Additional Context: This information was collected by Human Rights Watch, or HRW, in an interview with a representative from the digital rights organization in Pakistan in April 2025. This organization runs a helpline that helps individuals secure their online accounts and respond to online threats to their privacy and security. It also provides legal support, assistance to restore hacked accounts or respond to identity theft, protection against surveillance threats, and help responding to doxxing, cyberbullying, and disinformation. While the helpline was maintained despite the cuts, the representative of the organization shared concerns about the future of the organization's operations as a whole.

Devex Researcher Note: The project is not named in the HRW report. However, an organization whose activities are an exact match had received $212,540 from the U.S. Agency for Global Media's Open Technology Fund, or OTF, from which they received in 2024. Support from the OTF was terminated in March 2025 and, although a court order obligated the U.S. government to pay out the funds that had already been promised to organizations, as of April 2026 future support remains possible but uncertain.

According to HRW, Pakistan's Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, or PECA, has become a primary tool for silencing critical voices online, with provisions criminalizing the spread of false information and content deemed harmful to state institutions routinely weaponized against journalists, activists, and human rights defenders. The cuts to U.S. funding coincided with a deeper entrenchment of this law in early 2025, which makes what the state perceives as digital offenses punishable by three years in prison and has led to numerous journalists and over a dozen content producers being targeted.

Source: Human Rights Watch