Civil Society Is At Risk—and Tech Is Part Of The Problem

Across the globe, the rights to peaceful assembly and association are under severe and escalating threat. Civil society organizations (CSOs), vital to defending human rights, advancing democratic values, and supporting vulnerable communities, face an unprecedented assault, not only through repression, criminalization, and ill-intended laws, but also from a deeper structural crisis in the global aid system.

While foreign aid has been shifting in recent years, the arbitrary termination and dismantling of major aid institutions, such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), have left CSOs struggling for survival, forcing thousands to shrink operations dramatically, shut down entire departments, and transform their advocacy strategies. At the same time, the growing securitization of global policy and the politicized targeting of foreign-funded groups are eroding civic space.

States have been rapidly redirecting budgets toward defense and military capacities while reducing support for development, democratization, and human rights—thereby defunding civil society and even national and regional human rights protection mechanisms. This environment, combined with the growing crisis of trust and efficiency in multilateralism, has normalized the use of security frameworks to suppress civic freedoms, significantly lowering the threshold for their restriction.

Technology, while offering new tools for resistance and resilience, is also being weaponized to surveil, discredit, and disrupt. The cumulative effect is a shrinking space for civil society, at the very moment the world needs it most.