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Executive Summary

Civic Space Continues to Close

Since the mid-2000s, civic space has come under attack in many countries around the world. To counter this trend, transnational actors that support civil society have responded in many ways—from exerting diplomatic pressure and building international norms to providing emergency funds for activists.

Despite these efforts, governments continue to impose legal and extralegal restrictions amid a worsening larger political environment for civil society. Closing civic space now appears to be just one part of a much broader pattern of democratic recession and authoritarian resurgence. The international response seems stuck: some useful efforts have been undertaken, but they appear too limited, loosely focused, and reactive.

Areas of Progress in the International Response

• Research and knowledge dissemination: Timely information about civil society restrictions and overall trends is now widely available. Funders, policymakers, and relevant multilateral organizations are generally more aware of the problem; some actors have carried out internal strategic reviews and trainings to strengthen their programmatic and policy responses.
• Support for local resistance and adaptation: Major funders have established or expanded emergency funds for persecuted rights activists and organizations. Some have also initiated programs to help civic actors adapt to regulatory, political, and legal pressures, while some have examined ways to offer more flexible funding. Several new transnational coalitions and initiatives have been set up to share lessons and lead joint campaigns.
• Diplomatic pressure and international policy changes: Western governments have sometimes applied pressure on countries that are closing civic space, and they have supported advocacy in international bodies such as the United Nations. Civil society advocates have successfully pushed for reforms to harmful counterterrorism regulations, and some have begun engaging private sector actors on the importance of protecting civic space.

Factors Limiting the International Response

• Lack of conceptual and strategic clarity: Ongoing confusion over the root causes of closing civic space impedes efforts to develop a more unified strategy. Diverse actors disagree on whether tackling the challenge will require addressing the global political backlash against progressive causes or the overall global democratic recession, or whether a more focused approach would be more effective.
• Countervailing interests: Most Western governments still do not strongly prioritize closing civic space in their foreign policy agendas. They often refrain from escalating diplomatic pressure on repressive governments for fear of damaging their geopolitical, security, or economic interests. The loss of U.S. leadership on the issue has been particularly damaging.
• Closing space at home: Civic space is now under threat in many established democracies, and the international repercussions are profound. Western governments that lash out against domestic critics are less likely to speak out against civil society restrictions abroad, and they have less credibility when they do so. Their actions also set a negative example for leaders in other parts of the world.
• Inadequate scale: The resources committed to fighting the problem have been insufficient. Funders have also generally failed to embed their responses into a broader strategic framework. Explanations include a weak appetite for political risk among funders, the cross-cutting nature of the problem, and a lack of clarity on what a large-scale response might look like.
• Working in silos: Weak coordination and information sharing between different parts of the assistance community persist. Obstacles include the diverging policy and organizational interests within and between governments, as well as divisions in the wider funder community, including between human rights organizations and development and humanitarian actors.
• Struggles to change aid practices: Implementing far-reaching changes in aid practices has proven difficult, due to bureaucratic inertia, risk aversion, and narrower methods of monitoring and evaluation.
• Chasing a moving target: The problem of closing space continues to evolve quickly, which makes it difficult for the international community to anticipate new openings and threats. For example, international actors have been slow to react to the spread of new technological tools for restricting civic space online and offline.

