BACKGROUND
Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Taiwan have always been important stakeholders in protecting Taiwan’s strong democracy, promoting civic engagement, and reinforcing advancements in technology, disaster response, and universal healthcare. However, beyond its local impact, Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy+ (NSP+) framework recognizes the critical role of its vibrant community of NGOs in achieving prosperity in the Indo-Pacific, particularly in response to the recent disruptive changes in the region’s geopolitical context.
This is evident in the inclusion of the NGO Corridor in the six main NSP+ corridors showcased during this year’s Yushan Forum, which has further highlighted the Public-Private-People-Partnerships (P-P-P-P) approach. The NGOs became a key element in pursuing the “values-based diplomacy” of NSP+, wherein Taiwan actively fosters democracy, peace, and prosperity (DPP) in the region (Hsiao and Yang, 2024).
The value that NSP+ places on NGOs primarily manifests in Taiwan’s commitment to establishing itself as an “INGO Hub” - a platform for harmonizing NGO activities, capacitating NGOs to improve service delivery, and nurturing future generations of Indo-Pacific change makers. Through the INGO Hub, Taiwan welcomes international and regional NGOs to the strong enabling environment that it has created for its local NGOs.
The 2025 Yushan Forum: “New Southbound Policy+: Taiwan, the Indo-Pacific, and a New World” dedicated a panel session to the NGO Corridor, entitled “NGO Forum: Creating an NSP+ INGO Hub.” Panelists include Mr. Chiachi Kang (Deputy Director-General of the Department of NGO International Affairs of MOFA of Taiwan), Dr. Chang-Chuan Chan (Board Member of Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation - CAPRI), Dr. Peter Lin (President of STUF United Fund - Asia Pacific Center), Mr. Linus Lee (Secretary General of Taiwan AID), Ms. Cazadira Fediva Tamzil (Interim Executive Director of Pijar Foundation), Amb. Amitabh Amit Shah (Founder of Yuva Unstoppable), and Dr. Eve Chiu (CEO of Taiwan FactCheck Center) shared insights on the importance of regional NGO collaboration, key challenges faced by NGOs in the Indo-Pacific, and potential solutions, mainly in the form of the proposed INGO Hub.
INSIGHTS AND REFLECTIONS
The Yushan Forum’s dedicated panel discussion on the role of NGOs in the NSP+ highlighted key challenges faced by NGOs in the Indo-Pacific region, followed by potential solutions and paths forward.
Challenges and Difficulties:
1. Dependence on Western Aid renders NGOs in the Indo-Pacific increasingly vulnerable to the uncertainties of the global political landscape.
Amidst the backdrop of rapid and unfavorable geopolitical shifts in the Indo-Pacific, a pressing challenge confronting NGOs across the region is their heavy reliance on Western countries for grant funding and other essential resources. Earlier this year, announcements to cut financial international aid from Western governments, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, were released, causing immediate suspensions and postponements of NGOs’ activities throughout the Indo-Pacific region and preventing them from continuing the work of addressing pressing development challenges (Tyler and Trinh, 2025). This has strongly emphasized the urgency for all NGOs across the region to rethink their strategic approaches and actively pursue more diversified and resilient partnerships (Kagal, 2025).
2. Development in the Indo-Pacific remains uneven.
Discussions on the role of NGOs in fostering regional prosperity cannot begin without acknowledging the geopolitical and economic circumstances that necessitate the continued existence and participation of NGOs. While some Indo-Pacific countries steadily achieve progress, several countries in the Indo-Pacific still struggle to provide citizens with access to necessities and opportunities, such as water, food, shelter, education, and employment. This was evident in the experiences shared by panelists from Yuva Unstoppable, which works to address sanitation and water access in India, and Pijar Foundation, which links youth civic engagements in Indonesia for education and employment opportunities. Rampant poverty, hunger, and displacement increase the urgency for NGOs to fulfill their role in filling gaps in development. Given this context, regional collaboration among NGOs also becomes an urgent pursuit, if it means that NGOs in the region can be better equipped to scale their impact, achieve stability, and improve service delivery.
3. The absence of strong democracy, press freedom, and gender equality hinders NGOs from achieving their full potential.
During the forum, Dr. Peter Lin indicated the strong levels of democracy, press freedom, gender equality, and safety as one of the main factors why Taiwan is an ideal environment for NGOs to prosper. These same factors, along with its strategic geographic location, position Taiwan as an ideal environment for international NGOs to set up headquarters and host regional NGO activities. Conversely, this highlights a key challenge experienced by Indo-Pacific countries that do not share the same level of good governance, press freedom, gender equality, and other NGO-enabling factors. For example, in countries like the Philippines, NGOs and their workers are at risk of being “red-tagged” or associated with far-left movements, which further reveals gaps in local NGO landscapes that prevent NGOs from achieving their full potential.
4. Ambiguous and restrictive legal frameworks in many countries across the Indo-Pacific present significant structural barriers to the effective functioning of NGOs.
