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Binaifer Nowrojee

@nowrojeeosf.bsky.social
249 followers 6 following 150 posts

President of @Open-Society.bsky.social. Pursuing philanthropy grounded in critical thinking, local knowledge, and risk-taking, to advance human rights, equity, and justice.

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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Namibia’s first woman president, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, is a trailblazer for Namibia and for women across Africa. Under her leadership, women make up 57 percent of Namibia’s Cabinet—a significant reflection of her commitment to women’s participation and leadership in decision-making.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I’m grateful to the governments of Norway and Kenya for convening a timely and important discussion on the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea. One of the things that strikes me about the current moment is how difficult it has become to separate crises that were once discussed independently.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Multilateralism among states is under enormous strain. But beneath the surface, something else is happening: cooperation is now moving faster between cities than between countries.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This week, @open-society.bsky.social hosted a conversation centered around the importance of local collaboration in building peace and safety.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
At @nrginstitute.bsky.social’s 20th anniversary in New York, I spoke about the choices we are all making right now about critical minerals and the energy transition.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I gathered with local leaders and peace builders from Kenya, the Netherlands, Mexico, Colombia, and Spain to talk about local multilateralism for peace and safety.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Twenty years ago in the @open-society.bsky.social offices, a small group of people began asking a question that many in power found uncomfortable: If a country’s oil, gas, and minerals belong to its people, why were so many of those people living in poverty right beside it?
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
In this special issue of The Ideas Letter, five thoughtful pieces reckon with South Africa’s predicament today.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
What changes in governments around the world when women hold political power? The policies they pursue—on development, on participation, on human rights protections. When women lead, everyone’s outcomes improve.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Powerful states are flouting international legal norms. Both the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the images from Gaza that we’re seeing today are horrific, with the devastation of the Palestinian people being streamed to us live. I think this is a moment of global shame that will stay with us.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Open Society is contributing $1.5 million to support an equitable, locally driven recovery after the devastating earthquake in Colombia’s Pacific region, where more than 30,000 families are now homeless.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
The task before those fighting for universal human dignity is not the restoration of a vanished order, but the patient work of making a better one. We are the authors of our own stories.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
The human rights movement has long defined itself in the negative: no to torture, no to censorship, no to detention without trial. These refusals are necessary, but they are not enough. In Vienna, for CEU’s 35th anniversary lecture, I spoke about the new world we must dare to build.
"We have too rarely dared to affirm a positive vision—one in which human rights are not only about the violations that can be stopped, but the kind of world that can be built. One where everyone has the right not merely to survive, but to thrive."

Binaifer Nowrojee, President
Open Society Foundations
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
It’s time for the world to step up and pursue justice for Afghan girls and women. Five years after the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, I joined @bbcnewsnight.bsky.social to discuss the growing push for international justice:
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
The attacks on civil society are led by those who want to discredit the principles of open society, free expression, and debate. Civil society is not afraid. And if necessary, we will go to court to defend our constitutional rights.
falter.at
Open Society Foundation-Präsidentin: „George Soros wurde gezielt verunglimpft“
Binaifer Nowrojee im Interview: „Ein Großteil dessen, was man in den Medien über ihn liest, ist Desinformation.“
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Without international justice, women and girls in Afghanistan, and the victims of war in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan risk being abandoned, the crimes against them unacknowledged, and the perpetrators free to repeat them. My latest for @data.ft.com:
as.ft.com
The ICC is all the women of Afghanistan have left
Trump’s vow to dismantle the international court will inaugurate a new era of impunity
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Since taking over Afghanistan five years ago, the Taliban has imposed a brutal and misogynistic regime. As I wrote in the @financialtimes.com today, international courts are their only avenue for justice. But at the same time, international justice is under attack.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
The Taliban’s oppression seeks to remove women from public life and steal futures from girls. My piece for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute on why Australia should take the case to the ICJ:
aspistrategist.org.au
Australia can lead the international legal case against the Taliban’s violation of women's rights | The Strategist
The Taliban has issued a decree that further enables child marriages in Afghanistan and restricts women’s and girls’ ability to leave such unions. As the repression accelerates, Australia should build...
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
The crises we face today are real. But we know in the communities closest to the harm is where we’ll find solutions. It’s heartening to be surrounded by leaders and community builders from every region of the world at UCLG World Congress. @open-society.bsky.social is proud to be your partner.
Open Society Foundations President Binaifer Nowrojee speaks at a session at UCLG World Congress Tangier.Open Society Foundations President Binaifer Nowrojee speaks at a session at UCLG World Congress Tangier.Open Society Foundations President Binaifer Nowrojee speaks at a session at UCLG World Congress Tangier.Open Society Foundations President Binaifer Nowrojee interacts with event attendees at UCLG World Congress Tangier.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Universality was never meant to be uniformity. It does not require that the world speak with one voice. It is precisely the meeting of many traditions—cultural and legal, new and old, on every continent—that gives human dignity its true universality.
Open Society Foundations President Binaifer Nowrojee delivers remarks at CEU.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
The rights we now take for granted—abolition of slavery, the vote for women, the end of colonial rule—were not granted from above. They were won from below, by people who organized, argued, persuaded, suffered defeats, and kept going.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Nearly a decade ago, an authoritarian leader forced CEU out of Budapest. You did not watch the closing of a society from a distance. You lived it, and you persevered. That leader is now gone. Your commitment to open societies continues.
Open Society Foundations President Binaifer Nowrojee participates in a Presidential Lecture Series at CEU.Open Society Foundations President Binaifer Nowrojee participates in a Presidential Lecture Series at CEU.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Today’s advocates of dignity and justice understand that the law alone will not save us. I say this as a lawyer who knows that the first international convictions for rape as an instrument of genocide came because the survivors I worked with refused to let prosecutors look away.
OSF President Binaifer Nowrojee delivers remarks at Chatham House.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
To honor the freedoms we were once most proud of, we must defend democratic institutions, protect everyone’s dignity, and resist the lie that rights are zero-sum. One standard—for Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine—because a standard applied selectively is no standard at all.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
A multilateral system’s future depends on welcoming, not managing, a wider coalition—looking at who sits at the table, who sets the agenda. The same test falls on philanthropy: Support frontlines. Transfer power. Stand as allies, not saviors.
OSF President Binaifer Nowrojee delivers remarks at Chatham House.
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Reposted by Binaifer Nowrojee
Open Society Foundations @open-society.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Recent events, including the fatal shooting at a mosque in San Diego and stabbings targeting the Jewish community in London, show how the demonization of faith communities can deepen divisions in society and lead to terrible violence.
“The pernicious bargain that insists on trading in the safety of one community for the rejection of another is a false one. The danger does not end with Muslims and Jews. The threats to these communities today will follow others tomorrow. To defend them, and to defend them together, is how an open society defends itself.” Open Society President Binaifer Nowrojee in The Guardian.