Policy Recommendations

• Develop a strategic framework that links closing civic space to other key foreign policy challenges, articulates a positive vision of civic space globally, and offers tailored tactical guidance. Such a strategy should differentiate short-, medium-, and long-term priorities and distinguish between different types of political contexts.
• Improve foreign policy alignment by issuing specific guidance on defending civic space to embassies, systematically integrating the issue into diplomatic training and senior leadership briefings, designating a senior official to spearhead interagency coordination on civic space–related issues, and amplifying the voices of civil society actors, particularly in restrictive contexts.
• Avoid setting negative precedents by ensuring that domestic legislation does not threaten civic space. Nongovernmental actors should build cross-border alliances to share knowledge and resources, engage lawmakers in established democracies who stigmatize civil society, and champion transparency and accountability in internal practices and external partnerships.
• Bolster coordination among concerned transnational actors by evaluating existing mechanisms, investing in new platforms or tools for information sharing and institutional learning, expanding country-level networks, and forging new partnerships between governmental and private funders.
• Adjust funding practices to ensure a balance between support for long-term institution- building and catalytic funding, and track how much funding goes directly to local organizations as core versus project support. Funders should continue to expand flexible funding strategies for hostile environments, work with intermediaries that can reach a wider range of partners, and reduce grantees’ administrative burdens.
• Anticipate new opportunities and threats by, for example, monitoring and recognizing examples of positive reform, developing targeted roadmaps that identify opportunities and flashpoints in collaboration with embassies or local partners, and investing in technological know-how.

Acknowledgments

Carnegie’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program gratefully acknowledges support from the Ford Foundation, the UK Department for International Development, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade that helped make the writing of this paper possible. The views expressed in this paper are the responsibility of the authors alone.

Civic Space Continues to Close

In the mid-2000s, a disturbing international trend emerged: a growing number of governments around the world began restricting space they had previously permitted for independent civil society, using both formal legal and regulatory measures and extralegal actions. These governments also targeted international support for civil society by, for example, hindering foreign organizations from providing assistance to civic groups and denouncing such aid as illegitimate political meddling. Autocratic governments in Ethiopia, Russia, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe initially propelled the trend, but over time, a wide variety of governments joined in—including some democratic ones, such as India, Israel, and Peru.¹

Transnational actors that support civil society in developing countries and postcommunist countries noticed and began responding to this trend. These actors include most major Western foreign ministries and aid agencies, some multilateral organizations, many international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), and several private philanthropic foundations. They initiated what soon became ubiquitous discussions and strategic reviews focused on “closing civic space” or “shrinking civic space.” Their responses ranged from applying diplomatic pressure on countries that had enacted new civil society restrictions to establishing emergency funds and programs to help besieged civil society organizations survive in more restrictive environments.²

Despite these responses, the negative trend has continued and even intensified. Freedom House data show that, between 2006 and 2019, associational and organizational rights have eroded significantly in forty-three countries, while improving in only sixteen.³ A November 2018 CIVICUS report found that “civil society is under serious attack in 111 countries,” with restrictions often taking the form of new NGO legislation, counterterrorism measures, and administrative rules.⁴ In a few cases, domestic and international advocacy has managed to ward off or limit repressive measures.⁵ But the wider trend of governments using legal and extralegal means to limit or close civic space so far shows no signs of abating.

Moreover, the wider political context for civil society has worsened in significant ways. When closing civic space first emerged as an identifiable trend, the concerned international community largely saw it as a discrete problem, a somewhat self-contained stain on a larger picture of continued global democratic enlargement, or at least stability. Yet over the last ten years, a broader pattern of democratic recession and authoritarian resurgence has become evident. Closing civic space now appears as just one part of an encompassing set of daunting democratic challenges. These include stagnation and often backsliding in new or emerging democracies; serious political woes in some established democracies, including the United States; the hardening of autocracy in many countries; and greater transnational assertiveness on the part of some authoritarian powers.⁶

Fueled by larger nationalist, populist, and sometimes extremist currents, illiberal political forces are driving democratic backsliding in a growing number of countries. These forces often stigmatize and repress activists fighting for the rights of minorities and marginalized social groups—key issues on the civic agenda. In some countries, the election of nationalist or right-wing populist leaders and parties has given greater political cover to illiberal or extremist nonstate actors, who often directly target minority communities and government critics.⁷

Several other elements contribute to this gloomy larger picture. First, communication and information technologies have fundamentally reshaped core aspects of democracy and politics, redefining what constitutes civic space to include virtual platforms and networks. Autocratic governments are increasingly using these technologies to amplify their repressive tactics and illiberal narratives, both within their own societies and beyond their borders.⁸ Their arsenals include the use of new surveillance tools, online harassment, and social media to spread disinformation on a much wider scale. At the same time, democracies are grappling with the implications of technological innovation for privacy and information consumption, as well as the power of private companies to shape citizens’ attitudes and preferences.

