Soros' Open Society Foundations say they remain focused on human rights

NEW YORK -- Despite years of internal turmoil and changes, Open Society Foundations wants those in the human rights sector to know their movements will still receive support from the organization, its president Binaifer Nowrojee said Tuesday.

The foundations, founded by billionaire investor George Soros and now led by one of his sons, Alex Soros, have historically been one of the largest funders of human rights groups. But since 2021, they closed some of their programs and reduced their staff as part of a major internal reorganization.

In the process, many grantees and others in the human rights movement have waited anxiously to see where the chips would fall.

“A reimagination has taken place under the leadership of the new board chair at Open Society Foundations,” Nowrojee said, referring to Alex Soros.

“One of the reasons that we wanted to really reiterate in a large way, with balloons, et cetera, that we are still committed to human rights, is because of this fear that’s permeated with the changes that somehow Open Society Foundations is no longer going to be working on rights or equity or justice,” she said in advance of Human Rights Day, which the United Nations observes on Dec. 10.

Nowrojee offered few new details about OSF's specific funding priorities, though earlier this year, the foundations committed $400 million toward green jobs and economic development.

Another new program focuses on protecting environmental defenders that will work in a few countries, like Colombia and the Democratic Republic of Congo and end after five years, said Sharan Srinivas, a director of programs 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 who come under attack for defending land, water or other resources. “Especially bilateral donors find it much easier to support global organizations, who in turn are able to support prominent rights defenders in capital cities who are well known.”

One benefit of the limited time horizon, Srinivas said, is his team will mostly make grants of three or five years — longer than OSF's typical grants — and offer grantees more flexibility. It will also have some funds to respond to emergencies for human rights defenders all over the world.

In 2020, OSF was the largest global human rights funder, giving out the most money overall and making the largest number of grants. That's according to the Human Rights Funders Network, a membership organization of grantmakers that tracks philanthropic funding for human rights groups.

“When major funders adjust their priorities, it can have a ripple effect. Their decisions can dramatically impact the human rights movements they once supported, especially in regions where they’ve been a long-time champion,” HRFN wrote in its most recent Advancing Human Rights report from September.

To add 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 600 people in total around the world, Nowrojee said, which is down from a reported 800 in 2021.

Some of the changes OSF made in the last three years include winding down its global public health program and significantly diminishing its programs in the European Union. It spun off its area of work focused on Roma communities into a new organization and issued final grants to many of its partners.

“You never want philanthropy to just be doing the same thing. You want philanthropy to be getting out of stuff,” Nowrojee said. “And so there’s large areas of work where huge achievements were made, which we have retreated from, not because we don’t think that there’s value in them, but the movements themselves have strengthened.”

People who worked for OSF's public health program and some of their grantees have spoken about its impacts over almost three decades through an oral history project led by University of Southern California Institute on Inequalities in Global Health and funded by OSF.

Jonathan Cohen, who led the OSF public health program and now holds positions at USC, told an interviewer with the oral history project about a decision in 2020 by OSF's leadership to take funding from its programs and reallocate it to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“That claw-back in April should have been a sign, I think, to all of us that we were not long for this world,” Cohen said, of the public health program. "But of course, you don’t accept that. You fight. You resist. You try to keep your program, which is what we did until we couldn’t.”

Among the movements that OSF had supported under its public health program was the the Network of Sex Work Projects, a global coalition of sex worker groups. It formed in 1992 in part in response to the killing of sex workers living with 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 to see the closure of OSF's public health work.

“I hope as it reemerges and its global strategy reemerges, it will retain its stance and support for promoting the realization of sex workers’ rights and inclusion in our societies,” she said.

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