CIVICUS World Assembly
CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation is an international alliance of members and partners which constitutes an influential network of organisations at the local, national, regional and international levels and spans the spectrum of civil society <a>more</a>
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Claudia Kis Madrid es una participante y una voluntaria blogger en la Asemblea Mundial de CIVICUS.
En el taller titulado “Las muchas caras del movimiento climático” se habló entre otras cosas sobre las oportunidades que presentan las aplicaciones web para lograr una mayor participación y movilización ciudadana.
El mundo digital tiene grandes posibilidades para difundir información de manera muy rápida, vincular personas al otro lado del planeta e implicar a los jóvenes en el debate actual. Por esta razón CIVICUS también está explorando nuevos horizontes a partir de su nueva aplicación para iPhone.
Este tipo de aplicaciones web para teléfonos inteligentes sirven como plataformas permanentes de dialogo y expresión. Permiten a las organizaciones de la sociedad civil conjuntar esfuerzos y compartir información, y son a su vez, espacios donde los ciudadanos pueden proponer alternativas y coordinar iniciativas.
Sin embargo, no debemos olvidar que las aplicaciones web son únicamente uno de los múltiples instrumentos que deben usarse para debatir y coordinar acciones ya que aún muy poca gente en el planeta puede comunicarse a través de esta tecnología. Creo, en este sentido, que es necesario seguir considerando el recurso de la palabra y del contacto humano para lograr una mayor participación y movilización ciudadana. De no ser así, muchos quedarán excluidos del debate actual y de la acción.
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Category : Connecting People Through Technology, Spanish Content
Augusta Dwyer is the author of Broke But Unbroken: Grassroots Social Movements and Their Radical Solutions to Poverty.
As development practitioners and non-governmental organizations addressing issues of global poverty seek more effective ways of changing the current status quo, they are recognizing the need for communities of the poor to demand more accountability from both governments and policy-makers.
The heady events we have come to know as the Arab Spring are just one recent example of the aspirations of millions of people in North Africa and the Middle East for a greater say in their lives, for more just and economically equitable societies. In many other countries, from Brazil to Thailand to Senegal – to name only a representative few – social movements already decades old have also been struggling to define their own development processes.
In Brazil, the Landless Rural Workers Movement has used direct action to take state land and unproductive estates and distribute them among the poor. In doing so, they have empowered hundreds of thousands, setting up schools, cooperatives and organic farming initiatives. More than 370,000 families now cultivate the land instead of living in dire circumstances at the margins of society.
In Thailand, the Assembly of the Poor has long challenged their government’s development policies, top-down decisions that have destroyed their abilities to make a living as fisherfolk, farmers and forest dwellers. In Senegal, various community organizations have come together and formed networks for local development, deciding what needs to change and searching for international partners to work with them in their endeavours.
Perhaps one of the most interesting alternatives the global poor have themselves devised, however, is the International Urban Poor Fund. This fund is managed by members of the Shack/Slum Dwellers International from various developing nations. Donations from private trusts and the governments of Norway and Sweden are routed through Britain’s International Institute for Environment and Development. Since 2001, it has disbursed over $5 million to organizations of the urban poor to build housing and establish community-run microfinance schemes.
Here we find a process where the poor themselves make important decisions about what kinds of projects they need and how to implement them. What’s more, these projects cost far less than traditional aid projects, and are sustained by the people who designed them.
By working with the grassroots, bringing the voices of the poor and marginalized to the centre is possible. Like the courageous protestors who gave birth to the Arab Spring, they have already proven themselves capable of struggling for – and winning – truly stirring transformations.
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Category : Civil Society and Democratic Space, Connecting People Through Technology
Claudia Kis Madrid es una participante y una voluntaria blogger en la Asemblea Mundial de CIVICUS.
La conferencia de Naciones Unidas Sobre Medio ambiente y Desarrollo Rio+20 representa una oportunidad para establecer nuevas normas y objetivos de desarrollo. Sin embargo a menos de un año de Rio+20 la sociedad civil no se está aun movilizando. Las organizaciones de la sociedad civil no tienen aun espacios de dialogo permanente en donde puedan establecer agendas comunes. Tampoco existen espacios de discusión ciudadana en donde los individuos puedan hablar sobre temas claves la Cumbre.
Las organizaciones presentes en la Asamblea Mundial de CIVICUS 2011 coinciden en que, en general, la gente no esta animada para participar en Rio +20. Sin embargo, están cocientes de que hoy más que nunca la movilización es necesaria.
