In recent years, the international scientific community has mobilized swiftly to defend academic freedom when it is under threat in wealthy nations. During the Trump administration, when American climate scientists feared political retaliation, Canadian institutions opened digital repositories and established “climate sanctuaries”. Following Brexit, European funding agencies adapted frameworks to accommodate displaced British researchers. In 2022, Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation expanded its Philipp Schwartz Initiative to provide shelter for Ukrainian researchers fleeing war. In 2025, the European Commission, under Horizon Europe’s expanded mandate, launched the Rapid Response Mobility Scheme (RRMS), providing expedited fellowships for at-risk scholars from conflict zones in Europe and North America, including U.S.-based reproductive health scientists facing state-level legal retaliation.

These actions were principled, timely, and necessary. But solidarity has limits. When researchers in the Global South face surveillance, intimidation, or political suppression, the global system seldom responds with comparable urgency. The geography of scientific protection remains stubbornly unequal.

Indonesia illustrates this disparity. Its scientists are deeply embedded in planetary research, from coral reef monitoring and zoonotic spillover surveillance to climate modelling. Yet many work under tightening constraints. Fieldwork permits are delayed, politically inconvenient data are met with administrative interference, and researchers publishing critical findings encounter informal harassment. Some reports are being monitored after releasing studies on deforestation or reef degradation, particularly when findings contradict state narratives. These scholars publish in leading international journals, contribute to IPCC chapters, and collaborate with foreign institutions, but when they are targeted, emergency support rarely materializes.

The silence is structural. An overwhelming share of funding for Global South research is channelled through institutions in the Global North. According to the Wellcome Trust’s 2023/24 report, only 8.3% of its £1.6 billion annual research funding was awarded to institutions in low- and middle-income countries. Similar trends are observable with the NIH and the Gates Foundation. Even projects focused on Global South contexts are often administered and led by Northern institutions. Local partners are frequently relegated to peripheral roles, with limited influence over research design, authorship, or dissemination.

This inequity extends beyond grants. Visa regimes create barriers that selectively gatekeep access to global science. While at-risk scholars from Ukraine and the United States benefit from streamlined mobility channels, researchers from countries like Nigeria, Bangladesh, or Indonesia confront opaque security checks, excessive documentation demands, and arbitrary delays. These systemic obstacles routinely undermine academic mobility.

Professional societies and journal editorial boards reflect a similar imbalance. Although a frequently cited figure suggests that around 80–85% of editorial board members of top-tier journals are based in OECD countries, more precise and discipline-specific data provide a clearer picture. A 2023 preprint by Baccini and Re, analyzing over 1,500 economics journals, demonstrated that editorial leadership remains overwhelmingly centered in the U.S. and other OECD institutions. Similarly, a 2024 investigation published in Frontiers in Psychology revealed consistent underrepresentation of Global South scholars in the editorial boards of education journals. These imbalances are not merely symbolic—they determine what counts as global knowledge, which research gets visibility, and whose crises are deemed worthy of global scientific mobilization.

Scientific knowledge is not neutral to geography. What counts as a global crisis, which data are deemed credible, and whose risks elicit international concern are all shaped by institutional and geopolitical hierarchies. The absence of protective mechanisms for Global South researchers is not an oversight; it is a manifestation of a system that privileges visibility, access, and pedigree.

Yet local researchers are indispensable. A growing body of research underscores that community-based and locally-led conservation initiatives often achieve more contextually relevant, equitable, and sustainable outcomes than externally imposed interventions. These approaches, commonly led by Global South scientists, emphasize local stakeholder engagement and draw upon indigenous and situated ecological knowledge—forms of expertise that cannot be substituted by remote sensing or top-down modeling. Studies across diverse contexts, including sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, affirm that such approaches enhance ecological resilience, social legitimacy, and long-term impact (e.g., Reyes-García et al., 2018; Bennett et al., 2017).

Addressing these disparities requires structural rethinking. Emergency funding for scientists at risk must prioritize geographic balance and minimize bureaucratic hurdles. Fellowship programs should be reciprocal, allowing Southern institutions to both host and protect. International scientific societies should expand their advocacy mandates, adopting models akin to journalistic protection networks. Above all, research partnerships must shift from extractive to equitable: co-authorship, co-design, and shared agenda-setting must become the norm.

Science thrives on plurality. True internationalism demands more than representation—it requires redistribution. Unless the global scientific community reforms how it protects, funds, and values knowledge production across borders, it risks reinforcing the very inequities it claims to challenge. The choice is stark. Global science can remain a gated sanctuary for the privileged—or it can become a universal refuge, as its ideals demand.

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