OSF taps Nicaraguan activist to head $25M fund for women in politics

It’s been less than a year since Suyén Barahona was released from a Nicaraguan prison and exiled to the United States for daring to speak out against her government. But the pro-democracy, human rights activist said she will not be silenced. Rather, she is taking her advocacy for feminist politics global as the new head of a $25 million fund sponsored by Open Society Foundations to advance women’s political leadership, particularly in the global south. The fund will support feminist political leaders such as Barahona “at every stage, helping them to enter politics, succeed in governance, and sustain their influence in formal electoral and other political settings,” OSF said in a statement to Devex. It also will provide opportunities for them to connect to each other to provide support and develop strategies to respond to violence against women in politics, OSF said. “We need belligerent and independent movements pushing forward agendas of democracy, human rights, gender equality,” Barahona said. “We also need more women to get involved in political spaces.” Barahona will lead the fund from the United States, where she now lives with her family. The initiative is part of a broader $100 million pledge OSF made at the 2021 Generation Equality Forum hosted by UN Women to support feminist political mobilization and leadership. The fund is being set up as a separate entity from OSF and is an indicator of how things will work as the $25 billion foundation downsizes. Barahona is technically a grantee, but she will hire her own staff for the fund, Binaifer Nowrojee, OSF’s vice president of programs, told Devex. “She will set up her team. She will set up the spending. We’ve put the money in her hands,” Nowrojee said. And the large sum of $25 million is a major shift from the smaller, one-year grants OSF tended to offer just a few years ago, she said. Barahona is still working on developing a strategy for the fund. “In essence, we’ve devolved it to the community themselves to figure out how to do this best,” Nowrojee added. ‘An environment of torture’ Barahona was president of Unión Democrática Renovadora, or UNAMOS, a leftist political group in Nicaragua, when she was kidnapped in 2021 and detained for nearly two years by President Daniel Ortega’s government. Barahona is a feminist and environmental activist who may be best known for challenging a law that permits government surveillance of private communications in Nicaragua, among other things. “We need belligerent and independent movements pushing forward agendas of democracy, human rights, gender equality.” --— Suyén Barahona, human rights activist Ortega has been president of the country since 2007 and has held on to that position by force. Prior to the last general election in 2021, he imprisoned rival candidates such as Cristiana Chamorro Barrios, as well as dissidents such as Barahona. Barahona was terrified when she was kidnapped and thrown into the El Chipote prison in Nicaragua’s capital, Managua. “I was taken from my own home in the presence of my four-year-old and was in an environment of torture,” Barahona told Devex. For the first 81 days, she said, she was in a state of forced disappearance, in which her husband and son weren’t provided any information about where she was and she wasn’t given any information about them. She was held for 606 total days. During that time, she was held in solitary confinement and banned from socializing, going outdoors, reading, or writing. She often wasn’t given food and began to physically deteriorate, she said. The day in and day out of living alone in a dark cell was difficult. But it was the “psychological torture” of being separated from her son that she said was the hardest to bear. “I was not allowed any sort of communication with my son,” she told Devex. “I wasn’t allowed to send letters or receive letters or even a picture.” She was finally allowed to FaceTime her son, who was living outside of the country with his father, in December of last year. “It was clear to me that the environment of torture had to do with my feminist views, and had to do with making sure that they sent the message that it was not my place to be involved in politics because I was a woman, and it was not my place to be demanding democracy, gender equality, justice and so on,” she said. Women around the world face this kind of punishment when they engage in political and human rights activism, she said. Eventually, Barahona was freed and flown to the United States with more than 200 political prisoners in February. The Nicaraguan government stripped her of her nationality and eliminated her from the civil registry, which means that Barahona cannot return to her home country. How the fund will work OSF announced it was hiring for the role — described in the job posting as a “consultant” — earlier this year. While it will be overseen by OSF in the first year, the fund is expected to operate as an independent entity to support women political leaders starting in 2025. Research has shown that increases in the number of women political leaders within a country also tends to lead to increased legal protections and economic opportunity for women. The fund will be one of the first initiatives to launch under OSF’s new structure. The foundation is slimming down its operations by shuttering some offices, laying off hundreds of staff, and discontinuing some of its funding relationships globally. The reorganization will make the foundation nimbler and better able to provide narrowly focused, larger, and multiyear grants, OSF has said. However, downsizing staff and offices also means OSF will need more external partners to distribute its funding. The organization already has indicated plans to employ fixed-term contractors for some core functions after the next round of layoffs. Barahona will need to report back periodically on progress, but it is up to her to decide which areas she will target, Nowrojee said. Overall, OSF plans to prioritize 19 areas of existing work, including women in politics, as it rolls out a new funding approach, she said. OSF teams will come up with multiyear strategies as well as a budget and end date for funding, according to Nowrojee. Some of the areas that OSF plans to prioritize are supporting democracy-building efforts in Southeast Asia and helping the global south shape decisions about climate finance, equitable debt reform, and global tax reform, according to an internal document seen by Devex. Providing larger sums such as the $25 million for the fund allows grantees more flexibility and also allows OSF to pour more resources into priority areas, Nowrojee said. And by having set end dates for the funding, OSF will have a natural point at which to review whether it achieved its goals and then shift strategies, if necessary, she said. Barahona already knows one of her primary strategy goals will be helping to stabilize local women-led and women-focused organizations by providing multiyear grants. Many nonprofits haven’t been able to expand their work due to a lack of funding, she said. “This should be long term, and it needs to become sustainable,” she said. Update, Nov. 28, 2023: This article has been updated with a clarification from OSF on how the fund will operate. Update, Nov. 28, 2023: This article has been updated to clarify that a social impact nonprofit is not involved with the fund.