Americas

• ‘People cannot stay on the sidelines when their rights are being taken away’

  As part of our 2019 thematic report, we are interviewing civil society activists and leaders about their experiences of backlash from anti-rights groups and their strategies to strengthen progressive narratives and civil society responses. CIVICUS speaks toUma Mishra-Newbery, Interim Executive Director of Women’s March Global, a network of chapters and members mobilising to advance women’s rights around the world. Women’s March Global was formed to give continuity to the momentum of theJanuary 2017 mobilisations, when millions of women and allies in the USA and around the world poured out on to the streets to make themselves seen and heard. Its vision is one of a global community in which all women — including black women, indigenous women, poor women, immigrant women, women with disabilities, lesbian, queer and trans women, and women of every religious, non-religious and atheist background — are free and able to exercise their rights and realise their full potential.

  You recently witnessed anti-rights groups in action at the United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women. Are we seeing a new generation of more aggressive anti-rights groups active at the global level?

  I don’t think this is new. These groups have always been around, always in the background. But there is a massive resurgence of anti-rights groups underway. Following changes in political leadership in some countries, including the USA, they have become more vocal and more deeply involved. And they have become much more strategic and better coordinated. If we look at the funding of these groups, it is coming from very well-established family foundations that are deliberately working to undermine women’s rights. But they are doing it under the disguise of gender equality.

  During the 63^rd session of the United Nations (UN) Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), held in March 2019, the Holy See organised a side event under the title ‘Gender Equality and Gender Ideology: Protecting Women and Girls’. On the surface, this could appear as super progressive – they are trying to give the impression that they are promoting women’s rights. But you walk into the event and it’s extremely transphobic, as they outrightly reject the concept of gender identity and insist on biological sex, therefore refusing to consider trans women as women. They claim to know better what it means to be a woman and what all women feel and need, and this brings them to condone violence against trans people and reject sexual and reproductive rights.

  The way these groups have morphed and shifted, I think they have become more deliberate in the ways they show themselves in public. They have also become more sophisticated and are using information and communication technologies, as resistance movements always have, in order to organise and disseminate their views.

  Why do you think they are trying to appear to be progressive and who are they trying to fool?

  One would hope that they were trying to fool the UN, which should filter out hate groups, but truth be told, the UN still lets the National Rifle Association (NRA) keep its ECOSOC (UN Economic and Social Council) status, and the NRA actively lobbies against any trade treaty regulating weapons – weapons that are killing people in the USA at an astonishing rate. The UN should understand that these groups exist to undermine democracy and human rights – but more than ever, the UN has become biased on this issue. At the same time there are grassroots organisations that are being denied accreditation in unprecedented numbers – and these are all organisations working on issues that powerful states don’t want to see brought to the forefront.

  So I don’t think they are trying to fool anybody – at this point, they don’t really need to.

  You mentioned the foundations that support these anti-rights groups. Why are all these foundations providing funding?What is there in it for them?

  We have to look at the web of interests that keep these groups active within these spaces, because there are a lot of political and monetary interests keeping them at the UN and within the CSW space.

  If we look at, say, the Heritage Foundation in a space such as CSW, speaking out against what they call gender ideology, what is their point there? Digging deeper, we find that the Heritage Foundation was funded by the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation. And Betsy DeVos is currently the Trump administration’s Secretary of Education. She and her family are very deeply embedded within the US government, and they have their own political interests back in Michigan, where they are from. What Betsy DeVos has done in Michigan, essentially destroying the public education framework, is deeply troubling. We need to go through all these layers to understand why these groups exist, how sophisticated they are and why they are so difficult to remove.

  How are these groups affecting progressive civil society, in general, and specifically at forums such as CSW? How do they create disruption?

  We are currently seeing the phenomenon of governments working together to deny women’s rights, as opposed to the situation a few decades back, when collaboration among various development players, including states and their aid agencies, civil society organisations (CSOs) and grassroots groups, led to a widening of these rights.

  These new regressive partnerships are very clear at the UN. While some states continue to challenge sexual violence in conflicts, for instance, you have other member states – including the US government – that have shifted and now threaten to reject anti-rape measures because the language in the documents includes terms and considerations related to sexual and reproductive health. These states are working together to strip women – and not only women – of their rights.

  In this context, progressive CSOs are singled out as the ones speaking up against regressive governments and depicted as if they were the ones trying to undermine democracy. These delegitimising attacks against CSOs open up the space for further attacks. They are a signal for anti-rights groups, which are increasingly emboldened as a result of what their governments are doing. When your government is literally saying ‘we don´t care about women´s sexual and reproductive rights, we don´t care about what women experience as a result of conflicts – conflicts that we finance’, anti-rights groups hearing this know they are being given free rein to exist and act openly in these spaces. It’s exactly the same with white supremacists, in the USA and in other countries around the world. These groups are emboldened by a public discourse that gives a green light for fascists, racists and white supremacists to step forward. And this is exactly what they are doing by entering civil society space.

  As well as being emboldened by governments that promote their ideas, do you think anti-rights groups are also emboldened because they are becoming more popular among the public? If so, why do you think their narratives are resonating with citizens?

  They are possibly becoming more popular too – what once seemed like fringe ideas, or too politically incorrect positions to state aloud, are now becoming mainstream.

  As for why this is happening, at the risk of sounding like a ridiculous cliché, I think it is because it is easier for people to hate than to love. When we talk about human rights what we are saying is that, at a very basic level, every single person on this planet should have the same human rights. This is a message that everyone should be able to step behind. But of course, many of those who have held power for hundreds of years and benefited from patriarchy and white supremacy are going to try to defend what they see as their right to continue exercising that power. This includes governments as well as anti-rights non-state groups.

  This was apparent at that panel organised by the Holy See at CSW. The Holy See is an active, very vocal state at the UN. We reported live on their event on Twitter, and you cannot imagine the way we were trolled online. Anti-rights groups accused us of promoting trans rights over women’s rights. But we are an intersectional organisation: we understand that forms of oppression are interconnected, and so by fighting for trans women’s rights we are fighting for all women’s rights, in the same way as by fighting for women’s rights we are fighting for the rights of all people. Because the fight for the most marginalised is a fight for us all. But how can you explain this to people who have had their rights so protected, who have lived in such privilege for so long?

  Is there something that progressive civil society could learn from the ways anti-right groups are pushing their narratives?

  We definitely need to be able to work together towards a common purpose the way they do, and use social media for progressive purposes as cleverly as they are using them to undermine human rights. In many countries, Facebook is undermining democracy. In Myanmar, the genocide of the Rohingya people was incited on Facebook, and how long did it take Facebook to ban Myanmar’s military? In New Zealand, the Christchurch shooter tried to spread footage of the shooting live on Facebook, and how long did it take for Facebook to take it down?

  As civil society, we know that if we don’t actively use the tools that are being used by other groups and governments to undermine human rights, then we are failing. We have to work in a coordinated way, in coalitions. In the past, CSOs have tended to compete for funding – we need to really get better at sharing resources, being collaborative and bringing our strengths to the table.

  We are trying to move in that direction. Recently, we worked in Cameroon with one of our strategic partners, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, on social media training for peace. In this case, we focused on enabling social media campaigns to promote voting for politicians who support women’s rights and human rights.

  For our Free Saudi Women Coalition we have partnerships with six other CSOs, CIVICUS included, and we work actively as a coalition. The wins that we have had have been the result of working together. For instance, in mid-2018 the government of Iceland obtained, for the first time ever, a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, and went on to lead a joint initiative that publicly called on Saudi Arabia to improve its human rights situation. The joint statement that Iceland delivered on behalf of 36 states was a direct result of behind-the-scenes advocacy by a civil society coalition.

  What do you think progressive civil society needs to keep up the fight?

  I think that people need to understand that CSOs have always been on the ground, that they have always worked at the very grassroots level to hold governments accountable and to push forward human rights agendas. People need to know that 90 per cent of the time there is a high level of coordination that goes on behind the scenes and that CSOs are furiously working to push forward. But many people don’t see all the behind-the-scenes work. And in a lot of places, we cannot be very explicit and provide too many details about our advocacy work, because for security reasons we cannot reveal the names of activists or journalists.