In many countries in the region, the processes for registering an organization and maintaining legal compliance are governed by vague and inconsistently enforced regulations. Governments often impose strict, yet ambiguously defined, reporting and operational requirements, creating a legal grey area in which NGOs may inadvertently violate rules they do not fully understand and placing them at risk of suspension or dissolution. Moreover, NGO operations are further constrained by prohibitive fundraising restrictions, unfavorable tax policies, and a lack of clear, accessible mechanisms for obtaining state support. These systemic limitations not only hinder the sustainability of NGOs but also weaken civil society's capacity to address urgent challenges in the region.
5. Funding concentration issues are restricting the development of NGOs on a regional level.
Donor priorities, often shaped by geopolitical interests, media attention, or short-term development agendas, tend to favor certain areas, such as public health and anti-terrorism efforts, over others. While these sectors are undeniably important, this focus has sidelined equally critical but less visible fields, such as grassroots environmental protection, human rights for marginalized groups, and long-term education reform. This structural inequality in the funding landscape throughout the Indo-Pacific region has not only undermined the resilient and sustainable development of the NGO sector but also reinforced the dependency on external funding from the West, which further weakens NGO operations when faced with disruptive geopolitical changes.
6. Lack of opportunities for professional development and career-advancing credentials for NGO workers in the Indo-Pacific is raising serious concerns.
Panelist Linus Lee shares Taiwan’s vision of becoming a regional NGO training hub. Taiwan AID has been organizing a capacity-training program called “NGO Fellowship Program” since 2023, where NGO workers from various countries join a Taiwanese NGO for a month-long period, and engage in daily operations to learn about the systems of NGOs in Taiwan. NGO workers in many Indo-Pacific countries struggle with upward mobility in their careers, due to typically flat structures of NGOs. For that reason, Taiwan’s NGO training hub can potentially fill this gap and generate discourse about the importance of professional development in a sustainable NGO sector.
From the Youth Lens Perspective:
Reflecting on the insights from the discussion at the Yushan Forum and the challenges we observed as youth representatives, some of our takeaways are:
1. Taiwan’s vision of an INGO Hub, which will be supported by cross-sectoral cooperation, signals an urgent need to build a resilient network of NGOs in the Indo-Pacific region.
As Western aid becomes increasingly uncertain, a strategically positioned INGO Hub would serve as a centralized platform to strengthen coordination and resource-sharing among NGOs across the Indo-Pacific region. This would reduce the sector’s vulnerability against external challenges and strengthen regional interconnectivity. In addition, building upon the accumulated efforts of bi-directional exchanges and cooperation through its P-P-P-P approach over the past eight years, Taiwan has far surpassed expectations on successful cross-sectoral cooperation (Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation, 2024). Countries in the Indo-Pacific would do well to consider this proposal seriously with the new NSP+ momentum, not only as a policy initiative but as a necessary step toward long-term regional stability and civil society resilience.
2. Through NGO-enabling policies and a strong democracy, Taiwan sets the standard for a sustainable and efficient NGO landscape.
Taiwan’s commitment to democratic governance, press freedom, gender equality, and human rights provides the necessary political and social conditions in which civil society can thrive. These core values are further reinforced by clear and supportive legal frameworks, as well as proactive government efforts to attract and sustain international NGOs (Taiwan Today, 2024). Taiwan’s domestic civil society sector has expanded rapidly, with the number of registered NGOs increasing fourteen-fold over the past four decades, from approximately 5,000 in the early 1980s to around 70,000 today (Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation, 2023). This harmonization between the government and NGOs in Taiwan has conveyed to the international community that putting NGO-enabling policies in place, alongside the active pursuit of stronger democracy, freedom, and equality, will unlock the full potential of a vibrant and effective civil society sector.
3. A regional INGO Hub can break the cycle of unequal funding distribution, address gaps in professional development for NGO personnel, and foster more balanced development across countries in the Indo-Pacific.
A centralized platform for regional collaboration would enhance NGOs' capacity to tackle complex development issues by promoting the exchange of best practices and facilitating cross-border learning. In doing so, the regional platform can enable NGOs to understand and leverage resources and collaboration channels within the region, reducing reliance on Western nations and strengthening social and cultural engagement. This need for deeper regional collaboration was strongly echoed by panelists like Ms. Cazadira Fediva Tamzil and Amb. Amitabh Amit Shah, who emphasized the value of harmonizing resources and knowledge across borders to enable NGOs to make a bigger impact in the respective communities and sectors they serve.
In addition to fostering collaboration, the INGO Hub would help supplement the lack of professional development opportunities for NGO workers. Given the typically flat structures of NGOs, career progression and leadership training opportunities are often limited. However, programs from Taiwan-based NGOs, such as the “NGO Fellowship Program” from Taiwan Alliance in International Development (Taiwan AID), are already working to address this by providing NGO workers from other countries an exchange and hands-on opportunity to work in Taiwan (Wang, 2025).
