This news piece was first published on policypress.cy
By Bilun Gunes
An interview with Stelios Foteinopoulos, Interim Head of Policy and Public Affairs at Kaleidoscope Trust
Around a third of the world’s countries still criminalise consensual same-sex relationships. The Human Dignity Trust counts 65 jurisdictions, almost half of them in the Commonwealth, where 29 of 56 member states retain such laws.
At the same time, groups opposing gender equality and LGBTI+ rights have grown better funded. A 2025 report by the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights found US$1.18 billion in funding for such initiatives in Europe between 2019 and 2023, with the Russian Federation identified as the single biggest funder.
The pressure has coincided with deep cuts to international aid. A study published in The Lancet Global Health in February 2026 projected that, under a severe defunding scenario across donor countries, aid cuts could lead to 22.6 million additional deaths by 2030, including 5.4 million children under five.
Kaleidoscope Trust, a London-based charity founded in 2011, works with activists and governments to keep LGBTI+ rights on the foreign policy agenda. In 2025 it launched the Global LGBTI+ Rights Commission, which began its work in October. Cyprus has been among the governments it works with, through the Cyprus High Commission in London. Cyprus and the UK have also signed a memorandum of understanding on the rights of LGBTI+ people in Europe and the Commonwealth.
To examine what Kaleidoscope describes as a coordinated rollback of rights, Policypress spoke with Stelios Foteinopoulos, Interim Head of Policy and Public Affairs at Kaleidoscope Trust. In the interview that follows, Foteinopoulos sets out how he sees the shift since 2024, who he says is driving it, the effect of aid cuts on the communities Kaleidoscope works with, and the role he believes Cyprus can play.
Interview: Stelios Foteinopoulos, Interim Head of Policy and Public Affairs, Kaleidoscope Trust
Could you introduce yourself and Kaleidoscope Trust? Why does a London-based charity focus on international and foreign policy?
I am the Interim Head of Policy and Public Affairs at Kaleidoscope Trust. My work is largely about engaging with governments and international institutions to make sure gender equality and LGBTI+ rights remain a priority in foreign policy and security decisions. Kaleidoscope Trust is the only UK-based global LGBTI+ organisation working in this space. We work on two fronts: with movements, activists and human rights defenders on the ground, and with governments and international institutions.
The reason a London-based charity focuses on foreign policy is simple. The challenges these communities face aren’t just local. They are shaped by regional and global policy and geopolitical trends, and by the positions governments take internationally across development, security and diplomacy. That is why we produce evidence of the systematic challenges facing minority and vulnerable groups such as the LGBTI+ community. We shape the arguments and work with governments and movements to develop actionable strategies for the institutions that have the power to change things. Without that bridge between the people living the reality and the people making the decisions, nothing really changes.
Around a third of the world’s countries still criminalise consensual same-sex relationships. What does that mean in practice for the people and organisations you work with? Is the number still moving, and in which direction?
If you look at the trend over the last 10 to 15 years, the number is actually going down. We are seeing more countries decriminalise same-sex relationships, and that matters because it is a critical first step. But it is only the first step. Decriminalisation on its own doesn’t translate into full equality. People also need protections, especially where we see exclusion from equal rights at work, in housing and health care, and in the freedom to associate, organise and take part in public and political life. LGBTI+ people have historically been shut out of all these spaces.
In practice, the situation for the people and organisations we work with is pretty dire. For people of diverse sexual orientation and gender identity, democratic rollback is not an abstract idea. It is a lived reality. Around the world, the human rights movement is increasingly framed as something foreign, an outside agent imposing alien values and undermining national identity. That could not be more wrong. Gender diversity has existed across the world, including across the Global South, and has always been part of local cultures and national identities. What changed that was empire and colonialism, which imposed very specific religious, cultural and legal norms. Colonial systems laid the foundation of homophobia as we know it today, and of the policing of sexuality. They used the body, gender and sexuality as a method of social control.
The shocking thing is that today about 30 of the 56 Commonwealth member states still criminalise same-sex intimacy, using colonial-era laws that are centuries old. So when people call this a foreign import, they have it exactly backwards. The criminalisation is the colonial import.
You describe a new turn the world has taken since 2024. What changed, and what crises are countries now facing?
The world didn’t start in 2024, but it was a crucial year. After the US election result, two things happened at once. The far right suddenly had confidence and, crucially, access to huge amounts of money and political capital. At the same time, the US, along with other countries, started pulling diplomatic support, political backing and funding out of the global human rights system, practically overnight. Look at the UN right now: it is on the edge of a financial crisis as a result.
The net effect is a big shift away from an environment where countries worked together to resolve common problems. We have a new landscape, with more governments quietly ignoring human rights treaties, moving money out of the human rights architecture and into defence and security, and hesitating to stand up for what is right. That wasn’t the case until 2024 and 2025.
