Future-Proofing Freedom: Why the New Ipas Report is a Must-Read

As a movement, SheDecides is fueled by collective power. We counter opposition by taking coordinated action toward a shared vision: a world where every person has the right to decide what happens to their body.

For several years, intelligence sharing amongst our community has been an important part of making our mission a reality. Whether that be through reports, briefings or Masterclasses, this shared knowledge sharpens our advocacy and drives evidence-based decisions. By staying informed, we ensure strategic alignment as we work together to protect the future we are building.

As we move into 2026, we are under no illusion about the threat regressive policies pose to our shared vision. But today, that challenge has evolved: the SRHR opposition is no longer a “shadowy figure” in the background. 

As the new Ipas report, “FutureProofing: The Professionalization of an Anti-Rights Youth Generation,” reveals, we are facing a highly coordinated, well-funded, and increasingly youth-led machine designed to dismantle the very rights intergenerational movements have spent decades securing.

Understanding the “Long Game”

This hard-hitting report uncovers a decades-long project: the deliberate cultivation of young people as the future architects and new public face of the anti-rights agenda, shaping public discourse, influencing legislation and normalising far-right ideologies. Today, youth are no longer just the “foot soldiers” – they are the strategists, spokespeople, and political actors driving regressive policy and litigation at the highest levels.

SheDecides Champion, Ipas, exposes a vast ecosystem of networks, influential individuals, and institutions that have spent 70 years building a pipeline of political leadership – from campus groups to courtrooms to national legislatures. The report shows how strategies first refined in the United States are being exported and adapted across Latin America, Africa, and Europe, creating a coordinated global front fuelling hate.

By tracing this pipeline of training programs, professional associations and digital networks, the report reveals a highly networked movement that is equipping young people with the skills and connections to drive policy change, which is systematically undermining gender equality, LGBTQI+ rights, and reproductive freedom. 

These strategies are built for the long term, securing power by:

• Professionalising the Opposition: Empowering youth early in their careers with sophisticated legal and leadership skills.
• Building Borderless Influence: Establishing transnational networks that connect young anti-rights actors and politicians across the globe.
• Mobilising at Scale: Mastering the use of online spaces to further cultivate and influence young people

The 2030 Agenda: 4 Years to Go

This is not a future threat: Anti-rights youth leaders are already in office, already in courtrooms, and already influencing global policies, undermining multilateral institutions, weakening human rights norms, with devastating national and international implications.

With only four years left to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals, the promise to “leave no one behind” is in serious jeopardy. Goal 5 (Gender Equality) and Goal 3 (Good Health and Well-being) are now the primary targets of this coordinated assault.

The evidence is clear. If we do not act now to support youth leaders in our own movements defending human rights and gender equality, the 2030 deadlines will pass as a missed opportunity to move forward our shred agenda of a better world.

Future-Proof the Pro-Choice Movement with Youth at the Heart

Our pro choice movement must urgently reflect on and reconsider how we engage younger generations and how we prioritise and invest in youth leadership as a foundational strategy for progress. The report lays out clear recommendations built together with young human rights activists that call for immediate and sustained action to transform how our movement values, invests in, and shares power with young people, including: 

• Strategic Investment: Build youth-led movement pipelines and provide long-term engagement and funding rather than short-term project grants.
• Intelligence & Monitoring: Actively monitor anti-rights legal advocacy networks and research the tactics used against us.
• Digital & Narrative Power: Enhance digital counter-messaging and fund media literacy programs that foster critical thinking to disrupt disinformation.
• Protective Infrastructure: Protect youth human rights defenders from legal, online, and physical reprisals.
• Policy & Accountability: Halt public funding to anti-rights youth organisations that contravene human rights frameworks and defend democratic norms through international coordination.
• Solidarity: Foster progressive interfaith alliances and intergenerational solidarity to ensure our movement remains inclusive and visionary.

Building a Resilient Future Together: What can we do?

As an intergenerational movement, SheDecides has always understood that while we all have distinct roles to play in building a world where bodily autonomy is the norm, we are undeniably stronger together. And to combat the dangerous threat of anti-rights movements, we must reflect on and refine how we move forward in unity. 

For donors this means shifting toward long-term, sustainable investment to effectively counter the funding flows and recruitment pipelines fueling hate. In the policy sphere, governments have a vital opportunity to work in tandem with advocates to legislate for bodily autonomy and dismantle the influence of anti-rights groups. Within civil society, we can strengthen our collective impact by investing in power-sharing and partnership. 

Crucially, we must all move beyond mere solidarity to active partnership, especially with and led by young people, ensuring younger leaders have the resources and institutional power to sustain a movement defined by joy and fundamental freedoms.

For SheDecides Champions, donors, and youth activists, this report is more than just a publication. It is a critical intelligence tool for building our shared understanding and navigating an ever narrowing civic space. 

The ground is shifting – it’s time we move it back.