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Rethinking Human Rights Protection: From Crisis Response to Sustainable Systems [1]

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Date: 2025-09

A journalist receives anonymous death threats, faces legal persecution, and has their family harassed and forced into exile due to their writing about anticorruption campaigns in the run-up to a presidential election. A woman human rights defender in Afghanistan is threatened and driven into hiding by the Taliban for standing up for democracy and gender equality. A religious leader from Nicaragua is expelled and stripped of citizenship for defending religious freedom in the country. A whistleblower faces prison time for uncovering severe corruption at a government agency. A human rights activist providing free health and legal services to vulnerable LGBTI+ youth is severely injured in a mob attack in retaliation for their work.

These stories represent just a few of the thousands of human rights defenders (HRDs) worldwide that Freedom House successfully supported through its Emergency Assistance Program (EAP). Between 2007 and early 2025, EAP supported more than 17,000 HRDs, organizations, and survivors in at least 142 countries. The impact was clear: 96 percent of those who received support reported that they were more secure, and 86 percent were subsequently able to continue their work.

This critical project, which was funded primarily by the US State Department, came to a halt in January when the new administration’s Executive Order on Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid froze all programs funded by US foreign assistance. But the US government is not alone in cutting funding: major philanthropic foundations are also changing their funding strategies, and others are closing their doors. European governments have similarly announced significant cuts to funding for human rights protection.

The global rights-protection ecosystem of which Freedom House forms a part—that is, the interconnected network of local protection organizations, regional coalitions, international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), donor governments, philanthropic foundations, and community-based support groups—is struggling with unprecedented funding cuts from many sources, and the safety net that many in this ecosystem assumed would always exist is disappearing.

The funding cuts are forcing the protection ecosystem to fundamentally rethink its model. It must shift from a structure in which international organizations provide the majority of emergency assistance grants to a more decentralized approach in which local and regional protection mechanisms take the lead role, with international organizations stepping back to supply certain forms of specialized and strategic support rather than direct, ongoing funding.

The sustainability challenge

Human rights activists, organizations, and movements around the world continue to emphasize their need for long-term, flexible funding sources that allow them to sustain their work and respond to challenges through locally led strategies. Yet international protection programs like Freedom House’s EAP were designed fundamentally as crisis-response mechanisms, positioned to react to immediate threats or attacks and provide direct support rather than assist in the establishment of long-term funding strategies that prioritize self-reliance.

New forms of partnership for international organizations

The question now becomes: Can international protection programs evolve from direct service providers to facilitators and partners that strengthen local and regional protection mechanisms and put them on a path toward autonomous sustainability?

The answer depends on a rethinking of the core function of international organizations in the rights-protection ecosystem and how the other components should develop in a context of reduced funding and greater need. Decentralizing the approach to emergency assistance funding does not diminish the role of international protection programs, but it does transform them. The key is to create complementary international, regional, and local structures so that the international partners facilitate rather than dominate protection efforts, focusing on gaps that local and regional entities may be less equipped to address. This will ultimately lead to long-term protection strategies that are less dependent on foreign aid.

As described in Alliance magazine’s “Not Just Philanthropy Middlemen: The Unseen Role of Intermediaries,” intermediary funders are “transformative actors” that serve as “connectors, advocates, and interpreters of local contexts”—exactly the capabilities offered by international protection programs. These programs, including Freedom House’s EAP, can provide:

flexible and trust-based funding mechanisms that facilitate the resourcing of nascent local or regional protection programs, particularly for marginalized communities;



administrative capacity to deliver effectively , including established grant-management systems that allow such international programs to channel large-scale resources to grassroots groups, relieving local actors of heavy bureaucratic burdens; and



network reach, meaning diverse global connections that afford additional opportunities for funding, technical support, local organizational development, cross-movement solidarity, and exchanges of best practices for greater resilience and self-reliance.

While local and regional protection programs are best positioned to provide immediate and holistic responses to threats, international actors can direct their attention to persistent gaps in the sustainability of these local and regional partners. The most common needs include:

targeted mid-to-long-term funding for HRDs facing protracted threats and those forced to leave their home countries;

safe houses and spaces , both in HRDs’ home countries and abroad for those in exile;

digital security and technology support , including training and tools that local groups may have difficulty accessing;

bridge funding for neglected groups , including support for HRDs working with rural and marginalized populations, members of ethnic and religious minorities, and LGBTI+ communities; and

transformational support, such as the development of innovative fundraising efforts that lead to more sustainable and autonomous local and regional protection mechanisms.

Toward a sustainable rights-protection ecosystem

The sustainability of the human rights protection ecosystem must be the central tenet of any new program. The stark reality is that, despite its growing impact, the existing ecosystem was still unable to reach the majority of at-risk HRDs who were attacked and in need of urgent support, and it was ineffective at promoting sustainable local and regional strategies. No single international program can operate everywhere or reach every defender in need, and these attacks will not stop simply because we lack the capacity to respond. A decentralized approach—with international programs playing a secondary but strategic role to support multiple local and regional mechanisms—could dramatically expand coverage and impact.

International protection programs do not need to completely stop providing emergency grants under the new model, but those efforts should be designed to complement what local and regional mechanisms are doing, and to serve as a backstop in scenarios where the local mechanisms fail.

This is a pivotal moment for the global human rights protection community. As we reckon with the loss of funding and an evolving landscape replete with challenges and threats, we have a responsibility to listen to and learn from local and regional protection programs about how to become better partners and build sustainable mechanisms that are resilient enough to withstand future funding disruptions.

The situation calls for unprecedented collaboration: Donors, international protection programs, and local and regional mechanisms must come together, not just to rebuild what was lost, but to jointly create a fundamentally different ecosystem—one in which power flows to the front lines, resources reach those who need them most quickly, and sustainability is an inherent feature of how we protect HRDs worldwide. Providing more resources is not an adequate solution. The future of human rights work will depend instead on better systems, more equitable partnerships, and new methods to meet the ongoing needs of courageous journalists, activists, and other rights defenders around the world.

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[1] Url: https://freedomhouse.org/article/rethinking-human-rights-protection-crisis-response-sustainable-systems

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