The past year has been marked by profound challenges and widespread suffering for communities across the globe.
The world has watched in horror as the Israeli military commits apparent war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide in Gaza. In Ukraine, Myanmar, Afghanistan, DR Congo, Sudan, and beyond, countless people continue to live in fear and uncertainty – while nearly a third of the world’s population now resides in countries where civic space is completely closed. The COP climate summit again failed to deliver meaningful action, even as we lived through the hottest year on record.
Meanwhile, the United States faces another dark chapter with Donald Trump’s return to the presidency. Globally, the spread of disinformation and the rise of extremist ideologies are being fuelled by powerful narratives, social media complicity, and opaque financing.
Yet, amid the turmoil, hope endures. People-powered movements and a new generation of changemakers are leading the fight against social injustice, authoritarianism, and the climate crisis. However, repressive governments, corrupt corporations, and armed groups resort to violence and oppression in their attempts to silence them.
A surge in demand
Against this backdrop, Open Briefing received 575 calls for assistance from grassroots activists, community groups, and social movements at risk in 2024. This marks a 66% increase in cases over the past two years, with our team now responding to 11 new cases every week. Despite this surge in demand, we continue to provide timely and highly-effective support. As one human rights defender in Armenia remarked, “Open Briefing responded so quickly, professionally, and sensitively to our request for help that it is difficult to express anything other than gratitude.”
Over the course of the year, we supported organisations and activists at risk in 100 countries across every inhabited continent, underscoring the global scale of the challenges we face. Notably, the United States ranked third, behind Uganda and Kenya, as the source of the highest percentage of calls for assistance. We also responded to significant numbers of incidents in Mexico, India, and Afghanistan.
Strength in diversity
To meet the growing demand for our unique support, we have expanded our team to 41 staff and consultants across 18 countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Bosnia, Lebanon, Thailand, Indonesia, Myanmar, DR Congo, and Kenya, as well as throughout Europe and North America. Women now make up nearly two-thirds of our team and half of our senior leadership, while a third of our colleagues come from racialised and under-recognised communities.
As a global nonprofit guided by strong values, we prioritised equity and inclusion during our expansion. We transitioned consultants to employees, ensured comprehensive healthcare for all staff, and established transparent salary bands with a pay ratio cap and progressive cost-of-living allowances, benefiting those in lower salary bands. We reaffirmed our commitment to equal pay by rejecting location-based salaries and introduced progressive family leave, additional paid leave, and support for menstrual health, menopause, and gender transition. Finally, we expanded coaching and counselling support and took steps to further protect our team’s right to disconnect.
In parallel, we focused on further decolonising and localising our support services by building local partnerships, offering services and resources in additional local languages, recruiting more consultants in the majority world, and placing a stronger emphasis on collective care and Indigenous perspectives on wellbeing.
Measurable impact
Our diversity and global reach are the cornerstones of our success. Together, we delivered over 6,000 hours of mentoring and accompaniment last year and trained more than 1,000 at-risk activists in 112 holistic security workshops around the world.
We worked in solidarity with people and movements fighting for human rights and social justice, defending their land and rivers, demanding climate action, exposing corruption, reporting the truth, striving for peace and democracy, and championing reproductive justice and the rights of LGBTQIA+ people. Many of the cases we handled were complex – featuring intersecting physical, digital, and psychological harms – and high risk, involving highly-capable adversaries acting with impunity.
Our efforts delivered measurable impact. We reduced perceived risk by 15% and achieved a remarkable 25% improvement in individuals’ stated capacity to manage those risks – significantly enhancing the safety and resilience of those we served. An inspiring 84% approval rating from clients and grassroots partners underscores the meaningful difference we made, reaffirming the effectiveness and importance of our work in this complex and challenging field.
Sustaining progress
Funders continue to recognise our outsized impact and the vital role holistic security plays in countering shrinking civic space and strengthening civil society. We are profoundly grateful to Waverley Street Foundation, Luminate, the National Endowment for Democracy, Packard Foundation, Oak Foundation, the Mott Foundation, and our community of donors for their steadfast support. Yet, the funding environment is now the most challenging and uncertain it has been in our 14-year history.
Partnerships for change
We are part of a larger protection ecosystem, where collaboration is key to the safety of our grassroots partners. Last year, we played a central role in the Building Responses Together network as a steering committee member and remained active in the Alliance for Land, Indigenous, and Environmental Defenders (ALLIED). We also became part of Nonprofit Secure and the NGO Information Sharing and Analysis Center (NGO-ISAC).
To further our impact, we took concrete steps last year to address critical gaps in the ecosystem. This includes our #RethinkRelocation campaign, advocating for reduced reliance on international relocation of at-risk activists, as well as a new training and coaching programme that equips activists to champion individual and collective wellbeing within their organisations and movements. We also partnered with community-based and regional protection hubs in Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, supporting them through capacity sharing, resource mobilisation, and mentoring, while learning from their local knowledge and experience.
As both a mission-driven nonprofit and a social impact consultancy, Open Briefing operates at every level of civil society. Nearly a quarter of our income last year was generated through our professional consultancy and advisory services. We were honoured to serve as the retained provider for the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Global Witness, the Environmental Defenders Collaborative, and many other leading nonprofits and foundations.
In this capacity, we played a key role in high-profile campaigns, including:
- A holistic security audit for an organisation fighting illicit financial flows and corruption, a key player in the landmark French trial over alleged Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidential campaign.
- In-depth risk advisory for the makers of the PBS FRONTLINE documentary exposing the vast corruption scandal in Venezuela’s domestic aid programme.
- Security mentoring and wellbeing support for at-risk winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize, Right Livelihood Award, and Iris Prize.
But most of our work is behind the scenes, supporting the people and movements challenging unaccountable power at the grassroots level, often at great personal risk. We are privileged to share some of their stories from last year in our impact report.
We must mobilise now
The year ahead offers both crisis and opportunity. With your continued support, Open Briefing can deepen our impact and extend our reach to even more grassroots activists and organisations at risk. The challenges ahead are immense, but together, we can strengthen the resistance and resilience of the people and movements challenging unaccountable power.
Now is the time to defend those who speak out – they are needed more than ever.