies, and impacts, the report features inspiring short stories of feminist action, and knowledge-building exercises to help strengthen our collective resistance.
Three activists from Eastern Europe share their analysis of the advances of fundamentalist and fascist forces across the region.
Listen here: https://soundcloud.com/awidfeminisms/rightsatrisk-in-eastern-europe#t=0:15
This discussion addresses the following questions
- How are anti-right forces operating in Eastern Europe? How are they gaining support?
- What are the impacts for gender justice and human rights in the region?
- What does collective resistance look like?
A conversation with:
Olena Shevchenko, Ukraine:
Olena Shevchenko is a human rights defender and educator from Ukraine whose focuses are LGBT rights and women’s rights. She is Executive director of Insight, an organization working for rights of LGBT persons in Ukraine and internationally, board member of ILGA-Europe and Co-Chair of the anti-discrimination coalition in Ukraine.
Florin Buhuceanu, Romania:
Florin Buhuceanu is a Romanian human rights activist working at the intersection between LGBT rights, sexual and reproductive rights, and freedom of religion. He leads ACCEPT- the national LGBT rights organisation, and ECPI – a human right foundation focusing on non-discrimination and reproductive justice. From 2015, he serves as a board member of ENORB-European Network on Religion and Belief, and as member of the Advisory Panel of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA).
Marta Szostak, Poland:
Marta works with the Polish Federation for Women and Family Planning (Warsaw), where she is the Network Coordinator of ASTRA, a network of NGOs and individuals advocating for sexual and reproductive health and rights in Central and Eastern Europe. She was previously Coordinator of the ASTRA Youth Network
Moderator: Kasia Staszewska:
Kasia is part of the Resourcing Feminist Movements initiative at the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID). She is based in Warsaw, Poland, where she engages with struggles for sexual and reproductive rights and supports the work of the first Polish Feminist Fund. Before joining AWID, Kasia led policy and advocacy work on women’s human rights for ActionAid and Amnesty International.
Freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) is a universal human right guaranteed by Article 18 of the UN International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
In 2013, the European Union adopted the EU Guidelines on Freedom of Religion or Belief for which Human Rights Without Frontiers International was pleased to be involved in the drafting process along with religious communities and other civil society organisations. The Guidelines are an important reference tool for EU institutions in third countries for identifying FoRB violations and assisting citizens who have been discriminated against on the basis of their religion or beliefs. The Guidelines also set out the actions and measures that the EU can take at multilateral-fora, regional and bi-lateral levels with regard to countries which fail to respect FoRB.
The purpose of this report ‘In Prison for their Religion or Beliefs’is to highlight those states which imprison people for practices that are protected by Article 18 of the ICCPR and Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The report also makes policy recommendations to the EU and other international institutions which are in a position to put pressure on the relevant countries to better respect and uphold FoRB.
