Inside the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD-4) meeting rooms, governments were making “commitments” to the political blueprint of “development”: restructuring debt, what tax rules to rewrite, and how to reform the global financial architecture. Feminist movements welcome these long-overdue conversations, but argue that real “financing for development” cannot stop at technical fixes. It must redirect power and resources toward community-led, rights-based solutions. Bridging these perspectives means recognising that every budget line is a political choice—and deciding whether it will entrench inequality or fund feminist justice.
That’s the lens we bring in our Funding for Change podcast, which detours from Seville’s official corridors to the front lines of feminist organising where funding still arrives with conditions that silence dissent, impose rigid timelines, or collapse under political pressure. These are not abstract policy failures; they are daily obstacles for movements striving to build peace on their own terms.
“Negotiation is about the right to outright refusal. We completely reject this annex or this condition.” — Kifah Abu Ghoush, Stars of Hope Society, Palestine
That uncompromising stance and sharp contradiction between donor frameworks and the lived needs of communities was outlined in a special Arabic-language episode of WILPF’s The Political is Personal podcast series. The episode was recorded in December 2024 as the Israeli genocide in Gaza had been escalating and weeks before fresh U.S. aid-cut decisions rattled the region. Host Dr. Nof Nasser-Eddin (CTDC) speaks with Palestinian disability-rights leader Kifah Abu Ghoush (Stars of Hope Society) and Tunisian legal scholar Wiem Ghamsi (Tanit).
Their hour-long exchange does more than diagnose a crisis of conditional aid and shrinking civic space, it is about how those funds are distributed, politicised and weaponised. The conversation lands today in the midst of global policy hypocrisy and dissonance. While the Sevilla Commitment adopted at the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) reaffirms gender equality, social protection and investment in the care economy, it offers nothing concrete on demilitarisation, nothing on the financial roots of occupation, and nothing to address the coercive logic of conditional aid. It is yet another blueprint for private capital to dominate development spaces.
Against that backdrop, feminist activists from the MENA region outline in the podcast some key lessons and insights that form a feminist playbook for resisting and surviving: Refusing politically influenced grants, reaching out to Arab diaspora donors, turning in-house skills into income, and exchanging expertise within a regional network.
1 | Conditionality after 7 October: the new red line
Since October 2023, many funders paused programs in or on Palestine, tightened conditions and indirectly penalised organisations for refusing to compromise on core political principles. Some of the same donors that had previously had flexible grants returned with clauses that demand ideological alignment: avoid the word genocide, recognise or condemn specific political actors, delete or refute references that challenge Israeli narratives. In such a context, Kifah asks: “How far are we, as organisations, willing to go when such conditions conflict with our principles and values?”
Even longtime funders told Palestinian partners, ‘We need to pause and revisit our policies,‘ creating new and compounding hurdles in the midst of a humanitarian emergency. The message they were seeking to send was clear: stay quiet, or lose your funding. Kifah names the dilemma: “We have a right to this funding – it’s meant for the people, and we know how to use it effectively for our communities.” Yet signing a gag clause would betray the very communities Stars of Hope was built to defend. The red line holds.
2 | Gatekeeping in Tunisia: when ‘open’ calls are closed
Tunisia’s shrinking civic space adds a quieter, but no less corrosive, form of exclusion. Wiem reports that for many international funding calls, “50% of the seats are essentially reserved” explaining that long-established, capital-based NGOs are the ones that routinely win donor calls; while community groups and collectives in marginalised regions like Sidi Bouzid or Médenine rarely reach the shortlist. Centralised decision-making by donors leads to funding the same familiar organisations, “even when they may not actually need it.” Projects drift in as “pure theorising,” she says, inserted onto local realities they barely study or understand. Civil society becomes a shadow performance where local actors are implementers, not leaders.
Wiem painted a picture of organisations being forced into self-preservation, shifting their energy from community services to simply surviving bureaucratic and political onslaughts. “You begin thinking more about your structure and how to sustain your organisation, rather than sustaining the services you provide.” This shift to institutionalising organisations leads to the depoliticisation of local activists’ work.
We have heard for years, and seen more recently the claims at FfD4 in support of “inclusive decision-making” and “multi-stakeholder engagement”. However, inclusion will remain rhetorical and performative until resource flows shift to local control.
3 | Negotiation ≠ compromise; It means principled refusal plus counter-proposal
Both Kifah and Wiem insist that feminist negotiation is not about appeasement, but rather about agency. Refusal by itself is not the whole tactic. Kifah stresses that her team always arrives “with the capacity to engage, not to justify, but to explain”. Her team uses funders’ own rights-based language to reject conditions, explain why certain clauses are unacceptable, while grounding the argument in lived realities and proposing community-based alternatives..
