“The great majority of people in the world cannot raise their hand and speak freely,” said Dagmar Pruin, president of Brot für die Welt, as the organization released its annual Atlas of Civil Society. She warned that even in Germany “some narratives are being purposely buried,” and gave the example of how criticism of right‑wing extremism is sometimes dismissed as merely ideological.
The Atlas of Civil Society, compiled each year by Brot für die Welt in cooperation with partner groups, tracks trends affecting NGOs, protest movements and media freedom worldwide. This edition highlights the global spread of disinformation, especially in the age of artificial intelligence.
Key findings include that only 3.4% of the world’s population now lives in truly open societies, while 30.7% live under completely closed, authoritarian regimes. Brot für die Welt’s human rights expert Silke Pfeiffer said there has been a 7% rise in societies categorized as having “limited” openness. That group includes a number of countries in the global north that present themselves as democratic — the United States, France, Italy and Germany among them.
A “limited” ranking, the report explains, is assigned when civil society actors face heavy surveillance, demonstrations are sometimes met with violent repression, and dissent is curtailed or censored. Pfeiffer cited increased incidents of police brutality and arrests at protests in Germany as a key reason for the downgrade. Many of those confrontations occurred at solidarity demonstrations for civilians in Gaza and at renewed climate protests, but the report also flags an uptick in discrimination and hate — including queerphobia, sexism, racism and antisemitism.
The Atlas places special emphasis on disinformation, noting how rapid advances in AI amplify false or misleading content. Using data from the Ernst & Young AI Sentiment Index, which surveyed 15,000 people across 15 countries, Brot für die Welt found that 75% of respondents fear receiving bad information from AI, yet only about one third take steps to verify what they see.
The report highlights several topics that are frequently targeted by AI‑driven disinformation campaigns: immigration (often framed in relation to crime), attacks on LGBT+ communities, and efforts to undermine climate science. Public attitudes reflect this erosion of trust: in Germany the share of people who say climate change is caused by natural cycles rather than human activity rose from 23% in 2021 to 33% last year. Across the European Union the proportion skeptical of human‑caused climate change moved from 25% five years ago to 35% in 2025.
Brot für die Welt urges stronger protections for activists and civil society across the EU and calls for more rigorous enforcement of the Digital Services Act. While the law is intended to hold large online platforms to account for disinformation and hate speech, the report argues that legal loopholes and vague provisions have allowed major tech companies to meet obligations with minimal effort.
The Atlas frames these developments as part of a broader, global shift toward constrained civic space and degraded public discourse, and it calls on governments, platforms and civil society to act to safeguard democratic debate and protect those who speak out.