The issue

Identity-based violence is a collective harm. It is felt most acutely by those it targets, but it ultimately fractures entire societies.

It is also preventable. Identity-based violence is not inevitable, but without early and serious action, its impacts deepen, touching more lives and cutting deeper into our societies. This is why our work has always been driven by a few core convictions.

These harms are not peripheral to the challenges defining our time; they are central to them. In an era of aggressive statecraft, democratic backsliding, and growing instability, societies are increasingly targeted not only through military or economic means, but through deliberate efforts to fracture the social foundations that make democratic life possible. The fastest way to weaken a democracy today is often not confrontation at its borders, but division within it.

Identity-based violence does not emerge suddenly or without warning. It develops through identifiable processes, shaped by social, political, economic and institutional conditions over time. Because it can be understood, it can be anticipated. And because it can be anticipated, it can be prevented. That conviction is the starting point for everything we do.

Mobilising grievance, demonising "the other", and wielding division are the staid tactics of authoritarian movements throughout history and across the world. Identity has always been weaponised to advance political projects, secure territory, turn a profit, and achieve notoriety. These strategies are not new, but they are returning with new force. The playbook is back: modernised, and gaining ground.

Authoritarian actors, political extremists, and transnational hate networks increasingly exploit grievance, manipulate difference, and erode trust in democratic institutions in pursuit of power. Enabled by a disrupted information environment and rapid technological change, division, disinformation and hostility now spread faster and further than ever before.