Nilda Bullain

Beyond Convening and Coordinating – How can civil society be effective in countering restrictions on civic space?

6 April, 2016

The vicious spirit is out of the box.  By now we – those of us who read this blog – all recognise that countries will not stop imposing restrictions on civil society in the foreseeable future; to the contrary, those restrictions are growing by the year.  Just in 2015, over 30 countries proposed or passed 45 laws to constrain civil society organisations (CSOs) and rights of CSOs and activists have been violated in over 100 countries.

But what is this ‘vicious spirit’ and who let it out? 18_WhatCanWeDo_resize Who’s to blame?  Is it the newly budding populist and authoritarian leaders of this century?  Or the masses of voters who elect such leaders and agree with their worldviews, including those on civil society?  Democracies that weaken under the threats of terrorism, war and humanitarian crisis?

It is all of those and more; the phenomenon of shrinking civic space is complex and its root causes are difficult to tackle. As the problem has grown, more and more players became aware and got on board to address it: over the past couple of years, several dozen CSOs, donors, networks and international organisations launched ‘civic space’ projects, strategies and initiatives at the country, regional and global levels.  Yet the negative trend remains.  What are we doing wrong? MORE

Alliances, Culture

Mandeep Tiwana

Winning hearts and minds and other campaign strategies

29 March, 2016

A vibrant and empowered civil society is an essential component of a functioning and accountable state. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called civil society, the “oxygen of democracy” and applauded the sector’s role as a “catalyst for social progress and economic growth.” Yet, there is ample evidence to show that civil society space is rapidly shrinking.

Just in the month of March 2016: environmental and land rights activists have been assassinated in Honduras and South Africa; a prominent woman human rights defender has been arbitrarily detained along-with her 15 month old son for demanding democratic rights in Bahrain; an activist opposing the proposed construction of a hydropower dam in Cambodia has received a suspended sentence; staff of several CSOs have been judicially harassed in Egypt to prevent them from receiving vital funding from international sources; and a draft law placing arbitrary conditions on the formation of CSOs in Jordan has come to light.

Students'_mass_protest_in_Taiwan_to_end_occupation_of_legislatureLast year, CIVICUS reported substantial threats to core civil society freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly in 96 countries. Our preliminary findings for this year put the number at over hundred countries.  These trends spanning both democratic and authoritarian states heighten the urgency to inform public opinion about how attacks on civil society activists and organisations are chipping away at citizen rights and undermining participatory democracy. Effective mobilisations to influence hearts and minds of the global public will be key to reversing negative trends. MORE

Alliances, Culture

Burkhard Gnärig

Civil Society – Let’s Join Forces to Defend our Rights

22 March, 2016

A few months ago I wrote the blog We Need to Defend Citizens’ Space for Participation in which I looked at India and other countries where civil society was under threat. Since then, no day has gone by without news about government actions restricting citizens’ space to participate in shaping and developing their own societies. Meanwhile, a number of deeply worrying developments have become blatantly obvious:

  • Shrinking civic space is a global 25phenomenon. Citizens on all continents, in developing and developed societies, are suffering from the curtailing of their rights. Recent political initiatives in countries such as Hungary, Poland and the UK show that no society can be certain to escape this trend.
  • Governments are learning from each other how best to keep “their” citizens under control – rather than being controlled by citizens as should be the case. For instance, the Russian strategy to oppress any civic dissent to the government’s policies has been, and is being, copied in many countries globally.
  • In a world of mounting competition for dwindling natural resources, persisting terrorism, and a rising number of refugees crossing national borders, more and more citizens are willing to accept restrictions to their rights as a price for securing their own safety and wellbeing. They follow their governments’ arguments that limitations to citizens’ rights – e.g. to free speech, peaceful assembly, political participation – are necessary to preserve political stability, maintain economic growth, control terrorism, secure national sovereignty, and keep foreigners out.
  • Centuries of experience with authoritarian regimes have shown that once citizens have lost any rights over their governments, it will take a long time of painful struggle to claim them back. Therefore, the large scale disempowerment of citizens world-wide is a scary development, which requires a concerted approach of all who are willing to defend civic rights.

MORE

Alliances

Alexia Skok

Recap: “Leading change in my organisation”

15 March, 2016

06_ChangeChangedWhat do the civil society sector’s leading changemakers have to share about their experiences of leading change in their organisations?

Over the past seven weeks, we invited a number of guest bloggers to tackle this question, reflecting from within her or his own organisation. Although the challenges, threats, observations, and methods around driving change came from different standpoints with distinct histories, one thread that connected each voice is that transformation in the sector is needed and there is a responsibility for each civil society organisation (CSO) to push for it.

We have shared some of the key insights from each blog below, and encourage you to comment and share your own thoughts on managing change within CSOs! MORE

Culture, Governance & Management

Joanna Maycock

Disrupting the status quo: women transforming leadership in civil society

8 March, 2016

At the European Women’s Lobby, we unite women’s organisations from across Europe fighting for a Feminist Europe in which gender equality is a prerequisite to achieving the well-being of all people and the planet. As part of our campaigning platform, we call for women to be at the heart of decision-making in politics, government, business, institutions, and in civil society.

