IWGIA Annual Report 2025

IWGIA’s Institutional Strategy 2021-2025 reached its final year of implementation in 2025, thus giving us the impetus to reflect on the status of IWGIA’s programmes to promote and defend the rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as develop new and ambitious goals for the coming strategic period. Throughout the year, we communicated with a broad range of partners and allies to explore needs and opportunities and ensure that IWGIA continues to walk side-by-side with Indigenous Peoples in the continued struggle for their rights.

Across the globe, we worked hand-in-hand with Indigenous Peoples and their organizations to provide technical support, amplify their voices and contribute to legal and policy gains. In 2025, IWGIA contributed to key breakthroughs in securing rights to land and territory, advancing gender justice, and ensuring that Indigenous voices influenced global climate and biodiversity governance. From shaping national and international policies to supporting legal victories and Indigenous self-determination, our collaboration resulted in tangible progress for Indigenous Peoples’ rights around the world.

These achievements, however, took place in a world in which human rights in general, and Indigenous Peoples’ rights in particular, are becoming increasingly threatened. Since 2025, the efficacy and legitimacy of the multilateral system have been crippled and called into question, alongside Western states making major cuts to development cooperation budgets and programmes. These shifts are having a particular impact on Indigenous Peoples, leaving them vulnerable to land dispossession, eviction, human trafficking, sexual violence, criminalization, or worse, killings. Further, the weakening of international spaces represents the weakening of one of the few and strongest platforms from which Indigenous Peoples have fought for their rights and made significant progress in their recognition as Peoples with distinct rights.

However, even against such odds, Indigenous Peoples around the world continued to celebrate victories throughout 2025. Amid escalating climate threats, shrinking civic space, and growing geopolitical instability, Indigenous Peoples safeguarded forests, halted destructive projects, and secured stronger legal protections. IWGIA is proud to have stood in solidarity with the Indigenous Peoples and their movement.

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