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Just Futures Collaborative Dispatch II (April 2025)
Introduction: Refuse, Resist, and Redefine the Path Forward
At Just Futures Collaborative, we are increasingly concerned about the widespread fear and panic that is gripping our movements.
The sweeping legal and policy changes (or intended changes) by the new US administration - with their impact felt across the United States and the world - make it difficult to suppress a sense of hopelessness and helplessness.
Major shifts in the international development landscape and in the progressive private funding ecosystem are exacerbating our collective alarm. UN agencies, other member states, private funders, educational institutions and visible non-profit organizations are becoming more risk-averse and in some cases, preemptively capitulating to the US government’s demands and to its political ethos.
But what is the lesson we have learned from our collective histories of other regimes similar to this one? Capitulating won’t make this system work for us.
Summary
The April 2025 Dispatch from Just Futures Collaborative builds on the February 2025 Dispatch, and is a stark warning and urgent call to action in response to the intensifying global rollback of human rights, driven in large part by the current US regime’s aggressive anti-democracy and anti-gender agenda. It highlights the compounding global impact of authoritarian politics, especially on marginalized communities, and the failure of institutions including UN agencies, governments, and donors to resist or challenge this political climate.
The Dispatch opens by describing a climate of fear and suppression in global movements. Institutions like the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have scrubbed references to diversity and equity from their platforms, allegedly to curry favor with U.S. government actors. Meanwhile, the U.S. is aggressively criminalizing dissent, migrants, and human rights defenders, reinforcing its agenda through executive orders, mass deportations, and the gutting of public funding.
A key concern is the criminalization of migration, which is framed through the dangerous nexus between the “war on terror” and “war on drugs.” The U.S. is executing unlawful detentions, including of immigration lawyers and individuals with legal status, and deporting hundreds of immigrant persons, including over 200 Venezuelans to a mega-prison in El Salvador. Many of these individuals have no criminal records, yet are branded as "terrorists" or "criminals" under a political strategy designed to dehumanize, detain and deport.
The report draws attention to Ecuador’s deepening cooperation with U.S. military interests under the pretext of combating gangs, again aligning local policy with U.S.-defined security frameworks that criminalize marginalize communities and assert geopolitical dominance.
This trend is not limited to the U.S. Other powerful nations such as Australia and various European nations are also ramping up xenophobic, carceral immigration policies.
The Dispatch also draws attention to the deteriorating situation in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA), where rising authoritarianism, funding withdrawals (notably from USAID), and copycat laws inspired by the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act and Russia are shrinking civic space. In these contexts, civil society especially LGBTQI+, harm reduction, and drug advocacy groups face increasing legal and physical threats. Activists are branded as foreign agents, NGOs are discredited, shuttered or silenced, and whole populations are left without rights-based support services.
The final section of the Dispatch reflects on the narrative power of criminalization. It warns against activists adopting “terrorist” or “criminal” labels to justify our own advocacy against our opponents, as this legitimizes the use of those same labels against marginalized groups and dissenters. Similarly, sidelining movements led by drug users or migrants weakens broader coalitions. Instead, the document calls for solidarity that is intersectional and principled, recognizing that all these repressive strategies are part of a shared structure of domination.
Ultimately, the Dispatch emphasizes the need to resist division, criminalization, and fear through collective learning, cross-movement solidarity, and moral courage. Rather than retreating, movements must unify to dismantle systems of oppression and chart a path forward that centers safety, justice, and liberation for all.
Read the full article here (English) here!