Covering a conflict zone is arduous duty for any journalist. The challenge has been exceptionally tough for Ukraine’s independent media, who have scrambled to file their dispatches from live fire zones, telling the world stories of unimaginable atrocities while combating a flood of disinformation from Russian sources denying the hard…

By Viktoriia Tymoshevska, director of public health at the International Renaissance Foundation in Ukraine I am a physician by training, focusing on obstetrics and gynecology. I have been working on public health issues at the International Renaissance Foundation in Ukraine for the past 12 years. My husband, two children, and…

Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine is an assault on democracy and a violation of international law. It has also posed a grave threat to civil society in the country — including the staff, partners, and grantees of the International Renaissance Foundation, a part of the Open Society Foundations, which has…

By Lama Al Khateeb, acting team manager for the Open Society Middle East and North Africa Program One might think that the COVID-19 pandemic would bring partners and families closer together, but global indicators on gender-based violence tell a far darker story. Domestic violence shot up exponentially around the world…

By Zsuzsanna Lippai, acting director of the Open Society Women’s Rights Program and director of program development at the Open Society Human Rights Initiative From Afghan women bravely protesting Taliban rule in Kabul, to women organizing marches across the United States for abortion rights, feminist leaders are pushing back on…

By Petru Culeac, executive director of Soros Foundation–Moldova In the 1990s, responding in part by the experience of seeing the deaths of both of his own parents from cancer, George Soros launched an effort to change the way the medical establishment responded to pain and terminal illness in the United…

By Binaifer Nowrojee, vice president for Organizational Transformation at the Open Society Foundations We are living in what our founder George Soros calls “revolutionary times.” We face a climate crisis, a global pandemic that has deepened systemic inequalities, and the sustained rise of authoritarianism across the globe. These are dark…

By Rama Halaseh, a team manager with the Open Society Middle East and North Africa Program A year ago this August, a thunderous explosion tore through Beirut, decimating huge swaths of the city while the world looked on in horror. Lebanon was still reeling from the political and economic turmoil…

By Mark Malloch‐Brown, president of the Open Society Foundations Freedom is in trouble. The reasons are well rehearsed. Growing inequality and marginalization of different groups has fueled an embrace of the authoritarian right, and sometimes left, in many countries. …