APCOM has been working with our community, and launched the advocacy brief The Human Cost of the US Funding Freeze on LGBTQI Communities in Asia-Pacific.
The 2025 US government funding freeze, and the dismantling of USAID has triggered a far-reaching crisis for LGBTQI communities across the Asia-Pacific region. What began as an administrative and political decision with the US government Foreign Aid Freeze Executive Order on January 20, 2025, and the USAID Stop Work Orders issued on January 27, 2025, has rapidly evolved into a humanitarian, public health, and human rights emergency.
As a result, LGBTQI organisations throughout Asia and the Pacific—many of which operate as the sole providers of affirming health care, legal aid, shelter, psychosocial support, and HIV services—have been forced to suspend or terminate services with little or no notice. This brief synthesizes evidence from country reports, focus group discussions, and human stories collected across South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. It documents not only institutional disruption but the lived consequences for individuals whose survival, dignity, and safety depend on community-led services. Transgender people, young LGBTQI individuals, sex workers, migrants, refugees, and people living with HIV have been disproportionately affected.
“Many of us are suffering in silence. Without support, people will become even more vulnerable.”
Shimanto (21), Non-Binary, Bangladesh
“This job was not just income—it was dignity. We knew our community. People trusted us. Now they don’t know where to go.”
Transgender Outreach Worker, India
Furthermore, the funding freeze has exposed the structural fragility of LGBTQI civil society, which has long been underfunded in the region, politically targeted, and excluded from domestic financing mechanisms. Without urgent donor interventions, the region risks irreversible setbacks in HIV prevention, mental health outcomes, human rights protections, and community trust built over decades. This advocacy brief calls on donors to act decisively through emergency and medium-term funding, flexible grantmaking, and long-term partnership with LGBTQI-led organizations.
“People living with HIV trusted us. Now there is a gap. More people will default. More people will get sick.”
Community Health Workers, Papua New Guinea
“We know our limitations; we are a group of activists. We don’t have knowledge on, for example, income generating models. We don’t know how to make it flourish, to sustain ourselves, to become big business and all that. We don’t know how to go about setting up a social enterprise. We wish we knew. So, maybe that’s something that we can look at, how NGOs can generate income based on our specialisation, what we can sell in terms of our knowledge. But don’t tell me to create bath bombs and sell perfumes because that’s not something we know.”
Malaysia Group
A Defining Moment for Partners, Allies and Donors
“We call on donors to make an urgent, time-bound commitment of USD 8–12 million over the next 24 months to stabilize and strengthen LGBTQI-led community responses across the Asia–Pacific region.”
Midnight, APCOM Executive Director
When funding disappears from health and other services targeting LGBTQI people, people disappear from care and protection for a variety of reasons which leads ultimately to disastrous health outcomes. This is the scenario we have already seen at the start of the HIV response when no specialised services were available. Over decades a careful, specialised and functioning HIV and health response system was built with, by and for communities at risk. Now, we are about to lose the gains and step back 25 years ago.
We cannot let that happen. This moment demands courage and leadership from our partners and allies, first and foremost those who can support immediate investments in sexual health and other health services for LGBTQI people in the region. This will help to stop the gaps from getting bigger and at some point, unmanageable. And we need our partners and allies to put pressure on those who decide about these investments, whether it is at a local, national or international level.
Now more than ever, governments, philanthropies and other donors who care about the health and well-being of LGBTQI communities in the region must stand up and advocate alongside community organisations for immediate investments in the acute sexual and other health needs of LGBTQI communities in Asia and The Pacific. Timely, coordinated action can:
- Save lives and prevent public health reversals
- Preserve trust between communities and institutions
- Protect decades of progress in rights and inclusion
- LGBTQI communities and people in the region are not asking for charity—they are asking for real partnership, dignity, and the means to survive and lead.