Second, the proliferation of elected strongmen with crony ties to business interests has spurred an uptick in state and nonstate attacks on human rights defenders working on environmental protection, natural resource conservation, and indigenous and land rights. Particularly in Latin America and parts of South Asia, commercial interests have pushed for the criminalization of environmental protests and advocacy, while gangs and militias tied to landowners and corporations use violence to displace communities and target those who resist.⁹

Third, the global democratic recession has proceeded hand in hand with increasing authoritarian efforts to weaken or co-opt international institutions that help shape international norms and hold governments to account for their conduct. Examples range from the Chinese government playing a more activist role in the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council to China, Russia, and other authoritarian states jointly developing democratically problematic proposals and UN resolutions on global internet governance.¹⁰ They have been able to do so in part because some Western democracies have disengaged from these same institutions or have been slow to recognize and counteract growing authoritarian influence.¹¹

Yet the global picture is not entirely negative. Large-scale protest movements pressing for greater governmental responsiveness and openness have multiplied, sparked by discontent over poor basic services, corruption, and a lack of alternations in power.¹² New youth-led movements are emerging around climate change mitigation. While such mobilizations have often been met with new protest regulations, violent policing, and surveillance, some have brought down corrupt leaders or triggered democratic reforms—such as in Armenia, Romania, and South Korea. At least a few governments are opening up rather than closing down politically and have sought to loosen onerous legal restrictions on civil society. Most recently, Ethiopia’s new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, spearheaded reforms aimed at opening political and civic space, including a less draconian NGO law.¹³ And even in politically repressive contexts, citizens are organizing in more informal and fluid ways, particularly at the local level.¹⁴ While new technologies are enabling increased state surveillance and repression, they are also helping citizens to come together around shared concerns, build communities, and take collective action.

Nevertheless, the global picture is sobering and presents hard questions for international actors committed to defending civic space. Many policymakers and aid officials believe they have gained a stronger understanding of the issue and have undertaken some useful responses. But there is also a quiet yet widespread sense among some of those most engaged on the issue that the international response is stuck. They see diagnostic efforts repeated again and again without commensurate action being taken, responses being drawn from a limited menu that does not match the scale of the challenge, and international attention showing signs of drifting rather than focusing harder, even as the problem worsens.

To take stock of the state of the international response to closing civic space, three questions must be examined:

1. What are the main areas of progress in the international response?
2. What are the main factors limiting the response?
3. How might those limitations be at least partially overcome, and how might the response be strengthened?

The focus here is on the international rather than domestic or regional responses to shrinking civic space. The term “international actors” is used as a shorthand for the (primarily) Western bilateral aid agencies and foreign ministries, multilateral organizations, INGOs, and private foundations that are working on this issue. In many cases, these international actors collaborate with or directly fund regional and national organizations, and their efforts thus have direct implications for local responses. However, the aim here is not to assess the wide range of often innovative and creative resistance strategies initiated at the national or local levels.

Areas of Progress in the International Response

International responses to closing civic space mostly fall into three broad categories (see table 1).

The first is generating research and analysis about the nature of the problem and spreading this knowledge both within organizations supporting civil society and within foreign policy communities more broadly. Public and private research funding has supported many studies of the closing space trend by think tanks and INGOs, as well as numerous workshops and conferences to let concerned actors share perspectives and lessons learned.¹⁵

The second category involves helping civic activists and organizations in affected countries fight back against new restrictions and continue their work under more difficult circumstances. Such efforts include emergency funds for activists, support for advocacy work and new protective measures, new funding mechanisms aimed at circumventing restrictions and strengthening local organizations’ resilience, and the establishment of new innovative civil society coalitions at the local, regional, and international levels.

