Contested and Under Pressure: A Snapshot of the Enabling Environment of Civil Society in 22 Countries

"The Enabling Environment National Assessments (EENA) process, a national civil society-led participative research process, demonstrates the engagement by civil society around the world in improving the conditions for citizens' participation. It also showcases that in very diverse contexts, similar civic space issues are being encountered, suggesting potential for enhanced cross-civil society collaboration and the international sharing of good practice to overcome common challenges."

Between 2013 and 2016, the EENA was implemented in 22 countries worldwide: Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Colombia, Honduras, India, Jordan, Lebanon, Mexico, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, Panama, the Philippines, South Africa, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zambia. The assessments, led by national civil society partners, employed a common methodology that encompassed interviews with key stakeholders, consultations, focus groups, and desk research. In every country, six core dimensions were assessed: the ability of civil society groups to form, operate and access resources - all aspects of the freedom of association - plus the freedoms of peaceful assembly and expression, and relations between civil society and governments.

This EENA Synthesis Report reveals that civil society organisations (CSOs) are often not free to act without the state's permission and explores the impact of these constraints. Designed by CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation and the International Center for Non-for-Profit Law (ICNL) under the Civic Space Initiative (CSI), in partnership with ARTICLE 19 and the World Movement for Democracy and with the support of the Government of Sweden, the EENA is an action-oriented research tool for assessing the legal, regulatory, and policy environment for civil society. The EENAs are designed to be locally owned, rooted in primary data collected at the grassroots level, and validated by a consensus-based, multi-stakeholder process with the dual purpose of strengthening the capacity of civil society to advocate for an enabling environment and improving CSO-government relations. This report focuses on points of comparison and intersection among the EENA countries, to the end of offering a snapshot of the environment for civil society and the trends in civil society's ability to enjoy its essential rights of association, peaceful assembly, and expression.

As asserted in the report, international best practice holds that CSOs should be able to form and function independently and without having to seek permission from or notify state agencies. However, across the 22 EENA countries, CSOs of many kinds must register with or notify the authorities when they form, and seek legal existence. Several countries have notification regimes - in which CSOs can form, operate, hold events, communicate and receive resources without having to receive prior permission from state agencies - and, while falling short of best practice, these are recognised to be more enabling than approval regimes, in which CSOs must seek permission to carry out these core functions. The EENA research reveals that in many cases, CSOs are not free to act without the state's permission. This is the case even in several countries where notification regimes exist on paper but do not apply in practice, as state agencies, officials and security forces assume powers to veto CSO activities. The impact of these constraints is to absorb the energy and resources of civil society and to reduce its ability to respond creatively to the challenges of the day.

Across the EENA countries, civil society's assessment is that the laws and regulations that affect civil society are often disenabling. They frequently undermine provisions in constitutions that claim to recognise the importance of citizens' participation. In a number of countries, laws have been passed in recent years that restrict the fundamental civil society rights of association, peaceful assembly, and expression. Restrictions are often made on grounds such as the protection of national security and public order, and the prevention of terrorism, but they have the effect of making it harder for CSOs to form and function. Challenges also arise from inadequate and incoherent legal and regulatory regimes that have not kept pace with the contemporary development of civil society. CSOs experience most restriction when they seek democracy, good governance, and human rights, as opposed to when they prioritise charitable or social welfare activity, and when they engage in advocacy, express dissent, or attempt to exercise accountability, compared to when they deliver services. In the worst cases, restrictions in the environment for CSOs suggest a deliberate attempt by governments to limit the roles that CSOs can play and the topics they can work on, and to constrain the autonomy and hinder the effectiveness of CSOs. The direction is not entirely towards restriction. For example, in Mexico, the Federal Law on the Promotion of Activities Undertaken by Civil Society Organisations, introduced in 2004, is acknowledged to have made the environment for civil society more enabling, something that has helped to underpin a growth in the numbers and roles of CSOs. It created a right for CSOs to participate in public policies and led to the establishment of new bodies to coordinate engagement. And in Brazil, the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, passed in 2014 and implemented from 2016, provides a framework for ongoing cooperation between the government and CSOs. CSOs in Nepal, on the whole, see the country's new constitution, passed in 2015, as opening up new space and opportunities for civil society, in contrast to the difficult context of conflict that preceded it.

CSOs do not want an environment that is free of laws and regulations. Rather, they want laws that are predictable, manageable, transparent, and free from political interference.

As noted in the report: "The overall picture revealed by the EENA research is one of gaps. There are gaps between international best practice, which recognises the autonomy of civil society, and laws and regulations that impinge on this. There are gaps between the enabling language of constitutions, which promise to uphold the fundamental civil society rights, of association, peaceful assembly and expression, and laws and regulations that undercut these and place excessive restrictions on those rights. There are gaps between the stated purpose of laws and how laws are applied in practice, with broad and vague provisions in laws often giving governments and officials wide scope for discretion. There are gaps between national level policies and the practices at the local level, which are often less enabling in some regions of countries. Additionally, policies and practices are vulnerable to discrimination, politicisation and corruption."

Based on the overall findings and detailed discussion of findings on each of the 6 EENA dimensions, the report offers recommendations as the basis for future advocacy, including:

• Promote, as international best practice, the removal of mandatory requirements for CSOs to register in order to carry out their activities.
• Affirm the right that CSOs should be free to organise meetings and events without any need for any prior approval or notification. When CSOs organise public protests and demonstrations, notification regimes rather than approval regimes should apply, as this enables CSOs to be assured that law enforcement services will guarantee public safety.
• Advocate for the inclusion of civil society practitioners in agencies responsible for the registration and regulation of CSOs.
• Seek greater accountability over the role of security forces, including in the management of assemblies and in the exercise of the freedom of expression, and encourage the sharing of good practice in the peaceful management of assemblies.
• Assert the right of CSOs to receive resources as an intrinsic part of the right of association, and support the development of more enabling environments for domestic civil society giving.
• Encourage the adoption of structured, regular, transparent and broad-based engagement spaces between governments and civil society, including regular communication, and document and share learning about the impacts achieved for citizens as a result of high-quality civil society-government engagement.

As this report's accompanying paper on civil society response strategies makes clear (see Related Summaries, below), civil society is fighting back, working collectively and winning some important gains. An understanding of these should form the basis for future action to make the environment for civil society more predictable, functional, and enabling.

Click here for the 56-page report in English in PDF format.

Click here to access the synthesis report in Arabic, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, as well as the 22 individual country reports.