The Strategic Potential of Democratic Exiles: Belarusian Experiences

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Summary

Europe and the United States host growing communities of individuals and organizations that have been forced to flee countries with authoritarian regimes because of their pro-democracy activities. Can these exiled actors continue to contribute meaningfully to their countries’ democratic development? If so, how can Western policymakers and donors most effectively support them and strengthen their efforts? 

Belarus presents an instructive case study for answering these questions. Belarusians have been forced into exile since soon after President Aliaksandr Lukashenka came to power in 1994, with the outflow of political exiles over the years fluctuating in response to cyclical government repression, which tended to intensify during election periods and ease in the years between. This trend held until the stolen presidential election in 2020 provoked massive public protests. The regime shifted from targeting specific individuals to pursuing entire categories of people, such as those who attended a protest or gave money to a pro-democracy civic group, and forced the closure or departure of independent media and civil society organizations. As 2025 begins and Lukashenka claims a new presidential term, the regime is more reliant than ever on its repressive measures to silence or force the departure of its real and perceived opponents.

Many of Belarus’s displaced activists, journalists, civil society members, political leaders, and likeminded compatriots have remained engaged in their work, attempting to support, inform, sustain, and grow the democratic cause in Belarus. The largest communities of Belarusian exiles are in neighboring Lithuania and Poland, with sizeable communities also present in Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, and countries further afield, forming a constellation of independent media outlets, civil society organizations, and individual activists across Europe.

The longevity, creativity, and achievements of this Belarusian exile community over the last two decades, and particularly during and since the 2020 election, show the potential short-term and longer-term impacts of pro-democracy exiles. Their key contributions have included:

• Providing essential, secure “offshore” administrative and other support to counterparts still in the country
• Ensuring the Belarusian public retained access to accurate reporting about their country and its leaders
• Playing essential roles during the 2020 protest movement that could not be safely performed inside, including sharing information, coordinating protests, and fundraising
• Enabling new exiles to quickly settle in host countries and to resume their activities
• Fostering a stronger sense of Belarusian identity at home and among the diaspora
• Elevating Belarus on the international agenda, which ensured greater Western understanding and support for its democratic movement

The Belarus experience also underscores the need for tailored assistance programs if exiles are to continue contributing to democratic movements in their countries of origin. Many Belarusian exiles received support over the last two decades from a small number of western partners. One of the most active has been the Fund for Belarus Democracy (FBD), an assistance program managed by the German Marshall Fund of the United States that has supported Belarusians inside and outside the country. A review of its record highlights the importance of tailored assistance to sustaining and empowering pro-democracy exiles. The FBD’s flexible, sustained funding directly enabled many individuals and organizations to continue working, develop new approaches, build personal and institutional capacity, and make meaningful contributions in the short and long term to the Belarusian democratic movement. 

The intersecting experiences of Belarusian exiles and the FBD show that exiles can play an essential role in supporting democratic movements in their country of origin, and that carefully and appropriately designed assistance can play an important, and sometimes critical, role in enabling the work of exiles at a relatively low cost. 

Western policymakers considering the strategic implications of this finding must first ensure their expectations are grounded in reality. The struggle of democratic movements against authoritarian regimes can take years or decades. Exiles can play an important role in sustaining and advancing it, but they cannot bring about transformation alone or overnight. The impact of any exile community will also be affected by factors like geographic proximity and physical access to their country of origin, the security situation inside it, and the attitude of their host country. 

Assistance programs can play a critical role in enabling exiles to fulfill their potential as pro-democracy actors, but only if they are tailored to purpose and reflect a different mindset from that of traditional development assistance. (What is more, exiles require not just grants but also government support for basic needs like visas, work permits, and access to public services.)

The FBD experience and the case of Belarus suggest the following principles for designing and delivering effective assistance to exiles:

• Start early and support nascent pro-democratic exile communities as soon as they begin forming. They need not be large to be impactful and are likely only to grow. Early investments will be cost-efficient and pay long-term dividends.
• Build a program and a strategy for the long haul, requiring a tailored operational platform, financial predictability, and an underlying theory of long-term impact.
• Maximize programmatic and operational flexibility to navigate unpredictable operating conditions, to engage unconventional partners, to seize opportunities, and to adjust as circumstances warrant.
• Adopt a portfolio approach to grant-making and assess success in the collective long-term impact of all grants rather than the outcome of any single activity. 
• Recognize the multiple benefits of an effective grant for planning and budgeting purposes, looking beyond the grant’s most immediate outcomes to how it may build grantee (and program) experience, capabilities, reputation, and relationships.   
• Encourage creative approaches to advance goals, including by supporting well crafted, outwardly apolitical activities to reach and to engage target constituencies in new ways. 
• Accept repeat grants and financial uncertainty of key grantees whose work is delivering strategic impact; traditional development assistance preoccupations about long-term sustainability of grantees are not relevant.
• Trust and defer to the recipients of assistance when it comes to assessing and mitigating security risks inside the country.