Hivos provides support to civil society organizations working in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.

Hivos focuses its efforts on three primary impact areas of humanitarian projects worldwide: climate justice, safeguarding civic rights in the digital age, and promoting gender equality, diversity, and inclusion.

The founders held the conviction that development work should be secular, as true cooperation presumes respect for differing beliefs.

In the first ever brochure, the founders wrote that “necessary changes should spring from communities themselves – from people at the base of society.” These convictions are still reflected in Hivos its work.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Hivos was one of the first major Dutch NGOs that opened offices in the Global South to operate in the close vicinity of its civil society partners, beneficiaries and other stakeholders there.