  People need to understand that, in the fight for human rights, grassroots activists and organisations, as well as bigger CSOs, are doing really important and necessary work and more than ever need real support from them. We need people to get invested at the grassroots level. People cannot stay on the sidelines when their rights are being taken away. If your government is taking away your rights, you need to get involved before it’s too late. If you live in a free and stable democracy you have a duty to use your voice and speak up on the human rights abuses happening around the world. This work needs all of us at the table.

  Get in touch with Women’s March Global through itswebsite and Facebook page, or follow@WM_Global and@umajmishra on Twitter.

• ‘The government is in fact listening to civil society, just not to the progressive side of it’

  CIVICUS speaks to Horace Levy, the director of Jamaicans for Justice, a non-profit, non-partisan, non-violent citizens’ rights action organisation that advocates for good governance and improvements in state accountability and transparency.

  1. What led to the formation of Jamaicans for Justice, and what does the organisation do?

  In April 1999, the government announced new taxes, including a special fuel tax and a 30% hike in the cost of licensing vehicles. This prompted widespread protests, both peaceful and violent, including roadblocks and barricades, which lasted for several days. There was one group, in the St. Andrew’s section of Kingston, that included some lower class people, but was mostly middle class, and had gathered to block a road in protest. The poorer people were on one side of the road and the middle class people were on the other, but after a couple of days they came together. Some people from that middle-class group met afterwards to discuss the causes of the protests – the general state of injustice, the oppression of poor people. Out of a series of meetings, held along with a Roman Catholic priest, Monsignor Richard Albert, who offered his church as a venue, was born Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ). By July the group had formed, in August it registered as a limited liability company, and on 15 October 1999, six months after the riots, it officially became a registered NGO.

  The very first case JFJ took on involved the ill treatment of inner city poor youth by the police. The police had detained 52 poor youths, put them behind bars — then they released some but they kept others. From the beginning, then, ill treatment by police became a major issue for JFJ. As a result of several presentations we made before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the government eventually set up a Special Coroners’ Court, because the Coroner’s Court was totally inadequate to deal with this. The Special Coroners’ Court deals specifically with police abuse, and killings in particular.

  Another broad area of our work involves children in the care of the state. JFJ monitors the situation of wards of the state in children’s homes, places of safety, police lock-ups, remand and correctional facilities. We gather data, provide reports and lobby for the protection of this particularly vulnerable group.

  We are also involved in a wide range of other things: we deliver human rights education in schools, we provide human rights training to police recruits, we bring legal advice to inner-city communities through legal advice sessions and workshops, we give testimony in front of parliamentary committees, we promote citizen awareness of the right to access public information, and we develop media campaigns, among other things. Right now some of us are working very hard on an identification process the government is putting in place, which involves elements of respect for privacy and other rights. But we keep focusing on one of our core issues: the conditions of detention.

  One achievement we contributed to was the establishment by the government of an independent Commission of Enquiry to clarify the events that took place during the State of Emergency declared in May 2010, which left almost 70 civilians dead. A lot of progress was done in prosecuting the police for extra-judicial killings, which helped reduce the number of killings. In order to prevent this from happening again, we keep pushing for radical change in the way the security forces operate.

  2. Organisations defending basic civil rights against actions by the security forces are often accused of “protecting criminals”. How do you get public opinion to take your side on divisive issues such as police brutality?

  I don’t think we have entirely escaped that accusation. But we try in various ways: for instance, when a police officer is killed in the line of duty we issue a press release offering our sympathy to his family and condemning the act. Most of the times the papers don’t print that, but we issue it anyway. Secondly, we work on other issues as well, such as the welfare of children, which shows we are not fixated on police abuses. There was a period when we also did a lot of work on socio-economic rights: education, housing, employment and the development of rural communities. And of course, we also try to explain that the reason why we are concerned with police brutality is that the police are supposed to be protecting human rights. So a criminal killing somebody and a police officer killing somebody are two completely different things. But people seem to overlook that. Criminals are what they are, and they are not going to be moved by our condemning them. But by addressing actions by the state that should not happen, we have a chance to change them.

  3. How would you describe the environment for civil society in Jamaica? Are civic freedoms enjoyed by all Jamaicans equally, or are there restrictions that affect specific groups disproportionately?

  Civic space is quite good in Jamaica. The freedom of the press is perhaps the most unrestricted in the hemisphere. The freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly are respected and protected. The state does not attack these freedoms; to the contrary, for instance, the state has facilitated the freedom of expression by passing laws governing the establishment of fresh media outlets.

  About four years ago, we were stigmatised in public comments by the previous government’s Minister of Youth, who accused us of grooming children in state-run homes to be homosexuals, while we were in fact delivering a sexual education programme in about seven children’s homes. But this was an exception rather than a rule, and it was just an individual reaction from a public official that we had criticised. We had only had another situation like that in the past, when we had just started as an organisation and were perceived as hostile to the party that was in power at the time. But as time passed, and both parties spent some time in power, it became apparent that we criticised them both, that we were not partisan in any way, and that we were constructive rather than over-critical, so our position became accepted.

  Along with a quite healthy civic space, we have had free elections since 1945, and elections have been overall free and fair ever since. We never had a party in power that was not legally and legitimately elected. At the same time, slightly more than half the population is currently not voting, which means that each party has the support of about 23% or 24% of the electorate. Although democracy is firmly rooted not just in the political sphere but also among business, civil society and religious groups, recent polls have witnessed an increase in the number of citizens that would favour a military takeover (which is highly unlikely to happen) in reaction to the perceived corruption of politics.

  There are also lot of structural but subtle ways in which democracy is hurt. As a legacy of slavery and colonialism, our country has a hierarchical social structure that has stayed in place even after independence. It is a pyramid on top of which are white people, followed by brown people in the middle, and black people (who account for 85% of the population) at the bottom. Of course it’s not clear-cut: we have black politicians and top public officials, for example. But there is a sharp distinction between the brown and the black. The middle class is largely brown, although there are blacks among them as well. This distinction reflects in education: we have a two-tier education system, with the brown and upper class in private, proprietary and secondary schools, and the large mass of the mostly black population receiving and inferior education. Fortunately, this is changing, and formerly weak schools are now beginning to compete with privileged schools thanks to state funding. As for police abuses, they are directed against the black majority in poor communities: you don’t see upper class and white people being beaten by the police.

  In other words, democracy is in many ways corrupted by overlapping race and class injustices. The system is not corrupt in the sense that officials massively take bribes, but it is indeed damaged by this racial and class hierarchy that, according to public opinion polls, is unfortunately accepted by the vast majority of the people. Interestingly, this is not reflected in the way Jamaicans individually behave: we don’t see ourselves as less than anybody else, and when overseas we are often regarded as aggressive. We have a strong sense of our rights, but at the same time there is a broad segment of black people bleaching their skin in an attempt to climb up the social ladder.

  4. Do you think representative democracy in Jamaica is participatory enough? Do regular citizens and organised civil society have a say in how public affairs are run?

  Our democracy is not participatory enough, which is part of our struggle. Recent events have enhanced the prospects for civil society participation, however. In the latest election, in early 2016, the government won by a very tight majority, which made it more open to civil society. So as to gather as much support as they could, they gave continuity to an institution called Partnership for a Prosperous Jamaica (PPJ, formerly known as Partnership for Jamaica).

  The PPJ includes representatives of the state (both from the government and the opposition), the private sector, trade unions and civil society organisations. It was in fact as a result of civil society efforts that we got representation for five distinct civil society groups: a faith-based group, a rights advocacy group, a youth group, a women’s group and an environmental CSO. The Prime Minister, who chairs the Partnership, agreed to our proposal to have three sub-committees: on women and children; on violence and the rule of law; and on the environment. The chairpersons of all three sub-committees are civil society people.