Wiem captures the accountability dynamic with a Tunisian proverb: “The one who hands you the rope – tie them with it.” If a donor uses feminist language while imposing extractive terms, that same language becomes grounds for public challenge or boycott, using their rhetoric to hold them accountable.
This is more than strategy, it’s politics. As WILPF’s submission to the UN puts it, “Financing peace should be part of transparent, participatory, and democratic processes… rooted in feminist political economy and community sovereignty.”
4 | Making refusal affordable: feminist work-arounds
In order to push back strategically, you need fallback plans. Feminist activists are building these alternatives, using some of the following tactics:
- Solidify strategic alliance by seeking out partnership with those whose discourse theirs aligns with. Feminist organisers are creating transnational coalitions, drawing strength from shared analysis, and collectively resisting cooptation.
- Redefining the purpose of funding, by acknowledging that the very purpose of funding is not to scale programs or tick donor boxes, but rather to sustain life, dignity and political resistance.
- Diversify toward Arab philanthropy, diaspora giving and micro-donations that carry no gag orders. These are funders with few strings and more trust.
- In-house income generation by converting expertise into income through trainings, consultancies, or social-enterprise ventures that fund core costs.
- Skill-bartering across collectives by circulating knowledge even when cash stalls such as by seeking disability expertise for digital-security workshops, or legal review for media support.
- Share risk and mutual care such as by agreeing collectively to leaner salaries in crisis months, rotating “solidarity sabbaticals,” and keeping the mission alive when payroll shrinks. As such, creating structures that can breathe even when the pressure tightens.
This is feminist degrowth in action. It’s what WILPF calls “reproductive labor made visible”; the work of keeping movements alive, not scalable. Sustainable peace doesn’t come from private investment frameworks, but rather from unpaid care turned into collective infrastructure.
5 | What FfD-4 must absorb, clause by clause
The Sevilla Commitment restates the usual lines of investing in gender equality, reducing inequalities and closing financing gaps. Very significantly though, it fails to name militarism, ignores the financing of occupation, and refuses to challenge extractive capitalism.
By contrast, what feminist civil-society is calling for is:
(From the Feminist/CSO Forum declaration WILPF endorsed)
- Divert money from war to care. Name militarism, end the financing of occupation, and redirect military budgets to public services and climate action.
- Debt justice and a new financial architecture. Cancel illegitimate debt and create democratic mechanisms—under UN, not creditor—control—for transparent, fair restructuring.
- Progressive, global tax rules. Back a UN tax convention that stops illicit financial flows, taxes wealth and corporations fairly, and expands fiscal space for rights-based policies.
- Direct, flexible funding for movements. Provide sustainable core support to feminist, youth, migrant and grassroots groups, free from political strings or short-term project cycles.
What our Funding for Change podcast adds from the ground
Activists we interviewed translate these macro demands into day-to-day funding practice:
- Unconditional, core support. Clauses that censor genocide or demand “balanced” language are a form of administrative violence.
- Decentralised resource flows. If half the winners are pre-booked, finance entrenches rather than eases inequality.
- Fund infrastructure, not just outputs. Legal defence, digital security, and staff care and wellness are feminist security measures, not dispensable overhead.
- Accept mutual accountability. Feminist partner organisations already vet funders and donors – and walk away when the situation doesn’t align with their vision and politics. A healthy funding architecture welcomes that scrutiny.
From the Ground Up: A Feminist Financing Vision
The feminist vision emerging from grassroots experiences is radically different from what the FfD4 outcome document puts forward. The Sevilla Commitment, while acknowledging gender equality and the need to “invest in the care economy,” does so only within a framework that remains loyal to private capital, austerity logic, and financial markets as primary engines of development.
At its core, this is not just an issue about funding misalignment. It is an issue of failure to ask the important questions: Whose peace? Whose equality? And at what cost?
Feminist movements are rewriting the rules of engagement. While FfD4 delegates debated in Sevilla, feminist organisers already had their answers: peace cannot be funded through militarised donors, equality cannot be achieved through extractive economies, and funding that undermines community agency and political autonomy is not progress—it’s control.
They are practicing the future now: refusing strings-attached aid, redefining what funding is for, and building ecosystems of solidarity that outlast extractive frameworks.
As Kifah said plainly: “Since I know the field better than the donor, then I should have the power to negotiate.”
Let that clarity guide the next round of funding conversations—because the future of feminist peace doesn’t wait for conferences to catch up, and until then, feminist movements will continue doing what they’ve always done: resist, survive, organise and reimagine.
Listen to the full Arabic episode
Stream The Political is Personal episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
