By Dr. Pshtiwan Faraj

Sulaimani, Iraqi Kurdistan — 20 May 2026

Deep Roots, Regional Fault Lines: How Feminist Networks Are Becoming a New Political Force Across the Middle East. Inside the 2025 strategy of the Doria Feminist Fund and what it reveals about the future of power, governance, and civil society in the MENA region

The Doria Feminist Fund’s 2025 report reveals how feminist networks across Iraq, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and North Africa are evolving into major geopolitical actors amid war, authoritarianism, and shrinking civic space.

For decades, discussions about power in the Middle East focused almost exclusively on states, militias, oil wealth, and foreign intervention. But buried beneath the region’s wars, economic collapse, and authoritarian resurgence, another infrastructure of influence has quietly expanded across borders: feminist civil society networks.

The 2025 annual report of the Doria Feminist Fund (DFF) offers far more than a donor summary. It reads as a political map of the Middle East and North Africa’s emerging civic battlegrounds — from Sudan’s humanitarian collapse to Iraq’s queer advocacy spaces, from Syrian climate activism to North African legal reform campaigns.

What appears on the surface to be a funding report is, in reality, evidence of a deeper geopolitical transformation: non-state activist ecosystems are increasingly positioning themselves as parallel governance actors in fragile states.

And governments across the region are noticing.

The MENA Region’s New Political Arena

The report opens with an unusually direct diagnosis of the region’s trajectory. DFF describes a Middle East shaped by:

• intensifying authoritarianism,
• shrinking civic space,
• digital surveillance,
• anti-rights political coalitions,
• climate insecurity,
• economic inequality,
• and growing attacks on LGBTQI+ communities.

This framing matters geopolitically because it reflects a broader regional reality: many traditional institutions in MENA are losing legitimacy simultaneously.

In countries like Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, states increasingly struggle to provide stability, welfare, or credible political participation. Into this vacuum, grassroots networks are expanding beyond advocacy and into social coordination, humanitarian response, education, trauma care, and policy influence.

That evolution changes the political equation.

Historically, feminist movements in the Middle East were often treated by ruling elites as marginal cultural actors. The DFF report suggests they are becoming something more consequential: decentralized resilience infrastructures capable of operating where states fail.

Iraq’s Quiet Transformation Inside Regional Activism

One of the most notable aspects of the report is Iraq’s growing visibility inside transnational feminist organizing.

DFF funded queer-led and feminist initiatives in Iraq while supporting regional movement-building around digital rights, gender justice, psychosocial support, and political education.

This reflects a broader trend often overlooked outside the region: Iraq — especially the Kurdistan Region — has become an increasingly important crossroads for regional civil society networking.

Unlike some neighboring states where independent organizing is nearly impossible, Iraq’s fragmented political structure creates limited but significant openings for NGOs, advocacy groups, journalists, and minority-rights organizations.

Yet that opening remains fragile.

The report repeatedly references surveillance, pressure campaigns, and anti-rights mobilization. In Iraq, these tensions mirror larger geopolitical struggles between:

• conservative political factions,
• religious institutions,
• international donors,
• Kurdish political dynamics,
• and younger urban activist networks increasingly shaped by global digital culture.

The result is a contest over who defines Iraq’s future social contract.

Sudan: When Civil Society Replaces the State

Perhaps the clearest geopolitical signal in the report comes from Sudan.

As Sudan descends deeper into armed conflict and humanitarian catastrophe, DFF moved beyond traditional advocacy funding and directly supported feminist humanitarian networks across nine Sudanese states.

This is politically significant.

When non-state civic groups begin delivering emergency relief, documenting abuses, organizing displaced populations, and coordinating aid distribution, they effectively assume quasi-governmental functions.

In fragile-state theory, this is often a precursor to long-term political influence.

The report notes that DFF prioritized organizations with “strong community rootedness and a proven record of impactful aid delivery.” In geopolitical terms, that means legitimacy is increasingly flowing away from formal institutions and toward localized civil networks.

That dynamic is not unique to Sudan.

It increasingly defines crisis governance across the Middle East.

