Repression, War and the Limits of Philanthropy: What the Current Moment in Iran Demands of Funders

Repression, War and the Limits of Philanthropy
What the Current Moment in Iran Demands of Funders

Just ten days after the US and Israel’s military attacks on Iran, the Better Preparedness Initiative convened a closed conversation with civil society representatives and funders working with those in and on the country. BPI had initially planned a briefing after the deadly repression of protests in January and February, but the eruption of the war – which has now drastically expanded across the Middle East – accelerated both the timing and the urgency of the call. 

This piece distills what that conversation revealed about the situation on the ground, about the limits of current philanthropic practice, and the reckoning this moment demands from those of us who believe philanthropy has a role in sustaining human rights and civic space through crisis.

What has changed since the US-Israel attacks on Iran?

The January 2026 crackdown was one of the deadliest acts of repression on civil society in Iran in decades. Over 5,200 people were killed in the largest nationwide demonstrations since the 1979 revolution, under a total internet blackout designed to conceal the scale of the violence. Independent monitors believe the number is likely significantly higher than what human rights organisations have been able to document so far. Despite this, protests re-emerged in late February when students took to the streets again and Iranian civil society, under conditions of extreme repression, continued to organise.

Then, on February 28, the United States and Israel led a joint military attack on Iran. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had led the country since 1989, was killed during the first wave of strikes.

What we heard from civil society representatives on the BPI briefing call was granular and immediate. Human rights documentation organizations, which had already been overwhelmed tracking 1,600 executions in the previous year — fewer than 10% announced by state media — are now receiving information about casualties at a scale and pace that their systems, built for steady-state monitoring, cannot absorb. Ninety bodies arrived in the first few hours. Teams and volunteers documenting abuses under extremely dangerous conditions are burnt out and depleted. The standard documentation protocols, designed for what one participant called “stable repression,” are failing under the weight of a war.

Inside the country, over 50,000 protesters detained since January remain in prisons and unofficial detention centres, some of which are now in active conflict zones. Not a single political prisoner or human rights defender has been released since the beginning of the war.

The civil society infrastructure that might have responded to the current crisis – charities, informal networks, and organizations with ground-level reach – largely does not exist in a form that can operate legally in Iran. Any organization with official permission to operate is viewed with suspicion by activists, human rights defenders, and civil society at large precisely because of that state-backed permission. Informal networks of doctors are attempting to fill the gap, but with almost no external funding. Mental health support, one participant noted, is completely overlooked. The Red Crescent and Norwegian People’s Aid are present, focused primarily on Afghan refugees. Beyond that, there is very little independent infrastructure able to operate inside the country.

The polarization in Iran and its consequences

One of the speakers summed up a vital paradox about this moment:  People inside Iran want an end to the regime, but not under bombs.

In public media and global conversations, this distinction is often lost or oversimplified. The speakers urged a more nuanced understanding – both for those within Iran and those in exile. 

The Iranian-American community (70,000 members in one organization alone) is deeply split, with many equating opposition to the war with support for the regime. The polarization, as one participant noted, is not simply pro- versus anti-war. It reflects a generation that has tried elections, tried peaceful protest, watched thousands of their peers killed in January, and now feels there is no path to change that doesn’t involve catastrophe. There is a real divide, which needs to be taken into account as funders and others are looking at how to support civil society.

In this moment of chaos and hopes for change, the information environment has been perilously flooded with AI-generated content, making it harder than ever to document what is actually happening versus what is being deliberately circulated online. Independent media have been declining for years in Iran. Now, with the internet blackout, satellite news is often the only source of information for many inside the country.

The current hopelessness is real and should not be mistaken for consent for the current war. Funders working in this space need to understand this distinction clearly, and their funding strategies, programming and messaging need to account for these fractures and be aware of the risks of deepening them rather than bridging them.

 What the funder ecosystem needs to rethink

A series of assumptions that no longer hold emerged from the funders’ reflections, rethinking a whole architecture built for a world that no longer exists.

First, protection tools were designed for “stable” repression that is no longer at play. These include legal support, security protocols, networks of safe houses and trusted contacts that organizations have built over the last decades, and further infrastructure that has now been dismantled by the conflict.  Additionally, the civil society network that funders relied on has been jailed, disappeared, or severely repressed. 

