Annual Report 2025
14

Accompanying Local Partners

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In 2025, OMCT continued to provide direct and tailored support to its partners, with a particular focus on strengthening organisations operating in high-risk and resource-constrained environments. This work took place in an increasingly restrictive context, characterised by shrinking civic space, heightened risks for human rights defenders, and significant budget cuts affecting international funding and national civil society organisations.

In this context, OMCT prioritised flexible institutional support aimed at preserving partners’ operational capacity and organisational resilience.

Institutional support remained a cornerstone of OMCT’s partner assistance. Through targeted subgrants, OMCT supported partners’ core operational costs, emergency organisational needs, and measures to strengthen internal security, governance, and risk management. This support enabled organisations to remain operational, adapt to changing contexts, and continue their protection and documentation work despite increasing constraints.

OMCT grantee organisations have also maintained their commitment to solidarity, scaling up their actions to support grassroots communities and their own networks, creating a multiplier effect. In 2025, OMCT supported Pensamiento y Acción Social, which partnered with the Association of Cabildos Indígenas del Norte del Cauca (ACIN) in Colombia. Together, they promoted peace-building processes and international advocacy actions to de-escalate violence and human rights violations against Indigenous communities. The initiative involved 130 indigenous leaders and defenders of ancestral territories.

OMCT partnered with Sudan Human Right Hub (SHRH) to coordinate a comprehensive crisis response for human rights defenders in Sudan. The network-based approach of this partnership allowed to contribute to SHRH reinforcement and distribute funds to 10 grassroot groups, while creating collective learning, healing and advocacy spaces to keep advocating for justice and accountability.

In parallel, OMCT provided individual protection support to human rights defenders at risk, enabling access to urgent measures such as legal assistance, emergency relocation, medical and psychosocial support, and security-related expenses.

In 2025, OMCT also launched a capacity strengthening initiative to further consolidate institutional resilience. In its initial phase, the initiative focused on identifying partners’ priorities, strengthening capacities in areas such as protection, documentation, security practices, and financial sustainability, and encouraging peer-led knowledge and best practices sharing.

By combining institutional support, individual protection, and capacity strengthening, OMCT aims to provide comprehensive and sustainable support to its partners and to human rights defenders worldwide, ensuring they can safely continue to advance the fight against torture in increasingly restrictive contexts.