Many studies on civil society, the ‘third sector’ and philanthropy in Latin America and the Caribbean have for years analyzed the legal and fiscal context in which nonprofit organizations operate in the region. 

There is a widespread hypothesis that such legislation, the more favorable it is, can contribute to generating an ‘enabling environment’ for local philanthropy to flourish (greater volume of donations and greater number of donor individuals and organizations) and encourage the development of social organizations. Conversely, the more restrictive the regulatory framework, the more difficult it will be for these organizations to operate and generate more resources to support them.

Although regulatory frameworks affect all civil society organizations (CSOs) equally, it is when looking at the current political context that the particular situation of feminist and women’s rights movements is perceived. For several years now, these movements have been denouncing a strong offensive by the so-called ‘anti-rights’ and ‘anti-gender’ movements. This offensive, in fact, has been more relevant to the life of organizations than the regulatory framework itself, which is already restrictive for a large number of them.

The discourse of these movements is marked by a rejection of what they call ‘gender ideology’. The concept refers to the existence of an ‘imposition’ in culture, education, and laws of LGBT and feminist perspectives on sexuality, family, and relationships. It is called ‘ideology’ because, according to its proponents, it has no foundation, but is pure ideology that contradicts scientific statements.

In recent years, anti-rights or anti-gender movements have gained increasing importance across the continent, in many cases in reaction to the advances of feminist movements and gender policies implemented by neo-left governments. In the case of Argentina, for example, it became clear that conservative forces that had never been compelled to organize and mobilize, because their values and principles had long been embodied in common sense, practices, policies, and laws, began to do so in reaction to the advances of the women’s movement and its campaign for the legalization of abortion and against all forms of violence. To a large extent, this reaction reached its climax with the election of Javier Milei as president.

This is also a central issue for feminist and LGBTQI+ organizations in Paraguay. Indeed, long before Bolsonarism embodied in the Brazilian state the anti-gender onslaught promoted by the powerful Christian churches of its country, the anti-rights perspective had found its place in the state of Paraguay, a country that, unlike the others in the Southern Cone, never experienced a ‘feminist spring’ in the framework of its (belated) transition to democracy.

These events have consequences beyond Paraguay, whose government has led the bloc of countries in the region declared ‘pro-life and pro-family’ in successive editions of the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS), rejecting any mention of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression in its final declarations and opposing the adoption of protections for the rights of LGBTQI+ people.

The Association for women in development (AWID) has managed to portray the global dimension of this offensive:

‘… Huge amounts of funds are allocated against the human rights of women and LGBTIQ people in the service of ultra-conservative, fundamentalist and patriarchal agendas. In the United States, more than $280 million was disbursed. Between 2013 and 2017, the ‘anti-gender’ movement received more than $3.7 billion in funding, more than triple the amount allocated to LGBTIQ groups around the world in that period to fund activities of the Christian right to undermine human rights at the UN, in collusion with conservative states and other anti-rights actors. 

These agendas are making devastating inroads to roll back human rights, rights associated with gender and sexuality, sexual and reproductive freedom, and bodily autonomy. At the national, regional and international levels, these abundant financial resources fuel efforts to push for anti-feminist and anti-LGBTIQ legislation.’ ^[2]

Domestic Latin-American funders (both corporate and private) are very few and not much interested or committed to supporting pro-rights organizations and movements, and international funding is very scarce and hard to reach by the majority of these organizations. In institutional terms, Latin-American women´s funds are the only ones that can provide support for women´s and feminist organizations but unfortunately at a very small scale. Thus, these organizations must rely –as they have always done- on their own capacity to mobilize resources, mainly through individual contributions. In fact, these contributions have been their main strength to survive and advance their agendas.

These anti-rights movements, moreover, not only act at the state level influencing public policy but also emulate ‘progressive’ and pro-rights organizations, building a variety of civil society organizations (CSOs). Therefore, it is no longer possible to speak in generic terms about ‘the role of civil society’ in a univocal sense, but rather poses the great challenge of looking at it in terms of a disputed field where narratives and the availability of resources play a central role.

Andrés Thompson is Senior Advisor at ELLAS-Mujeres y Filantropía

^[2] See: AWID, Where’s the Money for Feminist Organizations? Data synthesis and call to action, 2021. In: https://www.awid.org/sites/default/files/2022-01/AWID_Research_WITM_Brief_SP.pdf