Our $30 million initiative to counter antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate will: protect communities from violence; strengthen interfaith and cross-community partnerships; confront antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred as linked dangers; safeguard the space for lawful expression and free debate.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
Antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate have flared across the west, with each rising to record levels. But, as I write in the @theguardian.com, these two hatreds have rarely been seen as related dangers—let alone confronted as a common threat to societies.
Screenshot of a Guardian article with the headline, "Anti-Muslim hate and antisemitism are twin crises. We must confront them together" by Binaifer Nowrojee.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
As I discussed on the @womensagenda.bsky.social podcast, we have to both defend women’s rights and advance them. Having women in leadership positions isn’t a trade-off—it’s win for everyone.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
At @open-society.bsky.social, we just committed $300 million to defend freedoms and create economic opportunities for all in the U.S. We are partnering with people who are looking beyond the hard times of today to imagine an affirmative vision for the next generation.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
The U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran was not just a war against the Iranian military. It was a high-speed, systematic assault on an entire society—with little prospect of accountability. We must effectively regulate this new, high-pace, mass-scale of warfare before it becomes the norm.
linkedin.com
The U.S.-Israeli Attack on Iran: When Death Comes Faster, and Destruction Becomes Wider
The U.S.
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Reposted by Binaifer Nowrojee
Open Society Foundations @open-society.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Prejudice, dehumanization, and violence against Muslims and Jews––fueled by deep injustices in the Middle East––have led to corrosive hate. This week, we were proud to announce a new $30 million, three-year initiative to address an alarming surge of antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate.
“Hate corrodes our shared humanity, and left unchecked, becomes a danger to us all. The deep injustices occurring in the Middle East are fueling indiscriminate prejudice, dehumanization, and violence directed against both Muslims and Jews. Bigotry and intolerance in any form must be called out and confronted.” Open Society Foundations President Binaifer Nowrojee
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Reposted by Binaifer Nowrojee
Open Society Foundations @open-society.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
We are living through a broader moment that demands we name what we are seeing. The organizations and institutions that protect our democracy are under sustained and coordinated pressure.
We Stand in Solidarity with the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Civil Rights Movement