This is not one crisis caused by electoral cycles. It is a polycrisis: a tough economic situation almost everywhere, including in the West, wars, political tension and growing pushback against democracy and public institutions. Human rights sit right in the middle of it all. The rights of minority groups are increasingly framed as a threat to national sovereignty or traditional values. Big state actors are quietly withdrawing their commitments inside the UN, and we see the same pattern in development banks and regional organisations. Less support means less money, and less money means less progress. In its place, we are seeing an attempt to revive nationalism as a way forward. If I had to summarise it in one sentence, this is an existential threat to decades of progress, and global trends such as rising authoritarianism and the anti-rights movement are threatening to become the new norm.
Who makes up the anti-rights movement, as you see it? How organised and how well-funded is it?
The anti-rights movement is essentially a network: far-right groups, ultra-conservative religious actors, anti-abortion campaigners, and anti-gender and anti-trans groups, all interconnected. Anything that sets out to undermine the protection of people, especially the most vulnerable, whether political or social, formal or informal, public or underground, is a sign of its presence.
It is extremely well resourced, even more so after 2024. A lot of this money comes straight out of state budgets, but also from private funders we cannot always trace. The scale of the money, the international coordination and the way it is plugged into everyday politics and decisions is unprecedented. According to the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, US$1.18 billion flowed into anti-rights movements [in Europe] between 2019 and 2023, and the single biggest funder was Russia, with Russian actors accounting for around $200 million. In the US, in the decade between 2008 and 2017, anti-rights organisations [had revenue of] around $6.2 billion, and 11 US-based organisations funnelled at least a billion dollars into other countries [according to the Global Philanthropy Project]. They use this money not just to fund their own operations but to fund like-minded movements around the world, including anti-rights actors here in Europe.
To sum it up, we call it a movement, but it is a political project. It weaponises LGBTI+ people and communities to build ultra-conservative coalitions, grow political power, influence government policies, force political shifts and ultimately reshape the world in a very different and very chaotic way.
What does the weaponisation of LGBTI+ rights look like in practice?
To answer that, I have to step back and explain why the world is changing the way it is. The rise of the far right is pushing the dominoes. They take people’s real anxieties about the economy and the cost of living and translate that uncertainty into concrete campaigns to attack multilateralism and push governments to step back from international rules. That is a historic shift, a return from the rule of law to the rule of force as we knew it before 1945 and the disaster of the Second World War.
It is well documented that these actors use attacks on minorities, and more specifically on LGBTI+ people and communities, on gender equality and on bodily autonomy. We are seeing it in the US with abortion rights, used as an entry point to launch a much bigger assault on the international rules-based order, with national sovereignty as the excuse. By the rules-based order I don’t mean the elite. Quite the opposite. It is the international human rights system, the agencies, bodies and mechanisms humanity built after the Second World War so countries could work together to handle conflicts, respond to health crises, mobilise resources and set common rules. Without it, we would have no way to manage our differences, let alone deal with the big global challenges we face today. That shared political framework is exactly what the anti-rights movement is going after, and it uses minority and vulnerable groups, migrants and more specifically the LGBTI+ community, as an entry point.
At Kaleidoscope Trust, we strongly believe that if we support and strengthen both the LGBTI+ movement and the broader pro-democracy movement, together we can build a wall against this backlash. That is why we make the case that LGBTI+ equality isn’t a side issue. It is an essential part of a more democratic, more equal, more peaceful world with real security for everyone.
After the US aid freeze, Kaleidoscope distributed emergency funding to partner organisations. What did that reveal about the movement’s dependence on government funding, and how is your work adapting?
The US aid cuts have had a brutal effect on people’s lives everywhere in the world. According to The Lancet, [aid cuts by the US and other donors] could lead to more than 22 million avoidable deaths by 2030, including 5.4 million children under five. These deaths are likely to occur largely in low- and middle-income countries, the vast majority in the Global South, and this is happening now. For millions of LGBTI+ people, it comes on top of the systematic oppression they have faced for decades. Because of the cuts, activists and human rights defenders face challenges accessing public health services, getting support to follow up legal and litigation cases, and building their capacity to advocate for their own rights.
The effect is very real. Supporting the most vulnerable communities was the least we could do to hold the line and not allow whole communities to collapse. The messages we have received over the year and a half since the US cuts started have been heartbreaking.
On dependency, governments fund all sorts of functions in a democracy: education, health, infrastructure, foreign policy, the defence industry, security and technological innovation. Among these is the protection of human rights, both at home and abroad. We strongly believe the protection of human rights and minority rights should be a priority. None of the rest makes sense, whether education, health, development or growth, without people living equal lives. So lots of things depend on this funding, not just gender equality movements. By supporting movements that fight for open and equal societies, we create a more democratic, more stable and more secure world for everyone, including the member states that are part of it.
Cyprus and the UK have a memorandum of understanding on LGBTI+ rights, and you have worked with the Cyprus High Commission in London. What has that partnership involved in practice?