Hay temas importantes presentes en la Asamblea como el financiamiento de la adaptación al cambio climático, la creación de empleos verdes, la protección social universal, la descentralización de la energía renovable, la iniciativa de subsidios globales, etc. Esto refleja que no sólo se trata de revisar las grandes problemáticas ambientales, sino de analizar en conjunto las metas de desarrollo y buscar soluciones que integren tanto lo económico como lo social y ambiental.
El problema es ponerse de acuerdo para poder tener un impacto positivo. El papel de la sociedad civil no es de llegar a Rio+20 a manifestarse. Se trata de toda una preparación, un debate previo, durante y después. Es una lucha que puede ganarse con la participación de todos. Con la búsqueda de soluciones conjuntas, con el apoyo entre organizaciones. Porque de nada sirve duplicar esfuerzos y desperdiciar recursos.
Rio +20 representa una oportunidad. Si queremos que las cosas funcionen de diferente manera que como hasta ahora debemos buscar alternativas. Encontrar nuevas formas de transmitir los mensajes y de participar.
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Category : Climate Justice, Spanish Content
Claudia Kis Madrid es una participante y una voluntaria blogger en la Asemblea Mundial de CIVICUS.
La Conferencia de Naciones Unidas sobre Desarrollo Sostenible (Rio+20) pretende renovar el compromiso político y evaluar el progreso que ha habido hasta la fecha en la implementación de los acuerdos en materia de desarrollo sustentable.
La economía verde será el tema central en Rio+20. Sin embargo, ¿es realmente esta una solución al problema de la creciente destrucción ambiental y la pobreza? ¿Se puede realmente solucionar el conflicto de intereses entre la sostenibilidad ecológica y el desarrollo? ¿Qué es el desarrollo verde? ¿Quién se beneficia?
El problema hoy en día es lograr el progreso social respetando el medio ambiente. En este sentido habrá que tener cuidado en no caer en el típico negocio verde: parches verdes, crecimiento verde… Los nuevos acuerdos en Rio+20 deben replantear el concepto de desarrollo sustentable. Es decir, deben reconocer el valor de la naturaleza, deben poner énfasis en la equidad intra e intergeneracional.
Es tiempo de pensar si vamos por buen camino. Necesitamos implicarnos y movilizarnos para que los nuevos marcos regulatorios incluyan principios que nos beneficien a todos.
El primero de Noviembre es la fecha límite para enviar propuestas para la agenda Rio+20. Esta es la dirección: uncsd2012@un.org
Para más información sobre Rio+20:
http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/index.php
http://www.earthsummit2012.org/
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Category : Climate Justice, Spanish Content
Tags: Rio+20
Louis-Félix Binette is a volunteer blogger and participant of CIVICUS World Assembly.
This post was originally published here.i grew up in the decade that saw the rise of the AIDS epidemic. the concept of safe sex was drilled in my head by parents who had known the “good ol’ days” of peace & love gatherings and all. while it is true that AIDS still represents a very serious threat, the dawn of the information age has brought on a new generation of sometimes life-threatening dangers. before cellphones and the internet became household commodities, “evil forces” had to plant spies everywhere, at a very high cost, to monitor every move of what they identified as potential troublemakers. today, they need only need a few geeks in a dark basement to know where you are, who you talk to and what your cousin’s baby had for breakfast.
for all the beauty of life 2.0, there are also serious pitfalls. they can be avoided, of course, but not without taking some serious precautions in the way you share thing on the web. on the second day of the tenth civicus world assembly, in montreal, i attended a workshop by freedom house‘s internet freedom project director, robert guerra, and carmen algeciras, of the development research center, where i learned that there are many steps to be taken if you want your ride on the information superhighway to be as safe as possible.
the problem is not that it is in and of itself dangerous to navigate the web, but the ease with which you find the answer to any trivial question by typing a few words in google also applies to people who would love to know a few things about you. this can become particularly treacherous if you are a (pardon my words) shit-disturber trying to mess up some organisation or state’s well-laid plans. your naïveté or your organisation’s laissez-faire, if you work in a politically sensitive area, could also put at risk the lives of the very people you are trying to help. as mr. guerra bluntly presented it, embarking on a facebook smear campaign against the powerful without some basic precautions is nothing short of suicidal. and there are examples to prove it. many.