“There is a documented pattern of the federal government threatening nonprofit organizations, law firms, and even public servants who disagree with the current administration, a pattern that courts have rebuked repeatedly ... We will not back down from the defense of our most vital freedoms.”
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
So great to speak with Dina Chaerani at @womendeliver.bsky.social about how bodily autonomy is the first right women need: “If women cannot control when they have sex, who they have sex with, when they have children, how many children they have—they cannot control their lives.”
laprogressive.com
At Women Deliver, Binaifer Nowrojee Talked Sex With an Influencer
The Open Society Foundations president turned the conversation into a message about reproductive rights.
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Reposted by Binaifer Nowrojee
Open Society Foundations @open-society.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Congratulations to Open Society President Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social for being named one of Washington DC’s 500 Most Influential People of 2026 by @washingtonian.com!
"At Open Society, we're working toward a future where everyone's rights are protected, their freedoms are real, and the opportunity to thrive belongs to all." Open Society President Binaifer Nowrojee
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
Behind each social justice movement lies decades of organizing––women, LGBTQ+ communities, Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, care workers, and informal workers building power from the ground up, often at great personal cost. @womendeliver.bsky.social
Binaifer Nowrojee speaks during a plenary session at Women Deliver 2026.A large audience is seated in a modern auditorium, attentively watching a presentation at Women Deliver 2026.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
At Women Deliver 2026, I’ve been inspired by courageous feminists on the frontlines of the fight for gender justice, often in the most difficult situations. From grassroots movements to feminist approaches to tech, thousands of women leaders are moving power where it belongs. #WD2026
Four women participate in a panel conversation at Women Deliver 2026.A large crowd of conference attendees gathers at Women Deliver 2026.A large crowd of conference attendees gathers at Women Deliver 2026.A cultural performance takes place during Women Deliver 2026.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Today, I’m thinking of Makan Nasiri, the only child whose remains have still not been found two months after the horrific massacre that killed more than 165 students at the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran on February 28.
A woman walks through memorial in Tehran for the children killed in a US airstrike in Minab, Iran, on April 22, 2026.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Today, we mark South African Freedom Day and pay tribute to the countless South Africans who made immense sacrifices fighting for their own liberation, inside the country and outside it.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
The war in Sudan has devastated the country, but it has not broken its people. However, their resilience must not become an excuse for inaction. Courage cannot substitute for justice. Aid cannot replace peace. The world faces a choice.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
We hope the ceasefire holds, but can't ignore that conflict continues in Lebanon. @open-society.bsky.social stands with this coalition in affirming our calls for the laws of war to be upheld, especially the protection of civilians, and accountability for those who violate international law.
Human Rights and Humanitarian Organizations and Experts Call for an End to Trump's Threats of War Crimes and Commit to Pursuing Accountability
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” These were the words that Hansa Mehta, the Indian feminist and freedom fighter, added to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They affirmed that human rights are for everyone, everywhere.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
I was honored to join the Faith and Politics Institute’s Congressional Pilgrimage to South Carolina to visit historic sites from slavery and the Civil Rights movement. We explored lessons from America’s past—particularly the unfinished struggle for freedom and equal opportunity.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
I spoke with Bernd Riegert at Deutsche Welle about the work of @open-society.bsky.social and the values behind it. Our approach is simple: support those working to defend human rights, strengthen democracy, and keep societies open.
dw.com
Open Society warns of fraying democratic practice worldwide
In an interview with DW, Open Society Foundations President Binaifer Nowrojee says the organization, among the world's most influential NGOs, will continue to support universal human rights amid rising global pressures.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
On this International Women’s Day, I feel it's important to recognize that the anti-gender and anti-rights movement should, in some ways, be understood as a reaction to progress:
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Reposted by Binaifer Nowrojee
Open Society Foundations @open-society.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
The Open Society Foundations condemn the arbitrary detention and denial of entry of our managing director of Programs, Brian Kagoro, by authorities in Kenya. No formal charges were presented, and no written reasons were provided to him.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Rights are not just given. They are always fought for. In this moment, we’re being called on to fight for them.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
More women now are graduating from university than men, and ever more women are taking up leadership roles in many spaces. As the role of women in society, we’ve seen attempts to push women back into “traditional” roles, as I said in at a @munsecconf.bsky.social event.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
As a teenager in Kenya, I witnessed firsthand the consequences of a government whose authority thrived on brute force and fear. Over my career, I’ve been a student of the mechanics of repression: vulnerable populations demonized, allied communities targeted, and unpunished abuse normalized.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
As the current administration transforms immigration enforcement into a tool of cruelty that undermines the rule of law, and as migrants are blamed for problems they didn’t create, communities are banding together to defend their neighbors.
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Binaifer Nowrojee @nowrojeeosf.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
.@open-society.bsky.social supports the right of free speech and organizations’ constitutional rights to organize themselves, including through peaceful protest. We’ll fight to ensure those rights are upheld, including going to court if needed. My @theguardian.com interview bit.ly/48C9laH
theguardian.com
President of George Soros’ non-profit says it would take legal action to fight Trump’s attacks
Binaifer Nowrojee, Open Society Foundations president, said the organization would ‘go to court if need be’
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