The Women Deliver chief speaks to News Hour about shrinking aid budgets, feminist leadership, and why the global South must help redefine the rules of international cooperation.
At a time when official development assistance is shrinking and gender equality faces growing backlash, Maliha Khan believes the global development system must undergo nothing less than structural reinvention.
As President and CEO of Women Deliver, Khan leads one of the world’s most prominent platforms advocating for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), gender justice, and youth leadership. But she is unequivocal: this is not a moment for incremental reform.
“This is not about adjusting around the edges,” she says. “It is about renegotiating relationships.”
Leadership grounded in lived realities
Khan’s feminist philosophy was shaped not in policy circles but in remote rural communities in Pakistan, where early in her career she engaged directly with women about their daily struggles and long-term aspirations.
She recalls those conversations as formative. The question she still asks herself before major decisions is simple: what difference will this make to a woman in a remote village whose priorities are her children’s education, her family’s health, and her daughter’s future?
That grounding, she says, remains essential in an era where global debates can easily drift away from lived realities.
An evolving institution in a volatile context
Since assuming leadership in 2022, Khan has steered Women Deliver through mounting crises: pandemic aftershocks, escalating climate disasters, geopolitical polarisation, and a dramatic contraction in aid budgets. She notes that official development assistance flows have declined sharply, destabilising long-standing funding models across the sector.
Rather than retreat, Women Deliver has reaffirmed its principles. In a climate where explicit advocacy for feminism and LGBTQIA+ rights can invite political targeting, the organisation has chosen to hold its ground.
“Gender equality and human rights are not optional,” Khan insists. “They are foundational.”
Decolonising the architecture of aid
Khan is particularly outspoken about the need to dismantle colonial and racist legacies embedded within international development systems. While aid structures may have emerged in the mid-20th century as newly independent nations sought capacity-building and resources, she argues that many Global South countries today possess substantial expertise, institutions, and aspirations.
“The world has changed,” she says. “But the architecture of development has not kept pace.”
Under her leadership, Women Deliver has undertaken internal reforms to reflect a more equitable global model: revising compensation structures to ensure parity across geographies, decentralising hiring practices, reassessing programme design, and reshaping institutional narratives to centre the voices of the global majority.
Yet she is careful not to overstate the organisation’s direct impact. Women Deliver does not implement programmes on the ground, she acknowledges. Instead, its role is to convene, connect, and amplify—bringing grassroots activists, government representatives, and multilateral actors into shared spaces.
“We are not the ones changing an individual life in a village,” she says. “But we are strengthening those who are.”
The Feminist Playbook: redefining cooperation
Confronted with a sector under financial and political strain, Women Deliver has initiated a global consultation process to craft what it calls a “Feminist Playbook”. This initiative combines a political declaration rooted in international law with a detailed blueprint for reforming global governance and accountability structures.
Dozens of consultations—many led or shaped by alumni of Women Deliver’s Young Leaders programme—have gathered input from grassroots activists to policymakers. The goal is to present a cohesive vision for how international cooperation should function in the 21st century.
“If we do not articulate the future of this sector,” Khan warns, “others will define it for us.”
Engaging technology without illusion
On emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, Khan adopts a pragmatic stance. She acknowledges that major technology corporations operate primarily on profit motives rather than justice. Nonetheless, she rejects the notion that feminist organisations can afford to disengage.
She identifies three imperatives: leveraging AI to enhance organisational efficiency; using it creatively for outreach and analysis; and advocating for regulatory frameworks that protect women and marginalised communities.
Technology, she argues, is not neutral—but neither is it avoidable. The responsibility lies with advocates to shape its application.
Climate justice beyond the household
Women Deliver is also pushing for more granular approaches to climate justice. Current climate assessments often measure impact at the household level, obscuring internal disparities. Khan highlights how adolescent girls frequently bear disproportionate burdens when climate shocks occur—through increased unpaid care work, school dropout, or early marriage.
“These losses are invisible in conventional calculations,” she says. “But they have lifelong consequences.”
In global climate forums, including COP negotiations, Women Deliver advocates for recognising such gender-differentiated impacts within loss and damage frameworks.
From charity to reparative justice
Perhaps most controversially, Khan argues that official development assistance should not be framed as benevolence. Rather, she describes it as part of a broader matrix of reparative justice, encompassing colonial histories, climate responsibility, debt restructuring, and multilateral reform.
With most donor governments reducing aid budgets—apart from a small number maintaining or increasing commitments—she believes the era of polite persuasion has passed.
“This is a hard conversation,” she says. “But it is one we must have.”
Youth at the forefront
Women Deliver’s network of more than 1,000 Young Leader alumni across 130 countries exemplifies what Khan sees as the movement’s long-term investment. Many alumni now hold leadership roles in global institutions. The organisation continues to integrate them into governance processes and global consultations as partners rather than beneficiaries.
Khan sees generational change as one of the most powerful forces reshaping the global landscape. Young activists across Latin America, South Asia, and beyond are asserting demands for bodily autonomy, democratic accountability, and climate justice with unprecedented clarity.
“They are not waiting for permission,” she observes.
A difficult road, a hopeful horizon
Khan does not minimise the turbulence ahead. Funding constraints, political pushback, and structural reform debates will define the coming years. Yet she remains cautiously optimistic.
Moments of disruption, she argues, create openings for transformation. If global South actors assert agency and feminist movements remain united across borders and generations, the next decade could redefine international cooperation itself.
“The future will not be handed to us,” she says. “We must shape it.”
For Maliha Khan, rebuilding global development is not simply about preserving what exists. It is about ensuring that justice, accountability, and the voices of women and girls sit firmly at the centre of what comes next.
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