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.

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