  The chairwoman of the environment sub-committee, in particular, is a civil society representative who is highly respected by both major political parties and who had resigned to her position in the previous Partnership because she was disgusted by the fact that there was all talk and no real action. She just led a petition to the Prime Minister to protect Jamaica’s Cockpit Country against bauxite mining. According to a recently established mechanism, if you gather 15 000 signatures in 40 days, the government will review the petition, and if it complies with certain standards the Office of the Prime Minister will issue an official response. This petition surpassed the target by far, so we are now waiting to see whether we won this battle or not.

  So, there is an element of participation, but making it count is a permanent struggle. Additionally, there is a section of civil society that is mobilised around conservative or even reactionary causes, which means that not all forms of participation are helping advance a progressive agenda. For instance, an area in which we are struggling very strongly is LGBTQ rights. We have long been pushing for the revocation of buggery or sodomy laws, old pieces of legislation that criminalise male same-sex sexual activity. Under these statutes, loosely defined “unnatural offences” and “outrages on decency” can be punished with up to ten years of imprisonment and hard labour. But there is a wide section of society, led by conservative churches such as evangelists and Seventh-Day Adventists, which strongly oppose the repeal of these laws. The majority of the population belong to these churches, while more liberal churches are a small minority.

  Politicians are afraid of conservative religious people, so the government has proposed to submit the issue to a referendum. So the government is in fact listening to civil society, just not to the progressive side of it. Now, why would the majority go against itself, its own social norms and its own privilege? We just had an international conference with leading Anglicans and human rights activists, including Anthony Gifford, explaining why this is not the kind of issue to be decided by a popular vote. It doesn't make any sense to ask the majority whether they would like to respect the rights of a minority they are oppressing. Sodomy laws were repealed in Britain 50 years ago, but in Jamaica we are not likely to have them revoked anytime soon. On this issue, a section of civil society is fighting another section of civil society.

  5. What support, including from international actors, does progressive Jamaican civil society need to play a full role in building a fairer society and a more participatory democracy?

  We get international support, for example in the form of the conference I just mentioned, with highly-respected figures putting forward a cogent argument that will hopefully help shape public debate. UNDP has also collaborated in a similar way.

  Financial support, on the other hand, is not that good. That’s where organisations like JFJ are struggling. We get some funding locally, but it is very little. For instance, we have one donor who gives us nearly 2.5 million Jamaicans, but that’s just a few hundred US dollars. We have an annual fundraising art auction, which is quite unusual for an organisation like ours, but that’s because we have some middle- to upper-class donors, and this brings in a couple million Jamaican dollars a year. And it takes months of efforts.

  So most of our funding comes from international sources. We had funding from the UN Democracy Fund (UNDEF), but it expired last December. We just got UNICEF funding for our work with children, which is set to last for at least two years. We also have some funding from the European Union, but it ends in about five months, and we are finding it hard to replace it. We have been trying to get funding from the Open Society Foundations but have not yet succeeded. We are approaching the Inter-American Development Bank, and we might get something from them.

  In short, we are struggling with funding. Until 2013 we had a Legal Department but we had to close it. We still employ one of the lawyers from our former Legal Department, but we need more lawyers because a lot of our work with pre-trial detainees is of a legal nature. For instance, we have a case now going to the Privy Council and we are struggling to get the money to send people there. Even though we have some pro bono lawyers in England, it still costs us money: we need to send them 3 000 pounds that we can ill afford.

  When we get our Legal Department going, we will be able to use it to earn some money. In the past, we stupidly thought that, as a charity, we shouldn’t. But in fact, even as a charity we can earn some money by imposing retainer fees to those who can pay them, while working for free for those who cannot afford them. We are set to do that, but we have made that decision quite recently, so we won’t be earning any money from it for a few months yet.

  • Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) was founded in 1999 and primarily works with victims whose rights have been breached by members of the security forces. In the upcoming period of sessions of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) in Montevideo, Uruguay, JFJ will take part in a hearing on extrajudicial executions and the excessive use of preventive detention against Afro-descendants in Jamaica.
  • Civic space in Jamaica is rated as “narrowed” by theCIVICUS Monitor.
  • Get in touch with Jamaicans for Justice through theirwebsite or Facebook page, or follow@JAForJustice on Twitter.
• “Fake news” violates citizens’ right to be informed

  CIVICUS speaks to Lyndal Rowlands, United Nations Bureau Chief at Inter Press Agency on what is “fake news”, its effect on civil society and how civil society can respond to it.

  1. How would you define fake news? How is this different from propaganda and established forms of political campaigning?
  Fake news only very recently became a part of our collective vocabulary. During the 2016 United States of America presidential election “content mill” websites created articles which mimicked the real news but were in fact entirely made up with the sole intention of going viral to make money from “clicks” or people visiting their websites. Yet before most of us had even begun to wonder what exactly fake news was, the term was co-opted by the very people who arguably benefited from fake news in its original form, and I think that it is important for civil society to pay attention to this later shift in how the term fake news has been employed.
  
  As comedian John Oliver has said, audiences need the press to help them to sort out fact from fiction and yet now that same press finds itself under attack. Even small mistakes made by journalists, have been seized upon by political figures as a way to discredit and delegitimise the so-called fourth estate. In light of this, I think it’s important to try and restore trust in the vast majority of the media who do uphold the professional standards that differentiate them from fake news.
  
  So, rather than trying to define fake news, I think that it’s better to focus on how we can discern which news audiences should trust and why. A few things that I would suggest would include making sure that you get your news from a wide variety of sources, finding out who owns the media companies you are getting your news from, and making sure that you double-check check anything that seems unusual against a primary source.
  
  2. Why do you think we are seeing a rise in fake news?
  The motivation for the initial rise in fake news was advertising revenue, however the disinformation that we are now seeing shared is more complex. New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen says that the spread of disinformation can help benefit a political side because it makes it more difficult for undecided voters to find out the truth. These undecided people may hear so much shouting and disagreement going on that they decide that it’s simply easier to go about their everyday lives, than to try and work out exactly who is telling the truth.
  
  This may explain why USA President Donald Trump’s team have now referred to three separate incidents which haven’t happened: namely Trump’s reference to “last night in Sweden”, Kelly Anne Conway’s reference to the Bowling Green Massacre and White House spokesperson Sean Spicer’s three references to a terrorist attack in Atlanta.
  
  As professor Rosen says, many of the Trump/Republican administration’s policies are not necessarily popular so by surrounding them with “fog and confusion” the administration “can get a lot more done”. However it’s also another reason why it’s so important that we all commit to not add to that fog and confusion ourselves, by making sure we don’t inadvertently share disinformation.
  
  3. Why do you think some citizens believe fake news?
  Sometimes we may believe a fake news story because it confirms our world view. We may then not be corrected, because for most of us, our world view has become increasingly polarised because of social media bubbles, which mean that we now almost exclusively see news which confirms our pre-existing opinions and values.
  
  4. How does fake news impact on civil society and human rights defenders?
  Attacks on press freedom affect civil society and human rights defenders because it is the job of the media to hold the powerful to account. If the vital democratic role of a free press is endangered through accusations that they are fake news and should be censored, then who will be there to report when the government or others in positions of power attack people demonstrating in the street or imprison them?
  
  Those who spread disinformation may also use it to discredit human rights defenders and civil society organisations. They may make up information about how many people attended a demonstration or argue that protestors are “paid”. Disagreements have begun to emerge over which protestors are violent, and whether they have been planted by the opposition, in order to discredit one side or the other. This may lead eventually to a curtailing of the right to protest, if peaceful protestors are successfully discredited.
  
  5. How should civil society respond to fake news?
  Sadly, the same people who seek to curb the freedoms of civil society organisations often also seek to control the media, so I definitely think that civil society and the media should work together to address these issues. Many media organisations are now also set up to serve the public interest as non-profit organisations, and many journalists are also freelancers, so there are other things that the media and non-profits have in common. If you rely on high quality journalism to get your story out, don’t forget to also support the journalists who produce these stories. If you can’t afford to buy a subscription, find other ways to support journalists, even through messages of support. Foundations and other funding organisations should also seriously consider supporting public interest journalism.
  
