Defending Civic Space: Four unresolved questions

Article By Thomas Carothers, Director, and Saskia Brechenmacher, Associate Fellow, Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

The trend of closing civic space crystallised at the beginning of this decade. In response, concerned international actors — including various bilateral aid agencies, foreign ministries, private foundations and international nongovernmental organisations — are working to address this problem. They have carried out many diagnostic efforts and gained greater knowledge of the issue. They have initiated a wide range of measures to limit or counteract it, from setting up emergency funds for endangered activists and supporting national campaigns against new civil society restrictions to pushing international bodies, like the Financial Action Task Force, to take better account of the issue.

Despite these efforts, the negative trend persists. Every year, more governments take formal and informal measures to reduce the space for independent civil society. Attacks on the legitimacy of international support for civil society continue to multiply. Shared learning amongst those actors intent on closing space seems to be increasing at a faster rate than learning amongst those fighting back. Furthermore, new dimensions of the problem keep emerging. In some countries, a rise in nationalism or religious fundamentalism has led to new attacks on minorities and progressive civil society groups by both state and non-state actors. Autocratic governments are now using new technological tools to amplify their repressive tactics and illiberal narratives, both domestically and across borders. More generally, while the issue of closing civic space initially appeared to be a discrete challenge, consisting primarily of restrictive NGO laws and a backlash against cross-border civil society funding, it now appears to be just one part of a much broader pattern of global democratic recession and authoritarian resurgence.

This sobering reality requires the international community of concerned actors to think hard about how to strengthen their responses. In some ways, relevant actors already know a lot about the types of efforts that are useful, such as the value of supporting national coalitions to resist restrictive measures. But on a surprisingly wide range of issues, considerable doubt and debate persists. Some of the uncertainty concerns small to medium-sized issues. For example, some civil society funders feel that making their assistance more transparent will help reduce suspicion and pushback, while others fear that greater transparency will only facilitate repression. And while some hold that pushing local partners to build wider constituencies for their work is key to resisting attacks on the legitimacy of civil society, others argue that constituency-building will always be a limited strategy as many civic causes inherently appeal only to certain communities.

Beyond these important operational and programmatic debates, a number of larger questions remain unresolved in the minds of many funders:

Closing or changing? Is the overall phenomenon best understood as a global trend of closing civic space, or of changing civic space? In other words, should it be understood as a more multidimensional and politically varied development than implied by the closing space narrative? Some critics argue that the “closing space” discourse assumes a largely homogenous civil society that primarily consists of professionalised NGOs and, in so doing, misses how civil society is changing but not necessarily shrinking in many places. Such changes include an expansion of space for conservative civic movements, a transformation of activism into more fluid and informal forms, the multiplication of large-scale protest movements, and the emergence of new types of digital activism. If change, rather than simply closure, is the more accurate lens, what does this mean for how international actors should adjust to this new global environment?

Symptoms or root causes? Is it more effective to focus on a relatively bounded agenda of promoting a positive enabling environment for civil society, or should funders approach the issue at a much higher level, and more broadly fight backsliding on democracy, pluralism and human rights? Some concerned actors have the sense that responses to date have been mostly reactive, and that simply anticipating, resisting and adapting to new restrictions risks missing the root causes of the problem. Yet, if root causes and drivers are to be addressed more proactively, do we agree on what these are, and how to ensure that a broader focus does not end up diluting action or having a paralysing effect?

Global versus local? How can funders most effectively support local-level responses to the problem while taking into account its transnational and global dimensions? Many concerned international actors agree that effective responses need to be primarily located at the national level and be driven by local civil society. At the same time, the problem of shrinking civic space has clear transnational and global dimensions. Governments worldwide are using a similar playbook and engaging in repression across borders. Certain illiberal narratives also appear to be spreading transnationally through concerted cross-border actions. For funders, this raises the question of how to best integrate the global dimensions of the trend with their country-specific strategies and ensure their various efforts add up to a coherent whole.

To blame or not to blame? Lastly, have aid providers done enough to ensure that they are not contributing to shrinking civic space? Aid providers continue to debate the extent to which they are exacerbating the problem by imposing, for example, certain organisational models on the civic sector in aid-receiving countries that make civil society less domestically rooted and sustainable. Local civil society organisations still often cite current funding models — especially the ever-growing pressures for detailed monitoring and evaluation — as one of the biggest barriers to do their work effectively, independently from government restrictions. Some funders have made concrete changes in their funding practices to try reaching a wider range of more informal civil society actors, rather than the same usual suspects. Others face internal bureaucratic barriers that make greater flexibility difficult.

Ultimately, mounting a larger, more effective and more coordinated response to the still-growing trend of closing civic space is a fundamental challenge for international aid and policy actors committed to democracy and human rights. Facing these various unresolved questions and working together to arrive at consensus-based answers to them is one part of the task.

 

By Thomas Carothers, Director, and Saskia Brechenmacher, Associate Fellow, Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Originally published on the OECD Development Matter blog

Reclaiming civic space: global challenges, local responses

To reclaim civic space, there are three key drivers that organizations must focus on, and three critical issues affecting local responses.

This article was originally published in this form on the OpenGlobalRights website, written by: Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah & Mandeep Tiwana

From attacks on human rights defenders to limits on civil society’s work, we are facing an emergency on civic space. As evidence from the CIVICUS Monitor suggests, threats to civic freedoms are no longer just happening in fragile states and autocracies, but also in more mature democracies. While there has been growing attention on how to respond to this phenomenon, we believe there needs to be more attention on underlying drivers and on supporting local responses. Civic space can’t be “saved” from the outside.