other participants in the workshop — mostly seasoned international development workers — all had horror, almost james bond-like, stories to tell. beyond the anecdotal, these testimonies show that you don’t have to be engaged in coup d’état planning to become the target of malignant action. cellphones, for example, can be remotely controlled to turn on and start recording your conversation. every internet query you send goes through so many hands that it’s basically public by the time you get your answer back. it doesn’t even have to travel that far if you are on a wireless network.
so what can you do? well, just like safe sex, it all starts with your head: think before you act. if you fear you could be followed or the target of electronic eavesdropping, don’t carry your cellphone unless you can take the battery out. same thing with chat and email: don’t share unless you know it’s safe to do so. the more sensitive and potentially compromising the information, the more cautious you need to be. but if you deal counterparts in china and other states with dubious human rights, don’t assume they are as safe as you are. any information you send their way could prove fatal to them.
most mainstream services out there (google, facebook, twitter, etc.) offer some level of security, but it’s often disabled by default so you need to put in some legwork. protect your passwords, usehttps everywhere for firefox and activate two-step verification when possible. there is a plethora of resources and specialised services out there to help you achieve higher levels of security if you need it. Here are a few that mr. guerra recommended:
- the adventures of super peif, a belorussian comic book the equivalent of “online security for dummies” (english and russian translations available)
- the surveillance self-defence guide of the electronic frontier foundation
- the security-in-a-box project offers tools and tactics for the digital security and privacy needs of advocates and human rights defenders
- 12pmtutorials show you how to use internet privacy and anticensorship tools
- vaultletsoft offers a secure email and document management alternative to gmail and dropbox, cool features like self-deleting messages and free licensing to NGOs
you wouldn’t cross a highway without at least looking both ways — unless you’d really like to experience what it feels like to be the famous deer in the headlights. so do your homework before you jump into the fray. as technologies evolve (and we all know how fast they do), great opportunities arise for larger networks, better coordination and faster action, but, as we virtualise more and more of our data, its very mobility becomes our achilles heel. always keep abreast of new developments. people with malicious intentions are certainly looking for novel ways to hurt you, or at least take advantage of you (take ransomware as an example). for those of us that live in safe political environments, the worst thing that lax management of our privacy can lead to is identity theft (and god knows it is by no means fun), but in some countries, it may mean the difference between life and death — something i, for one, find rather important, especially when it comes to planning my next holiday.
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Category : Connecting People Through Technology
Tags: digital security
Louis-Félix Binette is a volunteer blogger and participant of CIVICUS World Assembly.
This post was originally published here.
i am currently volunteering at the tenth civicus world assembly, held for the second time in montreal. civicus is sort of an worldwide umbrella and forum for civil society organisations (CSOs) working to give a voice to populations around the globe. i joined a team of young rapporteurs, bloggers and microbloggers (tweeps!) who are divided to attend the various workshops and report on what they hear, learn, think — either instantly through twitter, or by writing reports or posts that get posted on the blog later in the day. i can’t help but be impressed by the diversity of backgrounds, origins and interests of these young people. they are all extremely curious about the world, open to new ideas and willing to learn.what i find the most amazing though, is that, beyond all the people i meet during coffee breaks and lunch (many fresh faces but a lot of known ones too), sort of randomly, i ‘meet’ extremely inspiring people on #civwa, the “hashtag” under which you will be able to follow the twitter conversation that goes on around the world on the topic of civicus world assembly. some of them are right here at the palais des congrès de montréal (although i haven’t seen them… yet). others couldn’t make the long and costly trek across a couple of oceans and continents to come to montreal — CSOs are not usually super-flush with cash — but are using the new media to not only follow the deliberations at civicus (all plenaries and some workshops are transmitted through live video streaming) but also interact with fellow activists by reading their twitter stream and tweeting back.
so as i am sitting in a dimly lit conference room in montreal, listening to the inspiring words of speakers who have lived the apartheid, played a leading role in the arab springor are at the helm of some of the world’s largest, most iconic CSOs, i find myself chatting, sharing thoughts and memorable quotes with people scattered on all continents and people sitting a few feet away from me, in the same ridiculously air-conditioned room — all of this without a sound, in 140-character whispers, if you wish. in a way, those big speeches were not just being spoken and heard by the people in the room; they were generating a whole conversation, a shared, live reflection, through which links were being woven between people who would have otherwise kept apart forever by geography and culture.
as the builders of civicus – dr. rajesh tandon, one of its founding members, thierno kane, patrick johnston and anabel cruz, former chairs of its board of directors — spoke about its history, they also told the story of a broader movement, of a rebalancing act that is still taking place before our eyes. as recently as twenty or so years ago, civil society was still seen as organisations of white, often rich (at least from the point of view of a wide majority of the world’s population) people asking their governments to care for the poor in the third world. the civil society represented at civicus is something else: it’s people of the world raising their voice to speak for their own people and fighting for their own collective future.
and judging by the multicultural bunch that i got to meet today and the communication channels that pay absolutely no mind to traditional geopolitical boundaries, that shift is still happening as we speak. or should i say, as we blog, text and tweet?