Third, concerned governments and other organizations are pushing back directly by applying diplomatic pressure on repressive governments. Some of these concerned actors are also seeking to influence broader international norms and policies related to civic space, including in the realms of development cooperation and counterterrorism.

While a comprehensive assessment of these responses is beyond the scope of this study, some initial observations can be offered on the progress to date.

Research and Knowledge Dissemination

Researchers and organizations have generated and disseminated considerable knowledge about the closing space problem within relevant policy and aid communities. Timely information about civil society restrictions and overarching trends is now widely available, especially thanks to the pioneering monitoring and analysis work of CIVICUS and the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law. Various networks and organizations have produced tool kits that outline advocacy and response strategies to support civil society.¹⁶ As a result, there is significant awareness of the issue among INGOs and donor organizations working on governance, development, and human rights and at least some awareness within broader Western foreign policy circles. Some aid providers have carried out internal strategic reviews to strengthen their programmatic and policy responses and have implemented trainings for staff and management.

However, most analyses of the issue stem from organizations situated in the Global North, which have not always systematically disseminated this work to activists and organizations that operate in closing space contexts.¹⁷ Internal and cross-institutional learning from past successes and failures has been inconsistent. Moreover, silos and gaps in understanding persist between different communities of international actors.

Support for Local Resistance and Adaptation

Providing emergency funds: Over the past decade, major donor organizations have joined together to establish or expand several major emergency funds for persecuted rights activists and organizations, such as the European Union’s ProtectDefenders mechanism and the Emergency Fund for Human Rights Defenders At Risk, the Lifeline Embattled CSO Assistance Fund, and a new pooled fund for environmental defenders.¹⁸ Activists can access these pots of money quickly for a range of purposes, like paying legal and medical expenses, monitoring trials, temporarily relocating endangered individuals, or capitalizing on brief moments of opportunity for advocacy. These funds have provided vital help to thousands of activists and organizations.

At the same time, the scale of repression globally goes far beyond what this type of emergency assistance can alleviate.¹⁹ Accordingly, most funders and policymakers view them as a limited tool, valuable for carving out some space for resistance but incapable of reversing broader political trends.

Supporting active resistance within affected countries: Some funders have made new assistance available to help activists in countries with closing space adapt to and/or resist new regulatory, political, and legal pressures. This includes programs to help activists analyze pending measures, learn from the experience of activists in other sectors or countries, form resistance coalitions, and mount advocacy and public awareness campaigns. For example, the Funders’ Initiative for Civil Society and the Fund for Global Human Rights have convened dialogues with civic actors in selected countries that have experienced or are at risk of civil society restrictions. These dialogues aim to foster cooperation and to ensure greater alignment between external funders and domestic actors.²⁰ Funders are also increasingly offering training and protective technologies to improve local organizations’ digital security and help them protect themselves from online surveillance and harassment.²¹ Some exploratory efforts have focused on helping civic organizations forge new narratives about their work and civic engagement more broadly, so as to counter governmental smear campaigns and public mistrust of civil society.²²

It is difficult to gauge the overall impact of these measures. Funders generally recognize that resistance to civic space restrictions needs to be locally led, particularly since governments are adept at using international funding and ties to delegitimize their civil society critics. Yet external assistance has helped equip local actors with the necessary information to engage government officials or conduct advocacy campaigns. For example, the Civic Space Initiative, created in 2012 by four INGOs with the support of the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida), “has provided technical and advocacy support” in more than thirty-five countries, and the agency has helped local activists successfully push back against restrictive measures in Kenya, Ukraine, and other places (and propose enabling legislation in others).²³ Local organizations also highlight peer-to-peer learning initiatives as particularly useful.²⁴ In some cases, external support has helped kick-start new forms of cross-sectoral collaboration, though funders note that such efforts require longer-term investments.²⁵

