Summary of the year 2025
The KIOS Annual Report for 2025 once again demonstrates how the organisations supported by KIOS can bring about change despite ongoing opposition and the shrinking space for civil society. As funding declines, the operational environment for human rights work is becoming increasingly challenging. Hope is sustained by the courageous work of grassroots human rights defenders. In 2025, KIOS funded 88 human rights projects or programmes in East Africa and South Asia.
The year 2025 once again highlights the importance of human rights work. Attacks against the rules-based order, democracy, and fundamental human rights continue and are accelerating. The world seems to be moving from one crisis to another. At the same time, funding for human rights work is decreasing. Yet hope comes from the long-term efforts of human rights organisations. KIOS funded organisations achieved significant change. With KIOS support a wide range of human rights issues were advanced, from gender equality and LGBTIQA+ rights to the rule of law, accountability, environmental justice and the rights of people in vulnerable positions.
In 2025, the work of KIOS grantees in the areas of business and human rights, land and environmental rights, and strengthening civil society produced concrete results. Grantees strengthened accountability, defended the civic space, and improved access to justice, particularly for young people, Indigenous peoples, and marginalised groups. This has resulted in increased visibility, legal progress, and stronger participation of marginalised groups in decision-making.
In Finland, KIOS continued to serve as a bridge between international human rights defenders and Finnish audiences, media, and decision-makers, strengthening awareness and dialogue on key human rights issues.
Download the summary of the annual report (in English) and read more about our work in 2025!
Below more details of our work in light of numbers and themes (information presented in visuals, all the information also in text form above the pictures).
The Year 2025 in Numbers
- 88 KIOS grants were ongoing
- 66 in East Africa
- 22 in South Asia
Some results from grants that ended in 2025:
Last year, KIOS directed €1,435,000 to human rights work in East Africa and South Asia. In the 29 grants that ended in 2025:
- 55,295 people directly benefited from KIOS-funded human rights work
- 21,387 human rights defenders and right-holders raised their awareness about human rights*
- 12 225 people received legal aid or assistance*
- 1 555 public officials and political decision-makers were trained on human rights issues*
*Data from MFA-funded grants that ended in 2025.
Number of women-led organisations supported by KIOS was 39. Out of 76 different grantees supported during the year 2025, 51% had women in leadership positions.
The themes of all grants in 2025
In 2025, KIOS-funded organisations in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Kenya worked across a wide range of human rights issues, from gender equality and LGBTIQA+ rights to the rule of law, accountability, environmental justice, and the rights of people in vulnerable positions. The word cloud in the image highlights more specific themes: rights of persons with disabilities, right to water, sanitation and hygiene, right to physical integrity and humane treatment, women’s rights and gender equality, LGBTIQA+ rights, right to health, human rights defenders, child rights, rights of ethnic minorities and Indigenous peoples, business and human rights, environmental justice, access to justice, democracy and the rule of law, economic, social and cultural rights, and the rights of persons in vulnerable positions.