Climate Change Is Becoming a Security Issue — Not Just an Environmental One

One of the report’s most important insights is its integration of climate justice into feminist organizing.

DFF funded climate-related initiatives in Lebanon and Syria, including reforestation campaigns, agricultural resilience projects, and local climate education.

This reflects a major geopolitical shift underway across MENA.

Climate change is no longer treated solely as an environmental issue. It is increasingly understood as:

• a migration driver,
• a conflict multiplier,
• a governance stress test,
• and a catalyst for economic instability.

The Middle East is one of the world’s fastest-warming regions. Water scarcity, desertification, crop failure, and displacement are reshaping internal politics from Iraq to Morocco.

What makes DFF’s approach notable is that it frames climate insecurity through gendered political consequences:

• women’s labor burdens,
• displacement vulnerability,
• food insecurity,
• and access to public participation.

In doing so, feminist organizations are positioning themselves inside one of the century’s defining geopolitical debates.

North Africa’s Emerging Ideological Battlefield

The report’s KOMBOA initiative in North Africa reveals another important trend: ideological polarization is accelerating across the region.

DFF-backed organizations in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Mauritania focused on:

• sexual violence legislation,
• queer organizing,
• feminist media production,
• hate speech research,
• and legal reform advocacy.

This matters because North Africa is increasingly becoming a frontline arena in the global contest between:

• liberal rights-based activism,
• nationalist conservatism,
• Islamist political currents,
• and digitally mobilized youth movements.

The report repeatedly mentions “anti-rights backlash” — language increasingly used internationally to describe transnational conservative networks opposing feminist and LGBTQI+ activism.

That language signals that local activism is no longer purely domestic. It is embedded within global ideological competition.

The Strategic Importance of Narrative Warfare

One of the report’s most revealing themes is narrative-building.

DFF invested heavily in:

• podcasts,
• feminist journalism,
• theatre,
• storytelling,
• documentation,
• and political media campaigns.

This is not accidental.

Across the Middle East, narrative control has become one of the primary instruments of power.

States use media laws, cybercrime regulations, surveillance, and online intimidation to dominate public discourse. Activist networks increasingly respond through decentralized digital storytelling ecosystems.

In geopolitical terms, this resembles information warfare at the civil society level.

Who controls the narrative about:

• women,
• religion,
• sexuality,
• nationalism,
• identity,
• and resistance

will heavily influence the region’s next generation of political legitimacy.

Why Western Donors Are Reassessing MENA Funding

Another striking aspect of the report is its direct challenge to traditional donor structures.

DFF openly criticizes “top-down” aid models and promotes what it calls “radical trust” funding — giving local actors greater autonomy over priorities and implementation.

This reflects a growing debate inside international development circles.

After years of failed state-building projects across the Middle East, many donors increasingly view locally embedded civic actors as more adaptable, credible, and resilient than formal institutions.

But this creates geopolitical tension.

Regional governments often see foreign-funded activism as a sovereignty threat, especially when connected to:

• gender politics,
• human rights monitoring,
• LGBTQI+ advocacy,
• or democratic reform.

As a result, feminist networks increasingly operate in a contested geopolitical gray zone:
supported internationally,
but often politically vulnerable domestically.

The Real Significance of the DFF Report

The deeper significance of the Doria Feminist Fund report is not simply that feminist activism survives in the Middle East.

It is that feminist networks are evolving into long-term political infrastructures.

These organizations now:

• distribute humanitarian aid,
• train political leaders,
• shape digital narratives,
• conduct policy advocacy,
• build regional alliances,
• support mental health systems,
• document abuses,
• and coordinate cross-border solidarity.

In many fragile states, that begins to resemble parallel governance.

For authoritarian governments, that evolution is threatening.

For international donors, it is increasingly strategic.

And for the broader region, it signals that the future political map of the Middle East may not be shaped solely by governments and armed groups — but also by decentralized civic movements capable of surviving war, repression, and institutional collapse.

The Middle East’s next struggle may not simply be over territory.

It may be over who has the legitimacy to rebuild society after the collapse.

#MiddleEast #Feminism #Geopolitics #CivilSociety #MENA