A new report from Outright International notes 90 percent of LGBTQ and intersex rights groups that they surveyed around the world have lost funding since January 2025.

The New York-based global advocacy group surveyed 229 LGBTQ and intersex rights groups in 94 countries.

Forty-nine percent of the organizations that responded said they have lost more than half of their total budget since January 2025. 75 percent of the groups said they lost more than a quarter of their total funding.

“For nearly half of the respondents, the cuts removed most of the resources that sustained the organization,” reads the report.

When asked which funders “had reduced, suspended, or withdrawn support,” more than half of the responding groups “pointed to a source tied to the United States government, including USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and the Department of State.”

“No other funder came close,” notes the report.

‘What was initially framed as a temporary freeze has become a structural disruption’

The Trump-Vance administration froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid shortly after it took office on Jan. 20, 2025.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March 2025 announced 83 percent of USAID contracts had been cancelled, and the State Department would administer the remaining programs. USAID officially shut down on July 1, 2025.

Rubio issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the funding freeze. The Los Angeles Blade has reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down because of gaps in U.S. funding.

The Outright International report notes the State Department, under the Trump-Vance administration, “terminated the programs of the Global Equality Fund, the public-private partnership it launched in 2011 with allied governments, companies, and foundations, which distributed more than $100 million in its first decade to LGBTQ organizations and human rights defenders in over 100 countries.” The Trump-Vance administration has withdrawn the U.S. from the U.N. LGBTI Core Group, a group of U.N. member states that have pledged to support LGBTQ and intersex rights.

Outright International Executive Director Maria Sjödin in an op-ed the Blade published on Jan. 28, 2026, wrote the global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement since January 2025 lost more than $125 million — or 30 percent of its total annual funding.

“What was initially framed as a temporary freeze has become a structural disruption,” notes the Outright International report. “The effects have cascaded far beyond U.S. government funding: corporate, institutional, and philanthropic donors have also shifted, stalled, or quietly withdrawn, often without public scrutiny.”

“The broader environment in which LGBTIQ movements operate has continued to deteriorate — with democratic backsliding, anti-NGO legislation, rising violence, coordinated legislative attacks on trans and intersex people’s rights, and emboldened anti-rights actors filling the space left by the retreat of U.S. global leadership.”

The report contains specific examples that include:

• 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 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.

The Outright International report notes “global LGBTIQ funding had begun to fall even before the current U.S. administration took office.”

It further cites statistics from the Human Rights Funders Network that project “rights-focused development assistance will fall by between” $1.4-$1.9 billion a year by 2026, “with movements for LGBTIQ people’s rights and gender equality among the hardest hit.”

“At the same time, LGBTIQ organizations have not stood still,” reads the Outright International report. “They have continued to resist, adapt, and serve their communities under extraordinary pressure, often absorbing the costs of these funding shocks in ways that remain largely invisible.”

“This report is an effort to make those costs — and that resilience — visible,” it adds.

Washington Blade courtesy of the National LGBTQ Media Association.