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Category : Connecting People Through Technology
Rowena McNaughton is Media Officer for CIVICUS.
In a city of manicured lawns, double garages and neat houses all proudly flaunting an American flag, a man slows his glistening 4WD Toyota pick-up, winds down a tinted window, extends an arm and then raises his middle finger, aiming it towards a group of people clinging to a banner that reads: “climate change is not in our national interest”. A few obscenities are verbalised before the truck exits the protest area in a haze of exhaust fumes.
Over a two-week civil disobedience campaign against TransCanadas proposed Keystone XL pipeline, this overt display of condemnation towards the thousands who stood patiently outside Washington’s White House, demanding president Obama block the pipeline, was a rare event. Inside the white walls, however, the big question still waiting for an answer is will the powers that be side with the pick up driver or the beneficiaries of his abuse?
For the protest organiser, Bill McKibben, the jury is out. “Canada’s putting on full diplomatic pressure, and the oil companies have more money than god, but we’ve changed the odds a little bit these last two weeks,” he said in an interview last week. As for thew protest impact – it certainly got our attention. Especially thanks to Daryl Hannah being amongst the 1,252 people who were arrested during the protest. Her blonde locks were smeared across our media pages minutes after the some what confused police officers delicately handcuffed the star. Also, if commentary is any guide, Canada too, is losing its clean green environment image. A Greenpeace protest set for September 26 in Ottawa, “No Tsar Sands sit-in” has already been dubbed the largest civil society protest in Canada’s history.
Apparently though, where decisions are concerned, we will all have to wait. The Obama administration is said to be planning to make a final decision on the pipeline no sooner then the end of the year, after it determines whether the project is in the U.S. national interest.
If approved, Keystone XL would carry oil from the largest recoverable oil patches in the world – Alberta, in northern Canada through six U.S. states to refineries in Texas. While the U.S. State Department is sticking to its final environmental assessment of the $7 billion pipeline, that the project would cause “minimal risk”, the numbers are growing of people who simply can’t stomach this.
For water ecologist Dr David Schindler, it’s simple: “If any of these tailing ponds (at Albertas sands) burst the world would forever forget about the Exxon Valdez.”
he coffers pushing the oil drilling in Albertas sand argue that it’s the only option. Since 1970, domestic oil production in the US has been on the decline, while their domestic conception is expected to spiral from around 18 million barrels to more than 22 million barrels a day by 2024. Across the globe, of the 98 oil producing countries, 64 of them have already hit their production peak. Simply, the world is running out of oil. That’s the argument. By looking north to Albertas sand, they refute that they can fix the issue. The only thing is, that the oil sands the US want to rip off could supply Canada’s petroleum needs for the next 475 years, while in the US it would peater out after just 48 years. Then there is a small thing called the environmental impacts from needing 2-4 barrels of water to extract one barrel of oil and the 111 million litres of contaminates water that are said to leak from the tailing ponds every day. Contaminated water that is said to contain naphthhenic acids, trace metals, and ammonia.
What all this means for any of us that care about the environment is that drilling Albertas sand is a potential disaster waiting to happen - to say the least. The dispute has definantly riled many in North America; turnout was much higher at the protest recently then anyone thought. But it still did not get the right politicians talking; this has made it hard to infer whether the Obama administration will block the pipeline and, lets hope, look at renewable energy sources, and finally make amends for its failed federal climate change legislation last year.
One thing seems certain though, silence is not going to help.
Watch: Every Human Has Rights will screen the award winning documentary h2Oil at the CIVICUS World Assembly, Montreal tomorrow evning. Where: Palais des Congrès- room 516a, 7pm. www.civicusassembly.org
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Category : Climate Justice, Programme Work Sessions
With the CIVICUS World Assembly just over a week away, I’ve started to explore the programme and identify those activities that interest me the most. One that stands out is a workshop being hosted by representatives from the Inter Press Services (IPS) and Al Jazeera around advocacy communication in the context of the increasing role played by social media.