EWL Young Feminist Summer School 2015 © Isabella Borelli

There has been increasing public attention to the lack of women in political and economic decision making overall: more than 75% of national parliamentarians and more than 80% of members of corporate boards are men. However, very little attention has been paid to the failure of our own sector to address gender inequality in leadership. Most of the evidence I have seen suggests that around 75% of all the staff employed in civil society organisations (CSOs) are women, but less than 30% of the leaders of the largest CSOs are women. But this is not only about having more women operating within a system, it is also about transforming the nature of the systems of decision-making to ensure they are more inclusive, diverse and effective. At its core it is about reconsidering what leadership skills and attributes, and what institutions and structures, are needed for transformative leadership in the 21st century. MORE

Culture, Identity

Adriano Campolina

ActionAid: Moving towards a networked federation

1 March, 2016

ActionAid International went through a tremendous transformation through what was called its internationalisation. It moved from being a British charity with branches in several countries, to a an alliance of few European members and now to a federation of 27 national members across all regions encompassing countries as diverse as Vietnam, Denmark, Sierra Leone, Malawi and Guatemala.

This new federation would be serviced by an Visioninternational secretariat, with the roles of
coordinating international work, ensuring compliance with federation wide policies and supporting countries directly or by enabling peer support as well as managing the programmes in those countries that had not yet gone through a local governance development process. MORE

Business Models, Governance & Management

Salil Shetty

Globalising Amnesty International

23 February, 2016

Amnesty International’s Global Transition Programme (GTP) is our process of moving closer to the ground to ensure we have significantly greater impact by becoming a more global movement. By distributing our teams to 15 Regional Offices in key capitals we will be empowered to act with greater legitimacy, speed, capacity and relevance as we stand alongside those whose rights are violated, and join with others to build rights-respecting societies. The reorganisation enables us to work in a more integrated, efficient and effective way across functions and across geographies as well as with greater accountability to our local partners.

The genesis of this change can be © Amnesty International (Photo: Amin/Drik)traced to the International Board’s decision in mid-2010 to recommend a new organisational model to best deliver Amnesty’s Integrated Strategic Plan. Developing the case for change (the “Blueprint”) took a further 12 months of consultation. The subsequent period saw the whole organisation wrestling with the implications of this case for change and there were unquestionably real periods of unrest. The GTP was implemented to address this. This was a Programme of work to determine the practical implications of the proposals, and to develop a challenging implementation process balancing the need for change with achieving buy-in and acceptance from a complex range of stakeholders. All this was to take place at the same time of maintaining the core programmes of work, reactive and planned, when dealing with the very real impact on colleague’s lives. MORE

Business Models, Identity

Toby Porter

Closing the Gap & Transforming the Sector

16 February, 2016

I am writing this blog at Zurich airport, on my way back from the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting at Davos. Extreme global inequality was rightly a recurrent, prominent theme throughout the four-day meeting, again galvanised by the skilful publication by Oxfam of their calculations regarding the proportion of the world’s overall wealth held by the richest very few.

What is becoming clear, however, is that many civil society organisations (CSOs), working at national level, perceive a not dissimilar inequality in the global development and humanitarian system. Take the figure quoted in the run-up to the World Humanitarian Summit in May – a mere 10 CSOs are said to deliver 90% of the overall CSO share of global humanitarian assistance. Not surprisingly, there are a great many voices starting to say that this too is highly inequitable, and needs to change.

Older campaigners march in Haiti © Josph Jn-Florley/HelpAge International

In a recent blog for Devex I suggested that it was time for us CSOs to look at merging or outsourcing many of their functions at country level. Partly this is a matter of basic efficiency, starting to eliminate the obvious and widespread duplication in the current collective operational footprints in the countries and regions where we operate. MORE

Business Models, Culture

Wolfgang Jamann

Changing CARE: Teamwork & Transformation

9 February, 2016

“In a slow moving world, all the organisation needs is a good CEO. In a faster context, teamwork at the top is necessary to deal with transformations, almost all the time.” (J.P. Kotter, Harvard Business School)

Dr. Wolfgang Jamann meets with refugees at Slavonski Brod camp for Migrants in Serbia. January 2016. Photo: Srdjan Veljovic/CARE

Most of those leading and managing civil society organisations (CSOs) have embraced the idea of responding to disruption and rapidly changing work environments. We invest in innovation, in culture and behaviour change; we restructure, go south, globalise, seek new roles and partnerships. International CSOs (ICSOs) exchange experiences, successes and failures, and most of us believe in transformation – not the least because transforming people’s lives is the core of our business. MORE

Governance & Management, Identity

Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen

Plan International’s Transformation through Transparency

2 February, 2016

The first decision I took as the new CEO of Plan International was to open my calendar so all my colleagues could see my activities and book time with me directly, without going through a gate-keeper. I encouraged all senior executives across Plan International to do the same. It was a small step on a journey to transform Plan International into one of the most transparent and trusted players in the international development community. Judging by the reaction – which ranged from horror and shock to victory dances – we still have a long way to go, both internally and externally. MORE

Governance & Management, Transparency & Accountability
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