  In countries where the media is not free or where due to ownership interests they only partially or incompletely cover civil society issues, civil society organisations have also successfully begun using social media to tell their own narrative. By telling their stories directly to the public civil society organisations can also counter the sharing of disinformation. However, I would also encourage civil society to work together with the media, since there are many journalists who are committed to accurately representing issues on a wide range of topics in the public interest from human rights to climate change. 

  •Follow Lyndal Rowlands on Twitter at @lyndalrowlands

• #BEIJING25: ‘More women in public office translates into better government and a more robust democracy’

  For the 25th anniversary of theBeijing Platform for Action, CIVICUS is interviewing civil society activists, leaders and experts about the progress achieved and the challenges ahead. Focused on eliminating violence against women, ensuring access to family planning and reproductive healthcare, removing barriers to women’s participation in decision-making and providing decent jobs and equal pay for equal work, the Beijing Platform for Action was adopted at the United Nations’ (UN)Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. After 25 years, significant but unequal progress has occurred, not least as the result of incessant civil society efforts, but no country has yet achieved gender equality.

  CIVICUS speaks to Pakou Hang, Chief Program Officer at Vote Run Lead, an organisation dedicated to training women to run for political office and win, increasing women’s representation at every level of government. Founded in 2014, it has already reached over 36,000 women across the USA, nearly 60 per cent of whom are women of colour, and 20 per cent of whom are from rural areas. Numerous Vote Run Lead alumnae are now serving on city councils, county boards, statehouses, supreme courts and the US Congress.

  

  A quarter century later, how much of the promise contained in the Beijing Platform for Action has translated into actual change?

  A lot of progress has transpired since 1995, but there is still a lot to be done, and we are still far from equitable. In terms of political representation, there has been some progress, but it has also been slow: globally, 24.3 per cent of all national parliamentarians were women in early 2019, compared to just 11.3 per cent in 1995. Only three countries around the world have achieved or surpassed parity in their single or lower houses, but many more have reached or exceeded the 30 per cent threshold. As of last year, there were also 11 women serving as heads of state and 12 serving as heads of government, and women accounted for almost 21 per cent of government ministers – often in areas most associated with women’s issues, such as social affairs and portfolios dealing with family, children, young people, older people and people with disabilities. So the bottom line is mixed: a lot of progress has been made, but it has been slow and it is far from sufficient.

  Also, there has been a lot of variation among regions and countries, from about 16 per cent female legislators in the Pacific to more than 40 per cent in Nordic European countries. The Americas averages about 30 per cent, but the USA is below average. Congress is still disproportionately male: although women make up more than half the population, we hold barely 24 per cent of seats. Congress is also less racially diverse than the overall population, with 78 per cent of members identifying as white, a much higher percentage than the population’s 60 per cent of white Americans.

  According to the Center for American Women and Politics, the situation is not very different in states across the country: 29.2 per cent of state legislative seats and 18 per cent of state governorships are occupied by women. There is fewer data about local executives, and the information mostly concerns major cities, 60 per cent of whose mayors are white men, although they make up just 20 per cent of the population of those cities. And even as more women ascended into local office in 2018, it was still not uncommon for city councils and county commissions to include just one woman or no women at all.

  On the other hand, despite the relatively small number of women legislators, and especially women of colour, the current US Congress is the most diverse in history. And the group of candidates who ran for Congress in 2020 were also the most diverse we have ever seen. Of course, these candidates received a lot of backlash from the media and their political opponents. But I think we need to shift our perspective to understand the amount of change that has taken place. I surely was disappointed that we ended up with two older, white men leading the two major presidential tickets – but now we also have a Black, Indian American woman as our Vice President-elect, so there is progress.

  I remember when the 2020 presidential election was called for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, I contacted my nine-year-old niece with the news. She was ecstatic. I was reminded that she belongs to a new generation of Americans who were born under President Barack Hussein Obama. And growing up, she will know that Donald Trump was the President, but she will also know that Trump was beaten by a Black, Indian American woman. As we were talking, my niece said to me, “We are almost there, Auntie.” And it dawned on me: yes, we are almost there.

  Why is it important to achieve gender parity in political representation? Is it only a matter of women’s rights and equal opportunity, or would it also have positive effects on democratic institutions and policymaking?

  A big reason why we need more women in public office is because they govern differently than men. Women in government are more collaborative, more civil, more communicative. They are more likely to work across the aisle to solve problems. They bring home more money for their constituents, pass more bills, and their bills focus more on vulnerable populations like children, older people and sick people. Women broaden the political agenda, well beyond traditional women’s issues. And the result is better policies for all of us, not just for women and girls but also for men and boys. Because they bring an entirely new set of perspectives and life experiences into the policymaking process, the presence of women also ensures that women’s perspectives are not sidelined, and issues such as gender-based violence or childcare are not ignored. All in all, women in public office tend to be more effective than their male counterparts. And given the current gridlock and hyper-partisanship in politics, we need to do things differently. More women in public office translates into better government and a more robust democracy.

  Moreover, the need for women in power and politics has become even more critical in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This past electoral cycle, donors wanted to contribute to female candidates’ campaigns more than before, because the pandemic brought awareness not just about the many inequities that plague our society and the healthcare system, but also of the outstanding work women, and in particular women of colour, are doing in their communities to respond to urgent needs, fill in the gaps left by inadequate government policies, and address the needs of excluded populations who have been disproportionately impacted on by COVID-19 and the economic downturn. During this crisis, women have played major roles in keeping communities connected, collecting and distributing food and other staples to needy families, finding ways to support local businesses and providing pop-up community services, among other things.

  Research that looks at the ways in which various countries have responded to the pandemic seems to show that countries with female leaders tended to have fewer cases and fewer deaths from COVID-19. It seems that women in power have embraced a transformative style of leadership, which may be better at handling crises. This type of leadership focuses on deep human relationships, investment in teams and sharing knowledge, and being a role model and motivating others. These qualities are very useful in our current context.

  Why do you think the political representation of women in the USA is still so low?

  There are many reasons why we do not have gender parity in our political representation. First, there are still too many structural reasons why women do not run nor get elected. Women still do a disproportionate amount of housework and child-rearing and there is still sexist media coverage that focuses on women’s appearances and personalities rather than their policies. Further, those in party structures and the people with political knowledge, networks and money still continue to be men, and often they determine who is politically viable; for example, a young man who studied community development at Harvard is deemed more viable than a middle-aged Black woman who has been a community organiser for the past 20 years.

  Paradoxically, female candidates win at roughly the same rates as their male counterparts, and according to polls, voters are excited about getting women elected. But the second reason why women don’t get elected is simply that women don’t run at the same rate as men – and of course, you can’t win if you don’t run.

  Why don’t women run for public office? Perhaps the most pervasive reason is that women are self-doubters. They do not believe they are qualified. They do not see other women who look like them or think like them in those positions of power, and thus it’s a self-fulfilling cycle. But it’s not just women who self-doubt. Outsiders do plenty of that too. In fact, if a woman has never filled a position of power, then a question that keeps coming up in the media, said in a doubtful tone, is: is a woman electable? We heard a lot of that during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race.

  There’s also the fact that certain qualities that are deemed positive in men are given a negative connotation when applied to women, like assertiveness or ambition. While angry and vindictive men have surely been elected president, women who are perceived as ‘angry’, or ‘vindictive’ are deemed unlikeable, and thus disqualified. Women candidates are held to much higher standards of competency, sometimes by themselves, but more often by others, and as a result we do not have gender parity in our political representation.

  When was it that you realised that, unlike men, women needed training to run for office?