Making adaptive changes to funding practices: In addition, many aid providers have begun examining their own funding practices to better help their local partners resist and survive. Besieged activists frequently call for more flexible, core support in place of project funding to help them take advantage of sudden opportunities and respond to new threats. Funders often discuss this imperative—sometimes framed as the need for greater local ownership—but still implement it inconsistently. One tangible example is the creation of the European Endowment for Democracy, which enjoys greater flexibility than traditional funders in supporting informal groups, movements, and individuals. Some funders are also trying to help civic groups access alternative resources. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, is supporting the development of local philanthropy in some partner countries and helping civil society organizations use new digital technologies to raise funds through crowdsourcing and other means.²⁶

Establishing new coalitions and initiatives: Several new transnational coalitions and initiatives have been set up to tackle new threats facing civil society, share lessons and resources, and anticipate future challenges. For example, USAID and Sida have jointly funded a Civil Society Innovation Initiative, which established seven regional hubs involving civil society organizations from ninety-three countries that work on locally defined priorities.²⁷ While the initiative’s co-design and co-funding process posed challenges, its flexible approach has given rise to several new civil society partnerships and campaigns.

Meanwhile, the Community of Democracies set up a working group on civic space in 2009 that includes fourteen governments, the EU, and five INGOs.²⁸ This group shares lessons, monitors incipient threats to civic space around the world, and issues calls for action to try to foster more coordinated responses. The Task Team on CSO Development Effectiveness and Enabling Environment, a multistakeholder initiative aimed at advocating effective civil society participation in international development processes, has also served as a coordinating body among major bilateral donors. In addition, a number of groups bring together private funders, including the Funders’ Initiative on Civil Society, the Donor Working Group on Cross-Border Philanthropy, the Enabling Environment for Civil Society Working Group run by the Human Rights and Democracy Network, and the Environmental Funders Working Group on Civil Society.

Diplomatic Pressure and International Policy Changes

Engaging diplomatically with governments that are closing space: Western governments and international organizations sometimes pressure governments that are closing civic and political space to limit such actions or reverse course. For example, when the Kyrgyz government proposed a so-called foreign agents law in 2013, several international institutions—including the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe—strongly criticized the proposed measure, and representatives of key donor governments warned of potential negative consequences in high-level meetings. This pressure helped decrease the executive’s enthusiasm for the law, which was ultimately rejected in 2016.²⁹

At least some such high-level engagement over civic space restrictions has taken place in recent years in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Hungary, Israel, Russia, and Ukraine. But diplomatic pressure has often been inconsistent and poorly coordinated; civic activists note that governments tend to take a “wait and see approach” instead of reacting quickly.³⁰ Moreover, civil society advocates currently lack indicators or other tools to measure the extent to which governments are exerting political pressure and when or whether this type of pressure is effective.

Strengthening relevant international norms: Some INGOs and donor governments have also sought to establish or strengthen international norms relevant to closing civic space, both by raising global awareness and engaging with the UN and other international bodies. For example, they have supported the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association with technical expertise and human resources, helped UN mandate holders coordinate their actions on issues related to civic space, and enabled civil society participation in the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review process.³¹ Drawing on existing policy frameworks such as the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Development Assistance Committee is in the process of formulating policy guidance focused on member states’ work with civil society in development cooperation. Multilateral initiatives such as the Open Government Partnership and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative have also recently taken up the issue of shrinking civic space.³²

Perhaps the most important achievement in this area is the emergence of a global discussion on closing civic space. Reports and statements by the UN Special Rapporteur have been influential in building international soft norms, particularly by framing organizations’ right to access resources as a key element of freedom of association. Yet many governments continue to challenge these norms, and the constraining effect of these norms on government behavior has been weak overall. While th