While I am fascinated by the impact and role of social media, I often find myself wondering whether all the attention on new trends like social media takes attention away from the more fundamental questions and challenges for civil society’s communication efforts. This feeling is echoed by Mario Lubetkin in his recent article on the need for civil society to communicate with impact.
In this piece, Mario identified six major challenges for civil society communications (read Mario’s full article here):
Planning for the start: Civil society must always include communications as part of its strategy and bear it in mind from the start of activity planning in order to achieve impact.
Leadership from the very top: Recent experience has shown the communications is not often high on the priority list of many civil society leaders. To be effective, communications cannot just be the responsibility of communications officers but needs the participation of the entire organisation and particularly leadership.
Increased coordination across the sector: When civil society messages point in different directions, the overall impact of their communications is reduced. While not hiding diverse points of view, there is a need for greater coordination on key issues and event to bring more coherence to its communication activities.
More focus on the issues: When communications are focused on the organisation’s ‘brand’ it has very little impact. Civil society communications needs to engage more deeply on the issues and facts that it deals with.
More training: Civil society leaders, as well as communications officers, particularly in smaller organisations, need more training to engage in the communications game and get their voices heard. In addition journalists need more training to understand better the actions and messages of civil society.
Focus on content, not tools: There is a need to stop focusing on the divide between traditional and social media. Instead the focus needs to on the content we transmit. Tools may increase our capacity but without solid content, they will not increase our impact.
What strikes me about Mario’s six points is just how fundamental they are. As a communication practitioner and, to some extent, scholar, many of Mario’s points seem to reflect just basic communications theory and best practices. Yet, I think he is quite correct in pointing out that, while some (usually the large) organisations have great communications, many are struggling with these challenges and that the sector as a whole still has a long way to go.
I don’t think that this year’s CIVICUS World Assembly will tackle all the challenges civil society faces in its communications. However, I do hope that it will help to make progress on Mario’s point 3. That is, I hope the World Assembly will help civil society to develop civil society, or at least those that are present, develop common positions and messages on key upcoming events like the HLF4 in Busan, COP 17 and Rio+20. It’s only when we all pull together, that we’ll really see the change we want in the world.
Jessica Hume is Communications Manager for CIVICUS.
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Category : Connecting People Through Technology, Programme Work Sessions
Among the issues receiving top billing at next week’s World Assembly in Montreal is climate justice, and the missing voices of those who are impacted by climate change.
While the mainstream media only rarely tells us their stories, I find even less attention being paid to the solutions many of them are devising. When I met with members of Indonesia’s Serikat Petani, or Peasants Union, two years ago, I myself was surprised to learn that the struggle for the rights of forest dwellers was becoming a major concern.
The Serikat Petani, or SPI, is mostly known as a rural social movement, 700,000 peasant members who have made agrarian reform in Indonesia a fact rather than a slogan. They have taken over a million hectares of land from large landowners and plantations, much of it stolen from peasant families during the authoritarian Suharto regime.
Yet beyond the vibrant green quilt of rice paddies now cultivated – much of it organically – by families, my research also took me into forest. Even though every week, thousands of trees are falling to the chainsaws of plantation owners and illegal loggers alike, most of Indonesia is still tropical jungle. This land is public property, which means the Ministry of Forestry makes decisions over what happens to it. Often, those decisions are painfully short-sighted. Leasing rights are given away to mining and agri-business multi-nationals while millions of forest-dependent people are left in poverty.
Little wonder then that more and more of them are joining the SPI and looking for ways to fight back.
Now, with the Reduced Emissions from Forest Destruction and Degradation program, or REDD, a mechanism designed to preserve forest by offsetting the carbon footprints of wealthy nations is bringing about more evictions. Rather than local forest dwellers, this top-down approach sees millions of dollars going to the Indonesian government for protecting woodlands.
According to the SPI, this year 9000 families were evicted in the province of Jambi “because the area is to be part of a Conservation Park. Thousands in the neighboring district were also evicted in 2008 because their ancestral land was sold to United Kingdom under this scheme. The project is to be managed by an international conservation group.”
Eight other provinces, meanwhile, have proposals to sell more forested land to industrial countries and foreign multi-nationals.
The sad irony, of course, is that forest dwellers have greater and more sustainable reasons than just about anyone to protect these unique and beautiful environments. They can monitor against illegal logging with greater efficiency and consistency than governments. They could be effective agents of environmental protection if policy-makers would listen to them.