  Even though I had studied political science in college, I felt that American politics was dirty and corrupting and I never got involved in electoral politics. That was until 2001, when my older cousin, Mee Moua, decided to run for a State Senate seat on the East Side of Saint Paul in a special election. The East Side of Saint Paul was fast becoming a district where people from minorities were in the majority, and yet all its elected officials from the state level to the county and the city were all white, conservative-leaning men. My cousin was Ivy League-educated, had been a lawyer and the president of the Hmong Chamber of Commerce, and she decided to run for public office after having volunteered on numerous political campaigns over many years. However, as often happens with female candidates, she was told she needed to wait her turn. Well she didn’t, and since no one in the mainstream political community would help her, she looked to our 71 first cousins to become her volunteer army and recruited me to be her campaign manager because I was the only one of us who had studied political science. Against all odds, without any political experience, and in the middle of a Minnesota winter, we knocked on doors, made phone calls, mobilised voters using ethnic radio stations, drove people to the polls and won, making history by electing the very first Hmong state legislator in US and Hmong history.

  Looking back, I realised that I managed that campaign purely based on instincts, honed from my childhood experience helping my non-English speaking parents navigate the mainstream world. And while we won, we could have just as easily been out-organised and lost. It was only years later, after having gone through a Camp Wellstone political training course, that I realised women candidates needed something for ourselves, something that uniquely spoke to us, and prepared us for the real issues we would face as female candidates.

  What kind of training does Vote Run Lead provide, and how does it help break down the barriers that keep women away from power?

  Vote Run Lead is the largest and most diverse women’s leadership programme in the USA. We have trained over 38,000 women to run for public office, including rural women, transgender women, young women, moms and Black and Indigenous women and women of colour. Over 55 per cent of our alumnae who were on the general election ballot in 2020 won their races, and 71 per cent of our alumnae who are women of colour won their races too.

  The women we train often decide to run for public office because they see something wrong in their community and they want to fix it. But they do not see a lot of people who look like them in positions of power. Vote Run Lead offers a number of training modules that teach women the basics about campaigns, from delivering a stump speech to building a campaign team or crafting a message, to fundraising and getting out the vote. But what makes our training programme different is that we train women to run as they are. Women often need support to view themselves as qualified, capable and deserving candidates. We show them that they don’t need to obtain another promotion or degree and that in fact, their personal story is their biggest asset. Our Run As You Are training curriculum reminds women that they are enough and that they are the fierce leaders we need to elect to build the just democracy that we all deserve.

  What’s the ‘typical’ profile of the women you help run for office? Do you support any women willing to run, regardless of their politics?

  There isn’t a typical Vote Run Lead alumna. We are a nonpartisan organisation, so we train women from all walks of life, all professions, all political parties, and in all stages of their political development. Our values are deeply embedded in promoting intersectional, anti-racist women who are committed to building a just and fair democracy.

  Given the widespread phenomenon of voter suppression in the USA, does your programming also focus on getting out the vote?

  Traditionally, Vote Run Lead does not employ our own get out the vote (GOTV) programme because most of our alumnae are either running or working on a campaign. But in 2020, with the high levels of voter suppression fuelled by misinformation campaigns and health safety concerns, Vote Run Lead did launch a robust GOTV programme with our alumnae. This GOTV programme included eight GOTV-specific training modules, from how to respond to apathy and cynicism around voting, to which digital field and communication tools to use to get out the vote. We also activated over 200 volunteers, had 3,000 conversations, made 30,000 phone calls and sent out over 33,000 text messages to get our alumnae and their networks to go vote.

  Prior to the summer, we also launched a series we called ‘Your Kitchen Cabinet’, where we trained women on how to raise money, do direct voter contact and even launch a digital plan while social distancing. Those guides and webinars can be found on our website and YouTube channel and offer real-time advice and fact-based information.

  Civic space in the USA is rated as ‘obstructed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
  Get in touch with Vote Run Lead through itswebsite orFacebook page, and follow@VoteRunLead on Twitter.

• #BEIJING25: “Más mujeres en cargos públicos se traduce en un mejor gobierno y una democracia más sólida”

  En ocasión del 25º aniversario de laPlataforma de Acción de Beijing, CIVICUS está entrevistando a activistas, líderes y expertas de la sociedad civil para evaluar los progresos conseguidos y los desafíos que aún debemos sortear. Adoptada en 1995 en laCuarta Conferencia Mundial sobre la Mujer de las Naciones Unidas (ONU), la Plataforma de Acción de Beijing persigue los objetivos de eliminar la violencia contra las mujeres, garantizar el acceso a la planificación familiar y la salud reproductiva, eliminar las barreras para la participación de las mujeres en la toma de decisiones, y proporcionar empleo decente e igual remuneración por igual trabajo. Veinticinco años más tarde, se han producido progresos significativos pero desparejos, en gran medida como resultado de los esfuerzos incesantes de la sociedad civil, pero ningún país ha logrado todavía la igualdad de género.

  CIVICUS conversa con Pakou Hang, Directora de Programas de Vote Run Lead (Vota Compite Lidera), una organización dedicada a capacitar a mujeres para que se postulen para cargos políticos y ganen la elección, aumentando la representación de las mujeres en todos los niveles de gobierno. Fundada en 2014, ya ha alcanzado a más de 36.000 mujeres en los Estados Unidos, casi el 60% de las cuales son mujeres de color y el 20% procede de las zonas rurales. Numerosas graduadas de Vote Run Lead ahora ocupan puestos en ayuntamientos, juntas de condado, cámaras estatales, cortes supremas y en el Congreso de los Estados Unidos.

  

  Un cuarto de siglo más tarde, ¿cuánto de la promesa contenida en la Plataforma de Acción de Beijing se ha traducido en cambios reales?

  Se ha avanzado mucho desde 1995, pero todavía queda mucho por hacer y todavía estamos lejos de la equidad. En términos de representación política ha habido algunos avances, pero estos también han sido lentos: a nivel global, a principios de 2019 el 24,3% de los integrantes de los parlamentos nacionales eran mujeres, en comparación con apenas 11,3% en 1995. Solo tres países en todo el mundo alcanzaron o superaron la paridad en sus cámaras bajas o legislativos unicamerales, pero han sido muchos más los que alcanzaron o superaron el umbral del 30%. Hasta el año pasado había también 11 mujeres jefas Estado y 12 jefas de gobierno; y las mujeres ocupaban casi el 21% de los puestos ministeriales, a menudo en las áreas más asociadas a las temáticas de la mujer, tales como acción social y carteras relacionadas con la familia, la niñez, la juventud, la tercera edad y la discapacidad. Así que el resultado final es mixto: se ha avanzado mucho, pero el progreso ha sido lento y está lejos de ser suficiente.

  También ha habido una gran variación entre regiones y países, desde alrededor de 16% de mujeres parlamentarias en la región del Pacífico hasta más del 40% en los países nórdicos. El promedio para las Américas es 30%, pero Estados Unidos se encuentra por debajo del promedio. El Congreso sigue siendo desproporcionadamente dominado por hombres. A pesar de que las mujeres representan más de la mitad de la población, ocupan solamente el 24% de las bancas. El Congreso también es menos racialmente diverso que el conjunto de la población, ya que el 78% de sus miembros se identifican como blancos, una proporción sustancialmente superior al 60% de la población estadounidense compuesta de personas blancas.

  Según el Centro para las Mujeres y la Política Estadounidense (Center for American Women and Politics), la situación no es muy diferente a nivel estadual: el 29,2% de los escaños legislativos estaduales y el 18% de las gobernaciones son ocupados por mujeres. Hay menos datos sobre los ejecutivos locales y el grueso de la información disponible refiere a las ciudades más grandes, el 60% de cuyos alcaldes son hombres blancos, a pesar de que estos dan cuenta de apenas el 20% de la población de esas ciudades. Aunque en 2018 más mujeres accedieron a cargos públicos locales, siguió siendo frecuente que los ayuntamientos y las comisiones de los condados incluyesen a una sola o a ninguna mujer.