These efforts reflect Taiwan’s broader vision to serve not just as a physical hub but as a center for innovation, knowledge, and empowerment in the Indo-Pacific’s civil society landscape, strengthening NGOs’ institutional capacity and improving the effectiveness of their service delivery across borders.
Based on these takeaways, it is imperative to recognize that Taiwan plays a critical role in creating a more resilient and impactful NGO sector in our region to deliver meaningful, community-driven programs, especially in the context of disruptive changes in the regional geopolitical landscape and prevalent development issues. Hence, we express our strong support for Taiwan’s vision of creating an INGO Hub.
Furthermore, the NSP+ also places importance on youth and civic engagement via its three critical civil-society-led corridors. We firmly believe that a stronger and more coordinated NGO sector will ultimately mean greater support for youth participation, ensuring that young voices are heard and meaningfully integrated into the region’s development trajectory.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
At the end of the discussion, the 2025 Yushan Initiative for INGO Cooperation was established, which highlighted Taiwan’s long-term commitments to democracy, human rights, and multicultural inclusivity, as well as calling for more INGOs to set up offices in Taiwan for expanded engagement and effective cooperation.
However, as youth delegates, we believe that this shared mission requires more than Taiwan’s sole effort to be accomplished. The following recommendations are our proposals, from a youth perspective, on how governments, the private sector, civil society, academia, and other stakeholders can join hands to achieve the long-term goal of a resilient, independent, and sustainable NGO sector in the Indo-Pacific.
A. For Governments:
*Diversify NGO funding sources and promote regional financial independence: Establish streamlined national and regional grant schemes to reduce overreliance on Western aid and promote cooperation and bilateral aid programs within the Indo-Pacific.
* Strengthen democratic institutions and protect civic space: Enact and enforce laws that guarantee freedom of association, expression, and peaceful assembly to protect NGO workers from harassment or unjust criminalization.
* Reform legal frameworks to support and engage with NGO development: Simplify and clarify registration, compliance, and reporting procedures for NGOs. Remove unnecessary restrictions on domestic fundraising and foreign funding access, and introduce favorable tax policies for NGOs, streamlining channels for state collaboration and support.
B. For the Private Sector:
* Increase investment in society development through local NGOs: Create Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives that prioritize partnerships with domestic NGOs, especially those in underfunded sectors such as education, climate justice, and marginalized community rights. Provide matching grants, in-kind donations, or co-funding opportunities for NGO-led projects.
* Support NGO capacity-building efforts and innovations alongside the government: Offer more skills-based volunteering, mentorship, and training programs to NGO staff across the region, and invest in NGO incubators or accelerators that can support new or scaling social impact initiatives.
C. For Civil Society, Academia, and Multilateral Platforms:
* Utilize regional think tanks and other multilateral platforms to advocate for an equal funding landscape: Utilize multilateral platforms to highlight and address inequities in funding allocation across sectors. Advocate for more transparent, needs-based donor priorities, particularly in areas such as human rights, environmental justice, and inclusive education.
* Encourage inter-organizational secondments, mentorship networks, and digital learning hubs: Expand access to leadership and technical training through initiatives like Taiwan AID’s NGO Fellowship Program and further strengthen its collaboration with universities to offer certifications or degree programs tailored to NGO professionals in the region.
CONCLUSION
The Indo-Pacific faces an inflection point in its civil society trajectory. As traditional aid paradigms wane and geopolitical uncertainties intensify, the need for sustainable, locally driven, and regionally coordinated NGO frameworks becomes increasingly urgent. Taiwan’s vision of establishing an INGO Hub under the New Southbound Policy+ framework is both timely and strategic - responding not only to operational gaps within Indo-Pacific civil society but also to broader shifts in the geopolitical complexities of the region.
This initiative transcends conventional foreign aid by positioning civil society as a form of strategic infrastructure - where values-based diplomacy, institutional capacity-building, and cross-sectoral partnerships are interwoven into a resilient platform. Taiwan's enabling environment, which is grounded in democratic governance, legal clarity, gender equity, and press freedom, offers a replicable model for regional states seeking to bolster civic engagement and NGO effectiveness.
Moreover, the Yushan Forum’s emphasis on youth, cross-border collaboration, and professional development suggests that this INGO Hub is not merely an operational mechanism but a normative project - one aimed at democratizing access to development, rebalancing power in the NGO funding landscape, and embedding civil society more deeply into the Indo-Pacific’s future.
To realize this vision, however, regional stakeholders must go beyond rhetorical endorsement. They must invest political will, financial resources, and policy reforms into enabling the INGO ecosystem to flourish. Taiwan has offered the blueprint; it is now incumbent upon regional partners to act - not as passive beneficiaries, but as co-creators of a resilient Indo-Pacific region that can weather the geopolitical storms ahead.
REFERENCES
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