It’s time to turn REDD on its head, and put control of the forests into the hands of forest dwellers.
Augusta Dwyer is the author of Broke But Unbroken: Grassroots Social Movements and Their Radical Solutions to Poverty, available at the McGill University bookstore.
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Category : Climate Justice
The CIVICUS Programme Committee has prepared draft documents for each programme track that will be refined through the 3 days of dialogue at the World Assembly to form the final outcome document. To make sure that the final outcomes gather the key asks of civil society – we invite you to review and add your comments both before and during the World Assembly. Check them out, as well as background documents to give the context and contribute today!
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DEVELOPMENT EFFECTIVENESS
The world today faces multiple interlinked political, financial, economic, food, climate and energy crises, the brunt of which are being borne by impoverished and marginalised communities. There is no doubt that governments across the world are failing to address development challenges as more and more people are being forced into poverty. Change is imperative.
We are facing a time when existing development assistance budgets are under threat and people in both the global south as well as the north are questioning the motivations behind development budgets increasingly linked to considerations of domestic advantage, trade and security. With global decision making concentrated in the hands of a few, many believe that it is time to rethink global power relations. The lack of representivity and absence of democratic decision making in multilateral institutions, the power relations and architecture of which represent a dated post-Second World War world view, are widening inequalities and increasing the marginalisation of the world’s poorest communities. Read more!
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CLIMATE JUSTICE
The absence of serious commitments from governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adopt greener technologies is fast becoming a huge human rights issue. Emissions continue to trigger weather-related natural disasters, subjecting vulnerable and marginalised communities to increased risk as well as threatening the earth’s fragile biodiversity. A related concern is the low commitment of large-scale business to abandon practices that worsen climate change.
This problem is one of global injustice, given the fact that historically most greenhouse gas emissions have come from the highly industrialised economies of the global north, while the brunt of the impact of climate change is felt by populations in the global south where the infrastructure is too weak to withstand the damage caused. Excessive reliance on fossil fuels and dirty energy sources, and unsustainable deforestation, is precipitating a global humanitarian crisis, creating climate refugees and causing political instability as more and more people are deprived of their livelihoods and right to security through erratic and extreme weather patterns. Efforts to curb climate change require concerted actions from governments, the private sector and civil society. Read more!
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CONNECTING PEOPLE THROUGH TECHNOLOGY
New forms of information communication technology (ICT) have begun to counter old challenges of representation and voice by helping the silent, the invisible, the marginalised and those who advocate for their rights in civil society to engage and act. ICT has transformed advocacy by endowing local to transnational networks and communities with a greater capacity to research, report, publicise, organise, mobilise, campaign, connect and shape policies that affect the lives of people.
However, while access to internet and mobile technologies has gradually increased, the digital divide still replicates and exacerbates existing socio-economic divisions between the haves and the have-nots, and we must fight to counter these paradigms of exclusion by urging innovative, low cost and easily replicable technologies. As global civil society strives towards forging a more equitable and sustainable world, technological innovation should be at the forefront of the fight against poverty, social inequity and political repression. Science, technology and innovation offer unparalleled opportunities to unlock potential for democratic advancement, economic development and the creation of just and equitable societies. Read more!
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CIVIL SOCIETY AND DEMOCRATIC SPACE
The first decade of the 21st century has been particularly hard for civil society attempts at advocacy and for human rights defenders. Negative global trends that began soon after 9/11, exacerbated by the repercussions of ongoing economic crises, have come to a head as governments continue to encroach on fundamental freedoms through harsh security measures and other legal and policy restrictions.
Overzealous officials and law makers in long-standing democracies, emerging democracies and in overtly authoritarian countries have relentlessly chipped away at democratic freedoms, curbing the ability of civil society to undertake advocacy and play its much-needed watchdog role of ensuring transparency, accountability, good governance and respect for human rights in the public sphere. Legal and policy restrictions on the core freedoms of expression, association and assembly around the globe are creating a disabling environment for CSOs and activists to operate in and carry out their activities. Persecution of civil society activists through legal and extra-legal means remains a major area of concern. Read more!
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TAKE A LONGER LOOK AT THE BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS:
Development Effectiveness
Climate Justice
Connecting People Through Technology
Civil Society and Democratic Space
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Category : Civil Society and Democratic Space, Climate Justice, Connecting People Through Technology, Development Effectiveness, Programme Work Sessions
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