  Por otro lado, a pesar del relativamente pequeño número de mujeres legisladoras, y especialmente de mujeres de color, el Congreso actual es el más diverso en la historia. Y el grupo de candidatos que se postularon para cargos legislativos en 2020 también fue el más diverso jamás visto. Por supuesto, estos candidatos recibieron fuertes ataques de los medios y de la oposición política. Pero creo que necesitamos cambiar nuestra perspectiva para entender la magnitud del cambio ocurrido. Sin duda que me decepcionó que termináramos con dos hombres blancos y mayores a la cabeza de las dos principales fórmulas presidenciales, pero lo cierto es que ahora también tenemos a una mujer negra y de ascendencia india como vicepresidenta electa, y eso es un avance.

  Recuerdo que cuando se anunció el triunfo de Joe Biden y Kamala Harris en las elecciones presidenciales de 2020 llamé con la noticia a mi sobrina de nueve años. Ella estaba extasiada. Lo cual me recordó que ella pertenece a una nueva generación de estadounidenses nacidos durante la presidencia de Barack Hussein Obama. Cuando crezca sabrá que Donald Trump fue presidente, pero también sabrá que Trump fue vencido por una mujer negra de ascendencia india. Mientras hablábamos, mi sobrina me dijo: “Ya casi lo logramos, tía”. Y caí en la cuenta de que tenía razón: sí, ya casi estamos.

  ¿Por qué es importante alcanzar la paridad de género en la representación política? ¿Es solo una cuestión de derechos de las mujeres e igualdad de oportunidades, o también tendrá efectos positivos en las instituciones democráticas y en las políticas públicas?

  Una de las principales razones por las cuales necesitamos más mujeres en puestos gubernamentales es que ellas gobiernan en forma diferente de los hombres. Las mujeres en el gobierno son más colaborativas, más civiles, más comunicativas. Son más proclives a trabajar con miembros de otros partidos para solucionar los problemas. Consiguen más dinero para sus localidades, aprueban más leyes, y sus proyectos están más enfocados en las poblaciones más vulnerables como la niñez, la ancianidad y las personas enfermas. Las mujeres amplían la agenda política, más allá de los asuntos tradicionalmente concernientes a las mujeres. Y el resultado son mejores políticas para todas las personas, es decir no solo para las mujeres y las niñas, sino también para los hombres y los niños. Por último, dado que ellas traen a los procesos de formulación de políticas un nuevo conjunto de perspectivas y experiencias de vida, su presencia asegura que las perspectivas de las mujeres no sean dejadas de lado, y que asuntos tales como la violencia de género o el cuidado infantil no sean ignorados. En resumen, las mujeres en puestos gubernamentales tienden a ser más efectivas que los hombres. Y dada la actual situación de estancamiento político e hiperpartidismo, necesitamos hacer las cosas de un modo diferente. Más mujeres en cargos públicos se traduce en un mejor gobierno y una democracia más sólida.

  Además, la necesidad de mujeres en el poder y en la política se ha vuelto aún más crítica en el contexto de la pandemia de COVID-19. En el último ciclo electoral los donantes quisieron contribuir a las campañas de las candidatas mujeres más que nunca antes, porque la pandemia los hizo tomar conciencia no solo las numerosas inequidades que atraviesan a nuestra sociedad y al sistema de salud, sino también de la labor sobresaliente que las mujeres, y en particular las mujeres de color, están llevando a cabo en sus comunidades para responder a las necesidades urgentes, cubrir las lagunas de políticas gubernamentales inadecuadas, y abordar los problemas de las comunidades excluidas que han sido desproporcionalmente afectadas por el COVID-19 y la crisis económica. Durante esta crisis, las mujeres han desempeñado roles fundamentales a la hora de mantener conectadas a las comunidades, recolectar y distribuir alimentos y otros bienes básicos para las familias necesitadas, encontrar maneras para apoyar a la actividad económica local y proveer servicios comunitarios ad hoc, entre otras cosas.

  Las investigaciones que analizan las formas en que diversos países han respondido a la pandemia parece mostrar que los países con líderes mujeres tienden a tener menos casos y menos muertes por COVID-19. Parece que las mujeres en el poder han adoptado un estilo de liderazgo transformador que puede resultar más apropiado para el manejo de crisis. Este tipo de liderazgo se centra en las relaciones humanas profundas, la inversión en el equipo de trabajo y el intercambio de conocimientos, la acción ejemplificadora y la motivación de los demás. Estas cualidades son muy útiles en nuestro contexto actual.

  ¿Por qué crees que la representación política de las mujeres en los Estados Unidos sigue siendo tan baja?

  Hay muchas razones por las cuales no tenemos paridad de género en la representación política. En primer lugar, todavía hay demasiadas razones estructurales por las cuales las mujeres no se postulan y no son elegidas. Las mujeres siguen realizando una cantidad desproporcionada de las tareas domésticas y de crianza y la cobertura mediática sigue siendo sexista, ya que se enfoca en las apariencias y en la personalidad de las mujeres más que en sus políticas. Además, las personas que ocupan las estructuras partidarias y cuentan con conocimiento político, redes de contactos y dinero siguen siendo hombres, y a menudo son ellos quienes determinan quién es políticamente viable. Por ejemplo, un hombre joven que estudió desarrollo comunitario en Harvard es considerado más viable que una mujer de mediana edad que ha desarrollado labores de organización comunitaria durante 20 años.

  Paradójicamente, las candidatas mujeres ganan elecciones en aproximadamente las mismas proporciones que sus homólogos masculinos y, según las encuestas, a los votantes les entusiasma la posibilidad de elegir mujeres. Pero la segunda razón por la cuales las mujeres no son electas es simplemente que no se postulan en las mismas cantidades que los hombres, y desde ya que si no compites no puedes ganar.

  ¿Por qué las mujeres no se postulan para cargos públicos? Quizás la razón más generalizada es que las mujeres dudan de sí mismas. No se consideran calificadas. No ven a otras mujeres que se parecen a ellas o que piensan como ellas en esas posiciones de poder y, por lo tanto, es un círculo vicioso. Y no solamente las mujeres dudan de sí mismas, sino que también lo hacen los observadores externos. De hecho, si una determinada posición de poder nunca ha sido ocupada por una mujer, entonces la pregunta que se plantea una y otra vez en los medios, en tono de duda, es: ¿podría una mujer ser elegida? Es una pregunta que escuchamos mucho durante las primarias presidenciales demócratas de 2020.

  También está el hecho de que ciertas cualidades que se consideran positivas en los hombres, como la asertividad o la ambición, adquieren una connotación negativa cuando se aplican a las mujeres. Mientras que sin duda ha habido hombres furiosos y vengativos que fueron elegidos presidente, las mujeres que son percibidas como “enojadas” o “vengativas” son consideradas desagradables y, por lo tanto, descalificadas. Las mujeres candidatas son sometidas a estándares de calificación mucho más altos, a veces por sí mismas, pero más a menudo por otras personas, y como resultado de ello carecemos de paridad de género en nuestra representación política.

  ¿Cuándo se dio cuenta de que, a diferencia de los hombres, las mujeres necesitaban entrenamiento para postularse a un cargo público?

  A pesar de haber estudiado Ciencia Política en la universidad, sentía que la política estadounidense era sucia y corrupta y nunca estuve me involucré en la política electoral. Pero en 2001 mi prima mayor, Mee Moua, decidió postularse para un escaño en el Senado estadual por el distrito Este de Saint Paul en una elección especial. El distrito Este de Saint Paul se estaba convirtiendo rápidamente en un distrito donde las minorías eran mayoría, pero aun así todos sus funcionarios electos, desde el nivel estadual al condado y la ciudad, eran hombres blancos y conservadores. Mi prima se había graduado en una universidad prestigiosa, había ejercido como abogada y había sido presidenta de la Cámara de Comercio Hmong, y decidió postularse después de ser voluntaria por años en numerosas campañas políticas. Sin embargo, como sucede a menudo con las candidatas mujeres, le dijeron que tenía que esperar su turno. Bueno, decidió no hacerlo, y como ningún actor político relevante la ayudó, reunió a nuestros 71 primos hermanos para convertirlos en su ejército de voluntarios y me reclutó a mí como jefa de campaña, porque yo era la única que había estudiado Ciencia Política. Contra todo pronóstico, sin ninguna experiencia política y en medio del invierno de Minnesota, golpeamos puertas, hicimos llamadas telefónicas, movilizamos a los votantes usando estaciones a través de las radios de la colectividad, llevamos a la gente a las urnas y ganamos. Hicimos historia al elegir al primer legislador estadual hmong en la historia de los Estados Unidos y en la historia hmong.

