A third of LGBTQ groups say 2025’s drastic cuts will force them to close
Cuts fell hardest in countries that already victimize LGBTQ people.
Ninety percent of the world’s LGBTQ and intersex rights groups that were surveyed have lost funding since Donald Trump was sworn in as U.S. president in January 2025, the LGBTQ rights advocacy group Outright International announced on Sept. 10.
“Perversely, organisations in countries with the most repressive conditions for LGBTIQ people have been worst affected by cuts”, Health Policy Watch commented.
More than a third of the organizations said they would likely be forced to close within the next 12 months.
Not all the budget cuts came from Washington, but more than half of the survey’s groups traced their losses to the U.S. government, according to the Outright survey.
Outright reported about its findings:
Of 229 LGBTIQ organizations surveyed across 94 countries, 203 lost funding after January 2025.
Nearly half of those lost more than half their total budget, and more than half traced the loss to a U.S. government source.
A year on, only 3% describe themselves as stable, and 36% say they are likely or very likely to be forced to close entirely within twelve months.
The cuts fell hardest in countries where courts, police and public services already fail LGBTIQ people — the places where these organizations were the shelter, the lawyer and the emergency number.
The findings mirrored other overviews of the deep troubles facing LGBTQ rights advocates around the world.
“Across the globe, LGBTIQ movements are under sustained and coordinated attack from political leaders, anti-gender groups, and segments of the general public increasingly emboldened by [a] climate of hostility”, Human Rights Watch stated in July in a plea for a five-year LGBTQ rights strategy from the European Commission. “Even more alarming is the retreat of historically reliable allies like the United States from global leadership on gender and sexuality, particularly through drastic shifts in foreign policy and cuts in foreign aid. The political and financial pullback poses an existential threat to LGBTIQ movements that have long depended on such support to survive and resist.
Health Policy Watch noted that “The Global Black Gay Men Connect network has also documented significant disruptions to HIV services for key populations, with 77% of the key population organisations it surveyed reported interruptions to the supply of antiretrovirals, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and condoms.”
The Washington Blade reported these findings from the Outright report:
• Iraqi lawmakers in 2024 passed a law that criminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations and transgender people. Funding cuts forced IraQueer, an Iraqi advocacy group, to stop offering safety and security trainings and workshops to activists and LGBTQ rights organizations in the country.
• An intersex-led organization in West Africa can no longer maintain office space or pay its staff.
• An Ecuadorian group that operated a community center for a decade was “forced to close” it on Feb. 1, 2026. “It has been a true loss for the LGBTIQ+ communities in our city and the country as a whole, as we were a model of self-management and resistance in one of Ecuador’s most conservative cities,” said the group in the report.
• An “LGBTIQ-led refugee organization” in Uganda “has lost the emergency relocation support that once moved people facing immediate violence to safer locations.”
• An advocacy group in Ukraine that lost funding said it was “forced to stop paying some of our specialists and reduce our hours for handling inquiries … We used to be able to respond promptly to requests and support people throughout the entire process of resolving their issues, whereas now we are forced to limit ourselves to one-time consultations or refuse assistance altogether due to a lack of resources.”
• The Tonga Leitis Association in the report said a lack of funding has forced it to reduce “the number of activities the organization can run and erodes the prevention infrastructure behind” the country’s low HIV rate.
For earlier reports on the Trump administration’s cuts, see:
- Study finds that Trump’s funding cuts led to closing 1,700 HIV treatment sites
- Trump drops US support for human rights of LGBTQ Africans
- The costs of Trump’s USAID cuts keep rising
- After Trump cuts, 20 LGBT+ organizations in Haiti had to close
- Pro- and anti-LGBTQ Christian charities are gutted as Trump slashes funds
- Trump officials shut down Pepfar’s anti-AIDS operations, endangering millions
