During the last ten years, a large number of states around the world have taken measures to restrict or openly resist the activities of foreign governments and non-state actors that support local civil society groups. Some governments have started to limit the amount of foreign funding a non-governmental organization is allowed to receive; others delegitimize, intimidate or openly harass groups that receive external support, or go after those foreign organizations implementing civil society aid. This phenomenon of increasing legal restrictions and political resistance on external civil society support has been dubbed “the closing space” and is part of a general trend in increasing challenges to, and open resistance against, the international promotion of democracy and human rights.
In recent years, the closing space has received increasing attention by civil society activists, policy-makers and academics, resulting in a series of studies that map the phenomenon, identifying its scope and depth as well as its characteristics and evolution over time. Yet, what existing accounts largely, or deliberately downplay, is the normative dimension of the problem at hand.
In PRIF-Report No. 137 “From Closing Space to Contested Spaces. Re-assessing Current Conflicts over International Civil Society Support”, Jonas Wolff and Annika Elena Poppe analyze the normative dimension of the phenomenon. In looking at the global debate in the UN Human Rights Council and at four cases (Ethiopia, India, Egypt, and Bolivia), they assess the normative claims brought forward in order to either justify or reject restrictions on external civil society support.
The authors show that governments in the Global South have serious concerns about the foreign funding of domestic civil society groups. As a result, Wolff and Poppe argue that a promising response to the spread of closing spaces cannot but include a serious engagement with these concerns.
The Report is available at PRIF for 10 € and as a free PDF download.