Are donors accidentally funding groups not aligned with their values?

A group campaigning against abortion rights in Sierra Leone received funding from one of the world’s most prominent human rights donors — raising alarm among activists about how so-called progressive aid may be inadvertently funneled to anti-rights groups. Christian Aid received a $66,000 grant from the Open Society Foundations to implement a women’s economic inclusion project. It partnered with the Inter-Religious Council of Sierra Leone, or IRCSL — a conservative group opposing abortion rights — as an implementing partner. The funding was discovered by the nonprofit Institute for Journalism and Social Change after Christian Aid submitted the information to the International Aid Transparency Initiative, or IATI, a voluntary initiative that seeks to improve aid transparency. To date, IRCSL — which opposed the Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health Care Bill — has received $38,806 in two disbursements for the Strengthening Women’s Economic Inclusion and Transformation, or SWIFT, project, according to IATI. The bill would legalize abortion up to 14 weeks, among other measures, but Rev. Dr. Usman Jesse Fornah, general secretary of the IRCSL, told Devex that it contradicts some sections of Sierra Leone’s Constitution on the right to life and freedom of conscience, religion, and worship. The Quran and Bible value the sanctity of life, he said. “Therefore the term ‘abortion’ must be expunged from the bill.” An OSF spokesperson told Devex that they had not been aware of Christian Aid’s work with IRSCL, or of any work of the council or other Christian Aid partners that may promote anti-abortion work. Nor did Christian Aid’s concept note, which formed the basis of the grant, mention this, they said. “We are grateful that this matter has been brought to our attention,” the spokesperson said. “This grant has been closed and we are committed to investigating and implementing due diligence efforts to ensure as far as possible that our grantees are aligned with our values and our commitments to human rights, including reproductive rights and freedoms.” The grant was given to Christian Aid as part of OSF’s work with faith-based organizations to counter anti-gender attacks and advance racial and reparative justice, OSF told the Institute for Journalism and Social Change, or IJSC. With general support, they do not impose conditions on grantees, trusting them to make decisions, OSF said. When values collide Dr. Ramatu Bangura, co-CEO at women and girls’ NGO Purposeful, told Devex that funders must vet grantees and partners to ensure ideological alignment. “It’s a call to social justice-focused grantees or grantee partners to be really clear about what their commitments are to their communities that their grantee partners serve, what their commitments are to human rights and social justice, and to be clear any other group that they will move resources to also align in that way,” she said. It is reasonable to ask partners to state their political positions, especially when misalignment could jeopardize funders’ goals, she added. “They can say as a grantee partner you sign an agreement that says that you won’t do anything to undermine the rights that we hold and put to be important, and that that can be grounds for rescinding funding,” she said. This would require program officers to go beyond paperwork and have “deep conversations” with grantees — visiting their work, asking questions, and closely observing activities, she said. Although organizations submit regular reports, Bangura noted: “OSF has regional staff, so if anyone is paying close attention to Sierra Leone, it would not be difficult to know the position of the Inter-Religious Council.” In response, IRSCL’s Fornah said they “are eligible to receive resources for work that aligns with the promotion of economic rights — including advocacy for gender-just policies that enhance women's economic participation and access to finance.” “The funding we received through Christian Aid supports the work we are doing on women’s economic rights, a key area of advocacy for us so that more women can access economic opportunities for their empowerment and voice,” he said. “Whilst others may have their own opinions, we believe that our partnership with Christian Aid based on shared values, and through the support from OSF is making [a] real difference for women.” A ‘huge transparency success’ Claire Provost, co-founder and co-director of IJSC, told Devex she was “shocked” to discover that funding had gone to IRCSL — a group identified by feminist activists as a key opponent of Sierra Leone’s proposed abortion law. She uncovered the funding while tracing the group’s donors. “Someone at OSF should have been able to find this as well, for sure,” she said. “We were surprised that it was news to OSF.” It showed a key learning that any donor who cares about universal human rights needs to look carefully at their portfolios and whether their funding has ever touched groups advocating for rights that they are against. “If it’s happened to OSF, I feel like it could happen to any funder,” Provost said. Still, Provost noted it was a “huge transparency success” that Christian Aid was so transparent about its funding that she could see this information. While Provost understands that grantees already had to navigate a great deal of paperwork to obtain funding, she stressed that it wouldn’t be hard to have even one sentence on a form that funders could sign to say that they wouldn’t oppose sexual reproductive rights and laws. “It’s time for sexual reproductive rights to really be seen as inalienable human rights that are nonnegotiable, so why not put it in contracts?” she said. Emilie Tant, strategic communications and policy manager on gender equality and social inclusion at the think tank ODI Global, warned that gender equality work doesn’t automatically translate to support for all women’s or LGBTQ+ rights. “Some organizations can frame their work as supporting maternal health or family stability, which can mask an anti-abortion agenda,” they told Devex. “Donors must do their due diligence to see what other work an organisation does in the context of any specific grant.” A Christian Aid spokesperson told Devex that it was committed to gender equality and women’s rights. They said, though the IRCSL was a long-standing partner, the SWIFT project aims to increase women’s participation in governance and economic decision-making. “Our work in SWIFT does not therefore relate to the engagements of the Inter-Religious Council and their views about some of the provisions in the Safe Motherhood Bill,” they said. “We are proud of the difference we are making for the women in Sierra Leone. We do, however, recognize that we do not always agree on everything with our partners, including Christian Aid, but we work together on areas where our objectives and values align," IRCSL’s Fornah added. At a crossroads In April 2023, the IJSC revealed that aid donors, including the United States and the United Kingdom, had given at least $40 million since 2014 to organizations that advocated against LGBTQ+ rights in Uganda, such as the IRCSL. The group had previously lost U.S. aid funding due to its anti-gay stance. Similar flows in Ghana have been documented by IJSC. U.S. Christian rights networks opposed to sexual and reproductive rights have significantly increased their spending in Africa since 2019, according to the IJSC. Seventeen groups increased their total annual spending in Africa by about half between 2019 and 2022, the institute’s research said. They included international nonprofit Family Watch International, which more than doubled its declared spending on the continent from $128,636 to $260,642 between 2022 and 2023. Bangura said that foreign and homegrown conservative groups working in Africa have been emboldened by the political climate created in the U.S. “The cut in USAID funding is going to leave quite a number of organizations that provide essential services to communities without funding,” she said. “It’s going to leave them ripe to be picked off by religious extremists who will offer money to folks providing essential services to people who need them.” Given the gains that the anti-gender and anti-rights movements have made over the last few years, those in the human rights space are at a critical juncture, ODI Global’s Tant said. “The lesson for donors continues to be that core, flexible, trust-based funding to women’s and feminist movements at the frontline of pushing for collective rights and democracy is one of the most effective ways to counter the backlash,” they said. “Doing this through well-established women’s funds helps to avoid inadvertently moving money to anti-rights actors.” Update, July 23, 2025: This article has been updated to clarify Emilie Tant’s pronouns.