Reports and Publications
CIVICUS' reports and other publications.
Report from CIVICUS and RESOCIDE Regional Workshop on Enhancing the Capacity of Human Rights Defenders to Monitor Public Policy and Respond to Threats in West Africa, Burkina Faso
- Details
- Category: Reports and Publications
- Published on Friday, 17 August 2012 13:54
CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation and RESOCIDE jointly organised a workshop on enhancing the capacity of human rights defenders to respond to threats in West Africa in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso from 2 to 3 July 2012. The workshop which brought together participants from Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, the Gambia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and the USA, aimed at identifying specific threats faced by civil society and human rights activists in West Africa and creating a network to facilitate timely and proactive responses to these threats. At the close of the meeting, particpants agreed to create a West African Network for human rights defenders which they named Africa Rights Defenders. The meeting was made possible by the financial support of Irish Aid.
At the start of the workshop, participants presented country experiences on human rights issues. It was clear that Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and human rights defenders continue to work in restricted spaces despite improved legal frameworks for democratic governance and different levels of political transitions experienced by countries in the region. Even though the constitutions of most West African countries make provisions for the respect and protection of human rights, and countries are signatories to or have ratified several regional and international human rights conventions, governments often lack the will to implement these commitments.
Most country experiences indicate that human rights defenders, journalists and civil society activists are often victims of physical assaults, kidnappings, enforced disappearances, torture, judicial harassments and pre-trial detentions. Family members of and lawyers for activists are regularly threatened while some human rights defenders have been assassinated in the line of duty. In Senegal for example, close to 20 activists died in prison during the tenure of the former president while citizens and human rights defenders were attacked, harassed and tortured as they led protests against attempts by the president to amend the constitution to extend his stay in office.
Broadening civic space through voluntary action: Lessons from 2011
- Details
- Category: Reports and Publications
- Published on Tuesday, 17 January 2012 11:55
Voluntary citizen participation is an essential part of civil society, which in turn is a key contributor to sustainable development, human rights, good governance and social justice. 2011, the tenth anniversary of the International Year of Volunteers, saw an upsurge of such action in different forms in many countries around the world.
Reporting Human Rights Violations to UN Special Procedures
- Details
- Category: Reports and Publications
- Published on Wednesday, 11 January 2012 12:32
Under the auspices of the project Strengthening Civil Society Engagement with the United Nations: Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan sponsored by the Open Society Foundations, CIVICUS engaged two activists and two regional specialists in learning exchanges with CIVICUS’ Geneva Office from November-December 2011. Participants conducted outreach with civil society in the region to encourage interfacing with United Nations Special Procedures and produced reports to the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. In addition, participants produced and disseminated a bi-lingual guide on how civil society can interface with UN Special Procedures. CIVICUS members and partners can download Reporting Human Rights Violations to UN Special Procedures: An Introductory Guide in English and Russian.
Civil society volunteering patterns in Africa
- Details
- Category: Reports and Publications
- Published on Thursday, 29 September 2011 08:49
An analysis of the CIVICUS Civil Society Index 2008-2011 findings on volunteerism
The recently completed 2008-2011 CIVICUS Civil Society Index, a comprehensive analysis of civil society in 35 countries, offers an opportunity to assess the health of people’s participation and activism. The level of volunteering is one key indicator of the state and level of participation in a society.
Looking specifically at voluntary action and trends in nine African countries – Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo and Zambia - the CSI findings present a picture of volunteering that is shaped by cultural, historical, socio-economic and political dynamics. Even though Africa is not a homogeneous entity, across countries and cultures, patterns of volunteering are quite similar. With limited documentation to date specifically on volunteer trends in Africa, these findings have brought to light the value of volunteering in building social capital, its potential to encourage civic activism, and the heavy reliance of organised civil society on voluntary work.
Cutting the Diamonds: Civil Society Index 2008-2011
- Details
- Category: Reports and Publications
- Published on Wednesday, 07 September 2011 12:42
This report provides the first description of the quantitative data from the second implementation phase (2008 to 2011) of CIVICUS' Civil Society Index, bringing together the information from a set of 25 countries for which the data was finalised at the time of writing. This presentation of the data intends to invite an interested audience of academics and practitioners alike to work further with the data in order to deepen the understanding of civil society around the world and thus to enhance the potential forcitizens’ participation for positive social change.