  En un examen retrospectivo, me doy cuenta de que dirigí la campaña basándome puramente en el instinto, alimentado a partir de mi experiencia infantil de ayudar a mis padres, que no hablaban inglés, a moverse en el mundo exterior. Y aunque ganamos, bien podría haber sucedido que enfrentáramos a un adversario mejor organizado y perdiéramos. Recién años más tarde, tras hacer una capacitación política en Camp Wellstone, me di cuenta de que las candidatas mujeres necesitábamos algo diseñado especialmente para nosotras, algo que nos interpelara directamente y nos preparara para los problemas reales que enfrentaríamos en tanto que candidatas mujeres.

  ¿Qué tipo de capacitación ofrece Vote Run Lead, y cómo ayuda a derribar las barreras que mantienen a las mujeres alejadas del poder?

  Vote Run Lead es el programa de liderazgo de mujeres más grande y diverso de los Estados Unidos. Hemos capacitado a más de 38.000 mujeres para postularse a cargos públicos, incluidas mujeres rurales, mujeres trans, mujeres jóvenes y mujeres negras, indígenas y de color. Más del 55% de nuestras graduadas que compitieron en la elección general de 2020 ganaron, y el 71% de nuestras graduadas que son mujeres de color también fueron electas.

  Las mujeres que entrenamos usualmente deciden postularse a cargos públicos porque identifican algo negativo en sus comunidades y quieren arreglarlo. Pero no ven a mucha gente parecida a ellas en posiciones de poder. Vote Run Lead ofrece varios módulos de capacitación que enseñan a las mujeres todo lo que necesitan saber sobre las campañas, desde dar un discurso, armar un equipo de campaña o elaborar un mensaje, hasta recaudar fondos y motivar a la gente a votar. Pero lo que diferencia a nuestro programa de capacitación es que entrenamos a las mujeres para que se postulen tal como son. Las mujeres a menudo necesitan apoyo para verse a sí mismas como candidatas calificadas, capaces y merecedoras. Les mostramos que no necesitan buscar otra promoción u obtener otro título ya que, de hecho, su historia personal es su mayor activo. Nuestro currículo de capacitación, Run As You Are (Compite Tal Como Eres), les recuerda a las mujeres que ellas son suficiente y que son el tipo de líderes que necesitamos elegir para construir la democracia justa que merecemos.

  ¿Cuál es el perfil “típico” de la mujer que ustedes ayudan a postular? ¿Apoyan a cualquier mujer que quiera competir independientemente de su orientación política?

  No hay una graduada típica de Vote Run Lead. Somos una organización no partidaria, por lo que capacitamos a mujeres de las procedencias más diversas, de todas las profesiones, de todos los partidos políticos, y cualquiera sea nivel su desarrollo político. Nuestros valores están profundamente vinculados con la promoción de mujeres interseccionales y antirracistas comprometidas con la construcción de una democracia más justa y equitativa.

  Dado el fenómeno generalizado de la supresión de votantes en los Estados Unidos, ¿el programa también se orienta a motivar la participación electoral?

  Tradicionalmente, Vote Run Lead no utiliza un programa propio para motivar la participación electoral (GOTV, por sus siglas en inglés) ya que la mayoría de nuestras graduadas están ya sea compitiendo en una elección o trabajando en una campaña. Pero en 2020, cuando los ya elevados niveles de supresión de votantes fueron alimentados por campañas de desinformación y preocupaciones por la seguridad de la salud, Vote Run Lead lanzó un sólido programa GOTV que involucró a nuestras graduadas. Este programa GOTV incluyó ocho módulos de capacitación específicos para motivar la participación electoral, que abarcaron desde cómo responder a la apatía y el cinismo en torno a la elección, hasta cuáles plataformas digitales y herramientas de comunicación usar para promover la participación. También contactamos a más de 200 voluntarias, tuvimos 3.000 conversaciones, hicimos 30.000 llamadas telefónicas y enviamos más de 33.000 mensajes de texto para que nuestras graduadas y sus redes fueran a votar.

  Antes del verano también lanzamos una serie llamada “Tu gabinete de cocina”, con la cual capacitamos a las mujeres sobre cómo recaudar dinero, hacer contacto directo con los votantes e incluso lanzar un plan digital manteniendo la distancia social. Esas guías y seminarios virtuales se pueden encontrar en nuestro sitio web y en nuestro canal de YouTube y ofrecen consejos en tiempo real e información basada en evidencia.

  El espacio cívico en los Estados Unidos es calificado como “obstruido” por elCIVICUS Monitor.
  Contáctese con Vote Run Lead a través de susitio web o su página deFacebook, y siga a@VoteRunLead en Twitter.

   

• ARGENTINA: ‘The state is abandoning its role as guarantor of access to rights’

  CIVICUS discusses the deterioration of civic space and human rights under Argentina’s current government with Vanina Escales and Manuel Tufró of the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS). Founded under dictatorship in 1979, CELS promotes the protection and effective exercise of human rights, justice and social inclusion, nationally and internationally.

  Since its inauguration in December 2023, thegovernment of Javier Milei, a self-proclaimed ‘anarcho-capitalist’ who allied with culturally conservative groups, has promoted policies of economic deregulation, the reduction of the state and social spending cuts, resulting in increased unemployment and poverty. It has adopted a restrictive and repressive approach towards protests against these policies, denigrating journalism and anyone who expresses critical opinions. In the face of these restrictions on civic space and human rights, civil society is seeking international visibility and solidarity and pursuing strategic litigation.

  How would you describe Milei´s government?

  This is the first libertarian -- or anarcho-capitalist, as Milei describes it – government we’ve had in Argentina. Its rise is part of an international trend towards the erosion of democracies as a result of policies of market extremism and the advance of the far right. Like other expressions of the far right in Europe or the USA, it is characterised by brutalism and a recourse to authoritarianism to deal with social conflict. At times it also shows features such as historical denialism and regressive values about gender roles and the rights of sexual, gender and racial minorities. But it also has some peculiar aspects: unlike its counterparts in the global north, its xenophobic nationalism hasn’t targeted immigrants but Indigenous peoples instead.

  In the economic sphere, the libertarian agenda has manifested itself in the liberalisation of prices, leading to high levels of inflation and thus to a brutal transfer of income from the middle and poorer classes to the richest.

  As far as social policy is concerned, the government has tended to leave in place only policies of direct income transfers to individuals, meagre subsidies or social aid such as the Universal Child Allowance, which alone cannot mitigate the effects of the recession or counteract the impacts of the withdrawal of the state. This withdrawal can be seen in the lack of food and medical supplies and the closure of and disinvestment from community spaces and social policies. The state has withdrawn from its role as guarantor of access to basic services.

  The stated aim is to weaken controls on businesses, particularly foreign ones, in order to attract investment. Deregulation has a direct impact on the environment, as it ignores the rights of Indigenous peoples and peasant communities over the territories where companies want to set up. Companies receive privileges while the country is deprived of its natural resources.

  Some reforms were imposed by decree and others by an omnibus bill called the Basic Law, which was passed by Congress after much debate and amendment.

  How is the government reconciling libertarianism with cultural conservatism?

  There is a tension within the government between neo-liberalists who promote market deregulation, economic liberalisation and changes in labour policies, and the equally authoritarian but conservative voices that defend the last military dictatorship, state terrorism and state violence, and attack emancipatory movements such as feminism and its egalitarian gains.

  On this terrain, the government is fighting a cultural as well as a material battle. Verbal attacks go hand in hand with the dismantling of gender policies. For example, the government dissolved the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity and then dismantled all policies against gender violence. Officials have also spoken out strongly against abortion and sexual and reproductive rights in general.

