2025 Year-in-Review: How Manushya’s Courage & Collective Power Defied Repression

Manushya Foundation
Jan 14
4 min read

Updated: Jan 16

Authoritarian powers from multiple fronts tried to erase feminist movements. Manushya was targeted, defunded, and threatened. But instead, we grew our collective power and resisted.

2025 was a year of cascading crises across Southeast Asia. It was also a year when the systems that claim to defend human rights showed just how fragile and colonial they still are.

For us at Manushya Foundation, it was a year of survival.

IN PHOTO: “This is really a matter of life and death.” Manushya Foundation’s Founder & Executive Director, Emilie Palamy Pradichit, reveals the devastating impact of the USAID funding cuts in an interview with Radio France Internationale (RFI). — **IN PHOTO:** *“This is really a matter of life and death.”* Manushya Foundation’s Founder & Executive Director, Emilie Palamy Pradichit, reveals the devastating impact of the USAID funding cuts in an interview with Radio France Internationale (RFI).

Last January, the sudden USAID funding freeze wiped out 75% of our operational budget overnight. The work we do in protecting activists and refugees, exposing human rights violations, confronting authoritarianism, does not make us popular with powerful actors. As our advocacy grew, the team faced direct attacks and threats to our safety.

But like the youth-led uprisings and feminist movements that shook Asia in 2025, our decolonial, intersectional, Global Majority feminist team refused to disappear.

We made 2025 a year of truth-telling and people-powered resistance.

We Made Southeast Asia Impossible to Ignore

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqeiX_Dw770

Even under financial and security pressure, Manushya exposed the devastating impact of funding cuts to refugees and human rights defenders in the region, and forced the realities of communities in Southeast Asia onto the global stage.

In 2025, our work was featured by ten international media outlets, including: BBC, NPR, Al-Jazeera, Channel News Asia, Radio National Hour, Radio France Internationale (RFI), Thomas Reuters Foundation, the Daily Maverick, Nonprofit Quarterly, and SEA Junction.

At the same time, we published ten in-depth investigative reports exposing the true state of digital rights, human rights, and environmental justice in Thailand and Laos. Read through our advocacy documents here.

We Forced Power to Answer to the People

IN PHOTO: Manushya’s human rights lawyers stand together with courageous women leaders from Phichit villages in a court-led mediation against Akara Resources, operator of the Chatree Gold Mine. — **IN PHOTO:** Manushya’s human rights lawyers stand together with courageous women leaders from Phichit villages in a court-led mediation against Akara Resources, operator of the Chatree Gold Mine.

We further deepened our role as a bridge between communities and accountability. In 2025, Manushya worked alongside frontline defenders to demand justice: through court monitoring, legal accompaniment, and strategic advocacy that carried community demands into international spaces.

As a result, international and national human rights bodies formally echoed our advocacy for frontline communities, especially the Phichit and Sab Wai villagers and refugee activists in Thailand:

The United Nations issued a communication last January 14 expressing deep concern about human rights violations in Phichit, following the UN Complaint Manushya submitted.
Thailand’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRCT) confirmed the violations faced by Sab Wai villagers.
CEDAW mandated Thailand not to persecute those who support refugees and human rights defenders. Learn more about the victories we secured for women defenders in Thailand through our CEDAW advocacy here.
For the first time ever, CESCR issued Concluding Observations on Lao PDR and urged the government to strengthen protection for HRDs and their families, especially those facing repression and transnational repression. Read our full CESCR advocacy report here.

These interventions were not symbolic. They were the result of petitions, urgent actions, and formal submissions that transformed community testimony and evidence into international pressure, including in cases involving digital repression and transnational repression targeting activists across borders.

We Protected Defenders’ Lives and Built a People-Led Movement

In 2025, Manushya provided life-saving rapid response support to 21 at-risk pro-democracy activists, including their families, delivering swift, emergency protection when they were hunted by neighbouring authoritarian states, including through transnational repression that followed activists into exile.

Beyond crisis response, we also invested in collective power.

IN PHOTO: Women and youth leaders, migrants, disability rights advocates, Indigenous activists, LQBTQIA+ and feminist defenders during Manushya’s UPR IV Workshops in Bangkok, Hat Yai, and Chiang Mai. — **IN PHOTO:** Women and youth leaders, migrants, disability rights advocates, Indigenous activists, LQBTQIA+ and feminist defenders during Manushya’s UPR IV Workshops in Bangkok, Hat Yai, and Chiang Mai.

We brought together 296 activists from historically marginalised communities across Thailand to build a people-led human rights movement ahead of the country’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR IV). Grassroots leaders gained the tools to engage directly with UN mechanisms and shape policies grounded in their lived realities.

Because movements cannot survive on urgency alone, we also hosted 12 collective care and wellbeing sessions, including Community Care Circles, Zine-Making, Use of Thai Wellbeing Tools, and a workshop on Intersectional Feminism with Backyard Politics.

We Built South-South Feminist Power Across Four Continents

IN PHOTO: Emilie Palamy Pradichit, Manushya Foundation's Founder & Executive Director with Global Majority defenders and artists at the South-South Social Movements Convergence in Cape Town, South Africa — **IN PHOTO:** Emilie Palamy Pradichit, Manushya Foundation's Founder & Executive Director with Global Majority defenders and artists at the South-South Social Movements Convergence in Cape Town, South Africa

In 2025, Manushya joined Global Majority spaces where frontline defenders shaped international conversations on corporate accountability, digital dictatorship, feminist movement-building, and gender justice.

We participated in 33 major international gatherings including:

South-South Social Movements Convergence in Cape Town, South Africa
OECD Watch delegation in Paris, France
Building Solidarity, Advancing Accountability Across Asia's Global Supply Chains Conference in Seoul, South Korea
Asia-Pacific Business Human Rights Forum in Bangkok, Thailand
ASEAN People’s Forum and DRAPAC in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
RightsCon 2025 in Taipei, Taiwan
Gender Justice in International Criminal Law Conference in The Hague, Netherlands

We Grew Our Digital Resistance

Instead of shrinking under funding cuts and intensifying repression, our community expanded.

In 2025, Manushya reached 14,341,146 people across our digital platforms and grew our digital community of feminist allies and supporters to 152,822 followers. That’s over 14 million moments of political education and solidarity: proof that people across the world are hungry for feminist, decolonial truth.

We Are Still Here, And We Are Not Stopping

IN PHOTO: The Manushya Team at the Regional Capacity and Movement-Building Workshop for Thailand’s UPR IV in Chiang Mai — **IN PHOTO:** The Manushya Team at the Regional Capacity and Movement-Building Workshop for Thailand’s UPR IV in Chiang Mai

Authoritarianism is growing and shapeshifting: into elevated forms of digital dictatorship, transnational repression, weaponized aid systems, genocide and crimes against humanity.

But we too are persistent shapeshifters at Manushya. Our survival is testimony that feminists who come together will never be defeated.

In 2026, Manushya will be more courageous and audacious in amplifying the Power of the People.

We hope you continue to join the Manushya movement to co-create a feminist future of collective liberation: A future where all of us are Equal Human Beings.