Introduction

The powerful are overreaching, and people are pushing back. Across the world, an axis of unaccountable political leaders and economic elites is tearing up the international rulebook, weaponising technology and defunding the institutions designed to hold states to account. International humanitarian law is being flouted in plain sight. Impunity for atrocities is becoming normalised. The funding architecture that sustained civil society is collapsing through deliberate political choice, and those who already have the least access to rights are bearing the heaviest cost.

But what’s most striking about this moment is not the enormity of the attacks but the scale of the response. In country after country, people are choosing courage over compliance. They are looking the powerful in the face and refusing to fall silent.

Street protest is the most visible form of resistance, and it’s everywhere. A new generation is mobilising, driven by accumulated frustration at economic and political failures. In Bangladesh, a Gen Z-led uprising that overthrew an authoritarian government in 2024 led to the country’s first credible election in almost two decades. In the USA, the No Kings protests became one of the largest mass mobilisations in the country’s history.

Beyond the streets, resistance takes quieter but no less vital forms, such as underground schools for girls, kept running in defiance of theocratic rule in Afghanistan, communities physically blocking deportation raids in the USA and years of documentation and litigation finally bringing perpetrators of atrocities before international courts. In a time of backlash, holding the line is an achievement.

This is also a time of serious reckoning for civil society. Established organisations must resist the temptation to retreat by scrubbing human rights language and seeking safer ground because conceding without a struggle will only accelerate the erosion. Civil society must connect the dots across crises that the powerful try to keep separate, forge respectful partnerships with newer movements and place communities at the centre.

This annual plan is our answer to this moment. Across our five strategic objectives, we are investing in the knowledge, advocacy, solidarity mechanisms, narratives and movement infrastructure that resistance requires, not as parallel workstreams but as a coherent, coordinated response to the interconnected challenges we face.