Laws that stigmatise civil society and independent media by forcing them to register as paid agents of foreign interests – known as foreign agents laws – are a growing threat to civil society worldwide. In recent years several states have passed these laws: Nicaragua in 2020, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan in 2024 and El Salvador in 2025.
Foreign agents laws are part of a broader trend of restrictive legislation targeting civil society organisations (CSOs) that receive international funding. Many more states have attempted to pass similar laws or have enacted other restrictive measures that criminalise international funding without using the ‘foreign agents’ label, making this approach one of the most concerning and growing parts of the assault on civic space currently underway in many countries across the world.
Ostensibly designed to promote accountability and transparency about international support for domestic organisations, the real purpose of foreign agents laws is to restrict CSOs, constrain their resources, divert their energies, subdue dissent and consolidate power.
Typically, foreign agents laws require organisations – and sometimes individuals – that engage in activities deemed political and receive a defined amount of foreign support – sometimes as low as 20 per cent of their budget – to register as ‘foreign agents’ or ‘organisations serving foreign interests’. Registered entities are then required to add stigmatising labels of ‘foreign origin’ to their communications, publications and websites, and submit to onerous audits and reporting requirements. Organisations can face heavy fines and closure, and people can receive jail sentences for noncompliance.
In practice, almost any public interest activity – including a broad range of human rights advocacy and work to strengthen democracy, such as election monitoring – may be deemed political and therefore be restricted under foreign agents laws. States often leave laws deliberately vague and broad to allow for discretionary enforcement and targeting of organisations they object to.
For these reasons, international organisations and human rights bodies – including the European Court of Human Rights, the European Parliament, the Organization of American States, the Venice Commission and multiple United Nations (UN) experts – have condemned foreign agents laws as clear violations of freedoms of association and expression.
The threat is accelerating rapidly, bringing devastating effects. Georgia’s government defied widespread street protests in 2024 to pass a foreign agents law that has effectively frozen the country’s European Union (EU) accession process. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has used a foreign agents law as part of a comprehensive repressive arsenal that has shuttered over 5,600 organisations, roughly 80 per cent of all CSOs that once operated in the country. In 2024, Kyrgyzstan enacted a Russian-style law that immediately triggered the closure of longstanding human rights organisations, while El Salvador, Slovakia and Zimbabwe all moved forward with their foreign agents laws despite intense domestic and international opposition.
In countries where foreign agents laws take hold, civil society faces an impossible choice: accept a stigmatising label that brands them as foreign spies or cease operations. The mere threat of designation can be enough to silence critics. Meanwhile, the fact that dozens more countries – including Bulgaria, Serbia and Turkey – have proposed similar legislation indicates that foreign agents laws are in danger of becoming normalised as an authoritarian tool for silencing dissent.