Written by Mahmood Sonday, Reos Partners Managing Director. This article first appeared in the Moving Through Tough Terrain newsletter.
This year has been marked by immense global disruption. While viscerally amplified by the current US administration, the underlying drivers of the polycrisis have been with us for some time. Many in the global majority world, with strained public systems, are now reckoning with the realities of a post-aid world, geopolitical instability, and evolving trade and diplomatic ties. There is a growing sense that our systems—political, economic, natural, moral—are cracking.
At Reos, we felt the impact directly when one of our systems change programmes, focused on improving outcomes for adolescent girls and young women living with HIV, came to an abrupt halt. This followed the reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule, an executive order that withdrew critical funding from programmes associated with sexual and reproductive health. The policy didn’t just cut off resources; it derailed progress in one of the most urgent areas of public health.
Betrayal and Rediscovering a Moral Core
Part of what seems to be unfolding is a breakdown in the social contract. When egregious violations of human rights and international law—the targeted killing of children, journalists, and medical professionals—are met with silence or complicity by those who claim moral leadership, a sense of betrayal, and awakening is evoked. To borrow and tweak a line from Richard Pithouse, that even for those who take the view that the long arc of the moral universe does indeed bend towards justice, it is clear that we are witnessing the arc of history bend back against justice, against, in fact, the very idea of a moral universe.
In moments like this, it is tempting to retreat into despair, into numbness, or into seductive binaries: West vs East, North vs South, good vs evil, oppressor vs oppressed. These frames offer temporary clarity, even catharsis. But they are not maps for liberation. They are empty escape routes from the more daunting complexity we must confront.
Perhaps part of our despair arises from the persistent illusion that those with more power or resources who know more, care more, and would do more. But history and this moment remind us that power does not confer moral clarity. Often, it distorts it.
When laws fail us, when multilateralism unravels, and when global norms prove selective, we are forced to return to something more primal. As Steve Biko once wrote, we must rediscover “the greatest gift—a more human face.” Self-preservation may be instinctual, but conscience can be cultivated.
Power, Solidarity and the Ethics of Collaboration
Power, we know, is rarely yielded. But crises can open space to reimagine, to realign, to relinquish the obsolete and focus on what is essential. Crisis invites us to invest in alliances not based on convenience, but on shared purpose. The Latin root of the word solidarity is solidare, “to make firm, to strengthen.” In this sense, collaboration rooted in solidarity is not sentiment. It is structure. It is discipline. It is the choice to bind ourselves to others, especially those with less power, in ways that reduce our propensity to retrofit moral clarity onto complicity.
This means asking different questions:
- How do we work with those we don’t like or trust while also building power with allies?
- How do we ensure that collaboration, based on principle, does not obscure or enable narrow agendas while at the same time letting go of notions of purity?
- When laws are applied selectively, what values and frameworks can anchor our work in a shared ethic of humanity?
These are not theoretical questions. There are live tensions in every boardroom, philanthropy, or impact-oriented enterprise today. And they call for something more than clever analysis; they call for courage, humility, and the willingness to be transformed by those we walk with.
What This Moment Demands
In this climate of compounding disruption, it’s clear that navigating uncertainty is no longer a niche skill. We’ve seen the value of creating spaces for teams to reflect, realign, and stretch their capacity to lead, not alone, but together.
In our work, we walk alongside leaders who are contending with this rupture: who are building systemic awareness, engaging with their own disillusionment, and choosing to act anyway. This is not about having the correct answer. It is about holding the right questions, with others, long enough to allow something truer to emerge.
It is about cultivating the capacity to lead with integrity, dignity, and authenticity, even and especially when the ground is shifting. Because when the going gets tough, the tough don’t go it alone. They get together, guided by courage and conscience. A courage to get hard things done to improve the lives of people.