Cyprus and the UK share deep relationships and common values when it comes to supporting vulnerable groups and human rights defenders around the world. In London, I have worked a lot with diplomatic missions and government officials to make sure they prioritise LGBTI+ equality in wider foreign policy agendas, and one of the governments we have been working with is Cyprus. The Cyprus High Commission in London has been very supportive in raising the same questions and concerns about the state of the human rights of LGBTI+ communities globally.
Cyprus is a small state, but very active in diplomatic fora, and I would like to personally thank High Commissioner [Kyriacos] Kouros and his team for working with us. In this context, we organised joint panel discussions in previous years to raise the importance of a democratic and equal Commonwealth, in which Cyprus has a strong role to play, and to speak about supporting communities of diverse sexual orientation and gender identity in open societies.
It is really important for civil society to work closely with like-minded governments like Cyprus, and vice versa. We can amplify the voice of communities and offer insight and expertise from the ground, and governments can offer diplomatic and political support to these agendas. Only through strong partnerships can we hold the line against democratic backlash. This is something we want to invest more resources in building and sustaining, including with the government of Cyprus.
As a smaller state in the EU and in the Eastern Mediterranean, can Cyprus play a role that larger states cannot?
The truth is that it doesn’t matter that Cyprus is a small state. As I said, it is very active in diplomatic fora. Cyprus is a great example of a country where different historical dynamics meet, and that may explain why it is so strong diplomatically when it comes to human rights. It has first-hand experience of what it means to suffer injustice and violations of human rights.
Cyprus is a Commonwealth member state and at the same time at the core of the European Union, with strong relationships with nations in the Middle East. It is strongly connected to Europe, but it is also an island nation, with everything that comes with that. So Cyprus is a really interesting case study. Countries like Cyprus have a very important role to play in communicating this experience and legacy to the rest of the world, and in saying that it doesn’t matter how small you are: if you are committed enough to stand on the right side, everything is possible.
Kaleidoscope has launched the Global LGBTI+ Rights Commission. What is it setting out to do, and what is the one thing you would ask European governments, including Cyprus, to do?
The one thing to ask European governments is really simple: give us a seat at the table. We have so much expertise, connection and insight to offer and to integrate into the political and institutional debate. The only thing we need is a seat at the table.
The Global LGBTI+ Rights Commission is our flagship project. It is the most holistic and comprehensive global initiative civil society has attempted so far to understand, confront and respond to the escalating rollback of LGBTI+ rights and of democracy more generally. Through the Commission, we try to answer three urgent questions: how did we get here, what do we do now and where do we go next? It will diagnose the roots, drivers and mechanisms of the global rollback, something we know governments are also very interested in hearing more about. It will consult communities and experts worldwide, support the global community to produce a strategic roadmap for resisting and reversing these anti-rights trends, and amplify the voices of those most affected. For any global roadmap to be effective, the people on the ground experiencing these systemic attacks need to be the driving force informing these strategies.
Most importantly, we want the Commission to mobilise international resources and actors to take meaningful collective action. It will involve hundreds of experts, policymakers, communities and human rights defenders from around the world. I am hopeful it will be a major contribution as we try to understand and resist the democratic rollback we are seeing everywhere.
Is there anything you would like to add?
I think we are seeing a change in paradigm internationally, with member states withdrawing from the multilateral system. There is a connection between the decline in political support for LGBTI+ rights and the decline in political support for multilateralism. Multilateralism is exactly what the anti-rights movement wants to dismantle, because a world without rules, where everyone stands alone, is a world where no one holds anyone to account.
Every time a government pulls funding from the UN, walks back a treaty commitment or reframes an international body as a threat to its sovereignty, that is not disconnected from the attack on LGBTI+ rights. It is the same project. Right now, LGBTI+ rights are the crowbar they use to crack the whole system open, and that is why we are fighting to push back.
Stelios Foteinopoulos is Interim Head of Policy and Public Affairs at Kaleidoscope Trust. This interview was conducted on 26 October 2026 by Bilun Gunes for Policypress and has been edited for clarity and length.
Key takeaways:
- Foteinopoulos argues that the colonial-era laws still criminalising same-sex intimacy in 29 of the 56 Commonwealth states, not LGBTI+ rights, are the foreign import.
- He identifies 2024 as a turning point, with the US and other governments pulling diplomatic and financial support from the global human rights system.
- He describes the anti-rights movement as a well-funded, interconnected political project, citing research that traces US$1.18 billion in such funding in Europe between 2019 and 2023.
- In his view, attacks on LGBTI+ rights serve as an entry point for a wider assault on multilateralism and the international rules-based order.
- He says aid cuts have left LGBTI+ activists struggling to access health services, legal support and advocacy capacity, on top of decades of oppression.
- He sees Cyprus, as a Commonwealth and EU member with ties across the Middle East, as a small state with an outsized diplomatic role on human rights.
- His one ask of European governments, including Cyprus: a seat at the table for civil society.
