Voices for Peace 2025
Global Dialogue Series
Session I: Global Paradigm Shifts
June 26, 2025 | Virtual Launch
The world is experiencing dangerous intersecting paradigm shifts. Values like democracy, human rights, and peace are being challenged. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) datasets show how the quality of democracy is deteriorating globally and there is a widespread move towards authoritarianism. Climate change is dismissed. Militarism accelerates. Migrants are mass-deported and incarcerated. Civilians are bombed, starved, silenced. Multilateral institutions are losing influence, and with it, the international commitment to collective responsibility and humanitarian principles.
In this volatile global context, how can we change course before it is too late?
Join us for the launch of Voices for Peace 2025, a virtual dialogue series convening insightful thinkers and activists to discuss this global crisis. Together, we will examine the shifting political climate, including the rise of authoritarianism in the United States and elsewhere, increasing repression, the weakening of multilateral cooperation, and the critical implications for the global peace and development agenda.
Session II: The U.S. Administration's Global Impact
USAID Freeze and Shifts in U.S. Immigration Policy
July 21-23, 2025, | Cape Town, South Africa
The freezing of USAID funding and regressive shifts in U.S. immigration policy have had swift and severe consequences for democratic development, peacebuilding, human rights, and civil society work globally—particularly in the Global South. These policy changes are threatening the viability of NGOs, CSOs, and grassroots movements, with already vulnerable communities bearing the brunt of this impact.
Read AFSC's report on the USAID freeze from our Cape Town session
USAID has historically funded essential programs that support democratic governance, civil society, and human rights. The recent freeze and policy reversals are eroding progress, narrowing civic space, and undermining long-term efforts to build peace and justice.
To deepen understanding of these impacts, this Dialogue brought together affected communities—immigrants, migrants, CSO leaders, community researchers, and policy analysts—to examine both the direct and indirect effects of U.S. actions. Through critical discussion and collective analysis, we generated actionable recommendations to respond to the seismic shifts.
Findings were amplified through media and advocacy and shared at the Peace Connect Global Gathering in Nairobi in October 2025.
Listen to the AFSC Podcast on How the USAID Cuts Affected Nonprofits Around the World.
Session III: Peace Connect 2025
Global Gathering of Local Peacebuilders and Their Allies
October 13–17, 2025 | Nairobi, Kenya
As part of its evolving response to today’s global paradigm shift, AFSC partnered with Peace Direct and sponsored Peace Connect 2025. This landmark gathering convened over 500 peacebuilders—mostly from the Global South—for five days of deep dialogue, reflection, and strategy development. AFSC funded participants to attend and lead discussions designed to build community and solidarity, elevate and sustain the peacebuilding sector, strengthen collaborative analysis and action, and forge alliances to counter global repression.
AFSC shared insights from the Voices for Peace series, particularly on the impacts of the USAID funding freeze and the shrinking of civic space. These stories, strategies, and solutions were then carried forward to our final convening in Brussels in December 2025, where we engaged European institutions in supporting peacebuilding and democracy efforts worldwide.
Session IV: Brussels Advocacy Week, Horn of Africa
Under the leadership of AFSC’s Salama Hub, AFSC and AACC (All Africa Conference of Churches) held an advocacy week in Brussels from December 8th to 12th, 2025, including 19 civil society organizations and religious leaders from the Horn of Africa to deepen the European Union (EU) - Horn of Africa engagement and collaboration. The discussions focused on coordinated responses to the overlapping threats and challenges in the Horn of Africa. It brought together civil society and religious leaders from the region with representatives of the EU Economic and Social Committee, the European Parliament, the European Commission, and European peace and human rights organizations. Particularly powerful events included listening to lived accounts from activists in Sudan who called for European engagement to address the dire humanitarian situation overall, and a particular call for action to respond to sexual and gender-based violence.
European Parliament: https://youtu.be/kUVkpT4WFps?si=2VbkrBJhvY_cSo4-