Soros’ Open Society Foundations say they remain focused on human rights
NEW YORK– Despite years of internal turmoil and changes, Foundations of the Open Society wants those in the human rights sector to know that their movements will still receive support from the organization, President Binaifer Nowrojee said on Tuesday.
The foundations, founded by billionaire investor George Soros and now led by one of his sons, Alex Soros, have historically been among the largest funders of human rights groups. But since 2021, they have closed some of their programs reduced their workforce as part of a major internal reorganization.
In this process, many beneficiaries and others in the human rights movement have been eagerly waiting to see where the chips would fall.
“A reimagining has taken place under the leadership of the new chairman of Open Society Foundations,” Nowrojee said, referring to Alex Soros.
“One of the reasons we really wanted to reiterate on a large scale, with balloons and things like that, that we are still committed to human rights, is because of this fear that permeates the changes that Open Society Foundations are somehow not endure longer. to work for rights, equality or justice,” she said beforehand Human Rights Dayobserved by the United Nations on December 10.
Nowrojee offered few new details about OSF’s specific funding priorities, though the foundations committed earlier this year $400 million for green jobs and economic development.
Another new program focuses on protecting environmental defenders that will work in a few countries, for example Colombia and the Democratic Republic of Congo and end after five years, says Sharan Srinvias, program director at OSF.
“We did a survey of what other donors are supporting and in general we saw that this is where the gap is,” he said of people being attacked for defending land, water or other resources. “Bilateral donors in particular find it much easier to support global organizations, which in turn can support prominent rights defenders in capitals who are well known.”
One benefit of the limited time horizon, Srinvias says, is that his team will typically make grants of three or five years — longer than OSF’s typical grants — and provide grantees with more flexibility. It will also have some resources to respond to emergencies for human rights defenders around the world.
In 2020, OSF was the largest global human rights funder, with the most money in total and the largest number of grants. This is according to the Human Rights Funders Network, a membership organization of grant providers that tracks philanthropic funding for human rights groups.
“If major financiers adjust their priorities, it can have a ripple effect. Their decisions could have a dramatic impact on the human rights movements they once supported, especially in regions where they have long been champions,” HRFN wrote in its latest report. Human Rights Progress Report from September.
Adding to the atmosphere of uncertainty, another major human rights funder, Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, announced earlier this year that it would end its work by 2028.
OSF’s board aims to employ a total of 600 people around the world, Nowrojee said lower than a reported 800 in 2021.
Some of the changes OSF has made over the past three years include phasing out its global public health program and significantly scaling back its programs in the European Union. It made the area of work on which it focused independent Roma communities in a new organization and provided final grants to many of its partners.
“You never want philanthropy to just do the same thing. You want philanthropy to come out of things,” Nowrojee said. “And so there are large areas of work where there have been tremendous successes that we have withdrawn from, not because we don’t think there is value in them, but the movements themselves have become stronger.”
People who have worked for OSF’s public health program and some of their beneficiaries have spoken about its effects through an oral history project led by the University of Southern California Institute on Global Health Inequality and funded by OSF.
Jonathan Cohen, who led OSF’s public health program and now holds positions at USC, told an interviewer from the oral history project about a 2020 decision by OSF leadership to take funding from its programs and reallocate them ways to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That recovery in April, I think, should have been a sign to all of us that we weren’t longing for this world anymore,” Cohen said of the public health program. “But of course you don’t accept that. You fight. You resist. You try to stick to your program, and that’s what we did until we couldn’t do it anymore.”
One of the movements that OSF had supported as part of its public health program was the Network of Sex Work Projects, a global coalition of sex worker groups. It emerged in 1992 partly in response to the killings of sex workers who had HIV, said Ruth Morgan Thomas, who was NSWP’s global coordinator for many years, as part of the oral history project. She said she was saddened by the closure of OSF’s public health work.
“I hope that as it reemerges and its global strategy reemerges, it will maintain its position and support for promoting the realization of sex workers’ rights and inclusion in our societies,” she said.
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