SG Year end appeal

Dear Friends and Partners,

From the Arab Spring to the Occupy Wall Street protests, 2011 will be remembered as the year we realised the power we hold to change the world. It is the year that ordinary people became human rights activists. It is the year that you and I stood up and demanded to be counted. With this great power in our hands comes a responsibility to each other. Pro-democracy and human rights activists remain under siege in every region of the world. Civil society actors are jailed, harassed or targeted. Civil Society is under threat; free association, assembly and expression restricted. Since 1993 CIVICUS has worked towards its vision of a worldwide community of informed, inspired, committed citizens engaged in confronting the challenges facing humanity. We now ask you to join our fight.

Human Rights Day is our day. On the 10th December this year we celebrate the 63rd anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Human Rights Day reminds us that Human Rights belong to all of us and unite us into a global community of shared ideals and values.

This year, for Human Rights Day, CIVICUS is asking you to support the Crisis Response Fund (CRF). In 2009-2010 CIVICUS tracked and documented threats to civil society in over 90 countries in every region of the globe. The Crisis Response Fund reacts quickly and decisively when these threats arise, and in 2011 we have achieved some important successes. The campaign by CIVICUS and our partners in the Philippines resulted in the release of the Morong 43, a group of wrongfully imprisoned health workers. We supported the International Observation Station in Minsk in monitoring and documenting human rights violations, and sent lawyer Me Oyane Ondo to the African Commission of Hu

man and People's Rights to advocate for Human Rights Defenders in Central Africa. We have supported initiatives in Egypt, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Venezuela. And the work of the Crisis Response Fund is not done. With your help we can continue to strengthen, empower and enable civil society around the world.

This is our time. This is our challenge. Standing together we can change the world.

Ingrid Srinath

Testimonials

CIVICUS has directly contributed to freedom of expression and citizen participation in Yemen by supporting our independent youth radio station at Al-Tagheer (Change) Square in Sana'a. This aid was well-timed due to the fact that constant power outages in Sana'a made radio the only constantly accessible media. Yemenis have risen up in January 2011 to call for ending dictatorship and establishing a democratic state after they witnessed how Tunisians succeeded in starting the transformation of their country.
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The CRF has supported the Expert Working Group's work in the following ways:

Studying the situation of the civil society has been one of the important programs of the Expert Working Group since its creation. Apart from monitoring, documentation and reporting on a more systemic and general tendencies with development of the civil society in the country the EWG has also been involved in covering individual cases of threats and risks on the local activists with a special focus on the cases of political prisoners from among the members of the civil society.
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The conference which the CNIS conducted with the support of the CIVICUS fund demonstrated to the government the capacity of the civil society and the political parties to unite and show the solidarity in the conditions, when there is threat to the major freedoms, such as freedom of assembly.

It inspired other circles and organizations, such as Intelligentsia Forum, which previously was cautious to violate the "taboos" of the government, to join the campaign and come up with statements and appeals demanding release of the protesters and provide for the freedom of assembly.
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