Many of the current restrictions on civil society are knee-jerk responses, sometimes pre-emptive, to popular mobilizations, a sad and unexpected result of the initial hope of the so-called Arab Spring. Of course, this pattern is not the only cause of growing constraints on civic freedoms. Repurposing of the global security discourse to curb dissent, restrictions on international funding for advocacy groups by nationalist leaders, and retreat from the international human rights framework using flimsy arguments of state sovereignty are all ways by which the rights discourse is being undone. While there are several drivers of civic space restrictions, three in particular are worth paying attention to, due to their cross-cutting nature and deep impacts.

1. The business of civil society repression

The impact of of mega-corporations and market fundamentalism in undermining civic freedoms cannot be overemphasised. Private sector influences are particularly clear in the area of natural resource exploitation by extractive industries and big agri-businesses when local, often indigenous, environmental defenders face retaliation for protecting natural resources from grabs by corrupt business and political interests. The assassination of award winning Honduran activist Berta Caceres and restrictions on the right to peaceful protest for those opposed to the Dakota Oil pipeline in the United States are examples of how of these challenges transcend global North-South boundaries.

2. A toxic mix of extremist ideologies

Civil society is also being increasingly targeted by extremists aiming to divide societies around narrow interpretations of ethnicity or religion. Civil society emphasis on diversity and social cohesion is derided  as antithetical to nationalist cultural values and in some cases those speaking out against such projects are branded as operating at the behest of outside interests. In Europe, for example, civil society groups working on the rights of refugee and migrant populations are facing a backlash. In many parts of West Asia, women’s rights defenders have been attacked by armed groups seeking to impose puritanical religious doctrines on populations by arguing that gender equality is a Western construct. In South Asia, bloggers and journalists have been persecuted online and offline for opposing dominant cultural mores, while in Africa religious evangelists have linked up with like-minded groups on other continents to spur extreme forms of homophobia and attack defenders of LGBTI rights.

3. Retreat from democracy and multilateralism

We’re also facing a crisis of moral leadership on the international stage which has led to a retreat from universal human rights values and is negatively impacting civil society. Degradation of civic freedoms and the emergence of “neo-fascist” politics in Europe and the United States have emboldened despotic regimes in countries such as Bahrain, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and more, to attack dissenters and consolidate their power by manipulating electoral processes and state institutions. From the Philippines to Russia, Turkey and Venezuela, efforts are underway to silence dissent whereby repression against those who speak the language of human rights is becoming the norm rather than the exception.

Despite these challenges, placing local responses at the heart of efforts to reclaim civic space is critical.  Based on conversations with civil society stakeholders on their present challenges, we have  identified three under-researched but critical issues:

a. Resourcing resilience, close to the ground

In an era of growing linkages between rights oriented civil society organizations and the donor/philanthropic community, financial resources have become a key area of contestation. Only a tiny proportion of development assistance actually goes directly to civil society in the global South. Fickle donor priorities and excessive deference to whims of governments that restrict international funding have caused several smaller organizations to fold up. At the same time, bigger ones, which are more adept at marketing and meeting sophisticated accounting requirements of donors, are expanding. The organized civil society firmament has already started to resemble the market with big franchises edging out locally owned and rooted businesses. For example, an organization run by Syrian refugees in Turkey says they have experienced difficulties accessing international funding despite having much more relevant local knowledge than the international organizations that attract global donors. International donors should be mindful of how their red tape excludes community organizations that possess local expertise and have significantly lower overheads.

b. Beyond accounts-ability

Across the world, the legitimacy of organized civil society is being challenged on several fronts, from politicians demonizing them as disconnected special interest groups to social movements that see traditional CSOs as arcane at best and co-opted at worst. The usual ways in which CSOs demonstrate their accountability—through compliance with regulatory requirements and donor reporting are proving insufficient to convince skeptical politicians or publics. We thus need to move beyond just “accounts-ability” to enhanced transparency and dialogue with communities, not for the sake of checking a box but because they are key to making meaningful change. This shift could include things like people-centred decision-making, real-time adaptation to stakeholder needs, and nurturing the next generation of social change-makers. This form of accountability is not only about financial reporting and transparency to donors but about meaningful dialogue with affected communities and stakeholders, and keeping an eye on big picture outcomes to drive organizational decision-making process.

c. Standing together

Lastly, an energetic, civil society-led, global response is needed to counter attacks on civic freedoms. Many of us have done a good job of ensuring that the reality of closing civic space is on the international community’s radar, but efforts to push back against restrictions are often duplicative and uncoordinated. We must make clear that the enabling of civil society rights is an essential part of the defense of democracy. To do this, we need to form and work in progressive alliances, bringing together substantial masses of citizens and connecting classic CSOs, protest movements, journalists, trade unions, youth groups, social enterprises, artistic platforms and many other parts of the civil society universe.

A robust civic space can only exist within a functioning democracy, and thus safeguarding civil society also involves re-imagining more participatory models of democracy, with citizens at their heart. Seen in this way, the over-arching challenge is not a technical, short-term one of pushing back on attacks on civic space, but a longer-term political one of re-imagining a more participatory landscape where substantive democracy thrives.

***This article is an extract of an essay published in the 26th edition of the Sur Journal of Human Rights.