Second, the assumption that donors would step in is not holding. This is partly a reflection of the current funding landscape, in which philanthropic support is declining, in addition to the severe cuts in foreign aid. HRFN’s latest data projects a loss of up to $1.9 billion in human rights funding through government foreign aid alone. The organizations being asked to respond to an escalating crisis in Iran are simultaneously navigating cuts to the resources that sustain their baseline operations.

And the field is being pulled in too many directions at once. Sudan, Gaza, and Iran are only a few examples of the many severe crises happening globally, in a context of accelerating repression and closure of civic space. There is no coordination infrastructure equal to this scale, and there is no single organization or network that can respond to all of it. Hard-won lessons from contexts such as Afghanistan – that different communities require different forms of support, and that there is no one-size-fits-all response– still have not been fully absorbed across the field.

Third and perhaps most importantly, the field has been thinking too narrowly about who its partners are. Humanitarian organizations, refugee networks, and medical responders, among others on the frontlines, are not separate from the human rights and peacebuilding ecosystems. Likewise, human rights movements are often excluded from discussions of humanitarian action, as we’ve seen in places like Ukraine and as reflected in funding. In a conflict like the current war in the Middle East, collaborations across sectors are central to a holistic and meaningful response. The entry points that still exist in Iran are almost all located at those intersections, which means funders who remain siloed within their own ecosystems will miss them entirely.

Where Funders Can Still Act

Despite the severity of the situation, several concrete threads emerged for funders willing to engage seriously with what this moment requires.

1. In the immediate term, digital security and communications infrastructure is both underfunded and urgently needed. The tools that civil society has relied on — Signal, encryption, standard security protocols — were designed for a different threat environment. With the internet blackout and the collapse of standard communications, organizations need investment in alternative infrastructure: Starlink, shortwave radio, one-way reception systems. However, as one participant noted, some of these tools carry their own risks and sanction regimes need to be reviewed to ensure they are supporting protesters rather than hampering them.
2. Human rights defenders forced to flee will increasingly move through Turkey**, which has historically been a transit point but lacks adequate support infrastructure for this population. Channelling resources there now, before the displacement wave grows, is one of the most immediate and practical interventions available to funders.
3. Over the longer term, the priorities are accountability and documentation, support for civil society to begin imagining what a post-conflict Iran might look like, and building the political power needed to put the United States on a less militarist path. 

That last point is central to our understanding of democracy and the future world we are creating. The speakers laid out the stakes in no uncertain terms: The war in Iran is illegal. It happened in part because the infrastructure needed to contest militarism in the United States and globally — the organizations, the coalitions, the policy capacity — has been chronically underfunded for decades. That gap is now visible in real time. Closing it is a long-term project, but it begins with funders recognizing that this work is central to the long-term protection of democracy and human rights worldwide.

 BPI’s work moving forward

 The conversation on March 9th was a learning space that must lead to coordination. That is the commitment BPI is making coming out of this call. We are holding two things simultaneously: 

The first is the immediate: what do civil society actors in Iran, in exile, and in diaspora communities need right now, and how do we move resources to them in conditions where moving resources is genuinely difficult? 

The second is the structural: what does this moment reveal about where the field has underinvested, and what longer-term changes need to happen to prevent the next crisis from finding us equally unprepared?

Civil society continues to adapt. It does so under bombardment, under blackout, and under conditions of resource scarcity that came way before the current escalation. The question, as we have asked before, is whether philanthropy will choose to match the pace and clarity with which civil society is moving.

BPI exists to make that possible. We will be convening follow-up coordination conversations for funders working on the broader region in the coming weeks. If you are not yet part of the BPI community and want to be, you can learn more and get involved at www.hrfn.org/better-preparedness.

This piece was produced under Chatham House rule. All speaker contributions have been anonymized. Nothing in this piece contains operational details that could identify individuals or organisations working in Iran. 

** _{Turkey maintains an active extradition treaty with Iran and has deported or extradited Iranian HRDs, including some with UNHCR-recognized refugee status. It is important for funders to consider safety and security in Turkey, but also possible relocation to a third country.}