  As part of the dismantling of state structures, programmes aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and care, health and early childhood policies are being dismantled. Our monitoring of care policies has shown that only seven out of 43 are still in force. The state is abandoning its role as mediator and guarantor of access to rights.

  In addition, at the international level, the government is challenging commitments made by the state through international treaties, which in Argentina have constitutional priority, enshrined in legislation. At the recent General Assembly of the Organisation of American States (OAS), for example, the government demanded that any mention of climate change, gender and LGBTQI+ people be removed from the final documents. We believe that the OAS, the United Nations and their human rights mechanisms should closely monitor the Argentine government’s actions.

  How have these processes affected civic space?

  The quality of civic space has been severely compromised. Protests are now treated as crimes. These basic practices in any democracy are presented as, at best, obstacles to traffic and, at worst, seditious activities aimed at overthrowing the government.

  This is reflected in blatantly unconstitutional norms such as Resolution 943/2023 of the Ministry of Security, known as the ‘anti-picketing protocol’, which states that any assembly that disrupts traffic in cities or on roads is a flagrant crime and authorises direct police intervention, without the need for a court order, to disperse it and investigate protesters.

  This resolution authorises the deployment of large numbers of security forces at every protest, often using abusive and indiscriminate ‘less lethal’ weapons such as rubber bullets and teargas, as well as physical violence and arbitrary arrests. We have documented at least 80 such arrests in recent months. Protesters have been released because the government has no evidence to prosecute them. But as a result of these tactics, many demonstrations are broken up or do not take place at all.

  In the past six months, at least 47 journalists have been injured in protests. Many more have been harassed on social media and criminally prosecuted for anti-government statements.

  The government has dismantled the public media to the point where we have no way of knowing what is happening in different parts of the country, unless something comes to the attention of private media and international correspondents and they decide to cover it. In Argentina today, the right to generate information and be informed by a plurality of voices is being violated.

  How is civil society organising to resist these restrictions?

  Civil society organisations have filed several precautionary measures ahead of protests to protect the right to peaceful assembly. But the judiciary has not accepted them, arguing that there is no a priori risk, but rather that it is necessary to assess how a demonstration unfolds. The judiciary also has a very weak role in controlling arbitrary arrests and assessing excessive police violence.

  Since the judicial route is not bearing fruit, it’s time to resort to international mechanisms for the protection of human rights, something CELS has done many times throughout its history, since it was born under the dictatorship. We are working to provide information on the human rights violations taking place in Argentina.

  On 11 July we took part in a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The state was present, but only reaffirmed its position in favour of the criminalisation of social protest, justifying it as a mechanism to deal with sedition and attempts at destabilisation. The government was evasive and did not answer questions such as what protocols were in place to control the use of less lethal weapons, or why a regulation to control police action in public demonstrations had been repealed.

  We are also compiling a register of physical and digital attacks from non-state sources, particularly from parts of the radicalised right. Thanks to our work with the political research team at Crisis magazine, we have already registered around 280 cases of offline harassment on the Radar portal, and we are beginning to register online attacks, including the leaking of personal data that could lead to physical attacks.

  Today, more than ever, it is necessary to organise in national and international networks to carry out information and denunciation campaigns with a collective voice. If we wait for the total destruction of rights to raise our voices, it will be too late.

  Civic space in Argentina is rated as ‘narrowed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.

  Get in touch with CELS through itswebsite or itsFacebook andInstagram pages, and follow@CELS_Argentina and@vaninaescales on Twitter.

• ARGENTINA: “El Estado está abandonando su rol de garante del acceso a derechos”

  CIVICUS conversa sobre el deterioro del espacio cívico y los derechos humanos bajo el actual gobierno argentino con Vanina Escales y Manuel Tufró, del Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS). Fundado en 1979, bajo la última dictadura, el CELS promueve la protección y el ejercicio efectivo de los derechos humanos, la justicia y la inclusión social, a nivel nacional e internacional.

  Desde su inauguración en diciembre de 2023, elgobierno de Javier Milei, autodesignado como “anarcocapitalista” pero aliado con sectores culturalmente conservadores, ha impulsado políticas de desregulación de la economía y reducción del Estado y el gasto social que han redundado en el aumento del desempleo y la pobreza. Frente a las protestas que suscitaron estas políticas, ha adoptado una postura restrictiva y represiva y ha vilipendiado al periodismo y a cualquiera que exprese opiniones críticas. Frente a estas restricciones del espacio cívico y los derechos humanos, la sociedad civil está buscando visibilidad y solidaridad internacional y recurriendo al litigio estratégico.

  ¿Cómo caracterizarían al gobierno de Milei?

  Este es el primer gobierno libertario o anarcocapitalista, como lo describe Milei, que hemos tenido en Argentina. Su ascenso se inscribe en un contexto internacional de desgaste de las democracias a raíz de las políticas de extremismo de mercado y el avance de la extrema derecha. Al igual que otras expresiones de ultraderecha en Europa o en los Estados Unidos, se caracteriza por cierto brutalismo y por recurrir al autoritarismo como ordenador de los conflictos sociales. También exhibe por momentos rasgos como el negacionismo histórico y valores retrógrados sobre los roles de género y los derechos de minorías sexo-genéricas y racializadas. Pero también tiene particularidades: a diferencia de lo que ocurre en el norte global, hasta el momento su nacionalismo xenófobo no puso el foco en la inmigración sino en los pueblos originarios.

  La agenda libertaria se ha manifestado, en el plano económico, en la liberación de los precios, que ha producido altos niveles de inflación y, por lo tanto, una brutal transferencia de ingresos desde los sectores medios y populares hacia los más concentrados.

  Respecto de las políticas sociales, cristalizó la tendencia a dejar en pie sólo las políticas de transferencia directa de ingresos a las personas, magros subsidios o ayuda social como la Asignación Universal por Hijo que por sí solas no mitigan los efectos de la recesión ni los efectos de la retirada del Estado. Esta retirada se ve en la falta de entrega de alimentos y medicamentos y en el cierre de y la desinversión en espacios comunitarios y políticas sociales. El Estado se ha corrido del rol de garante del acceso a servicios básicos.

  El objetivo declarado es debilitar los controles sobre las empresas, especialmente extranjeras, para atraer inversiones. La desregulación tiene un impacto directo en materia ambiental, ya que desconoce todo derecho de los pueblos indígenas y las comunidades campesinas sobre los territorios donde buscan instalarse estas empresas. Éstas reciben privilegios mientras el país es despojado de sus recursos naturales.

  Algunas reformas han sido impuestas por decreto y otras a través de la llamada “Ley Bases”, que, luego de mucho debate y ajustes, ha sido aprobada por el Congreso.

  ¿Cómo se compatibiliza el libertarismo con el conservadurismo cultural?

  Dentro del mismo gobierno conviven en tensión sectores neoliberales que promueven la desregulación del mercado, la liberalización de la economía y transformaciones en el mundo laboral, con expresiones igualmente autoritarias pero conservadoras que reivindican la última dictadura militar, el terrorismo de Estado y la violencia estatal y arremeten contra movimientos emancipatorios como el feminismo y sus conquistas igualitarias.

  En este terreno el gobierno está dando una batalla tanto cultural como material. Los ataques verbales van junto al desmantelamiento de las políticas de género. Por ejemplo, disolvió primero el Ministerio de las Mujeres, Géneros y Diversidad y luego todas las políticas contra la violencia de género. También se ha expresado firmemente en contra del aborto y de los derechos sexuales y reproductivos en general.

  En el marco del desmantelamiento del Estado nacional se están eliminando programas destinados a prevenir embarazos adolescentes, políticas de contención, de cuidado y de salud, así como para la primera infancia. Nuestro monitoreo de las políticas de cuidados encontró que siguen vigente solo siete de 43. El Estado está abandonando su rol de mediador y garante del acceso a derechos.

  Además, el gobierno está poniendo en discusión en el plano internacional compromisos asumidos por el país a través de tratados internacionales, que en Argentina tienen jerarquía constitucional, y consagrados en su propia legislación. En la última Asamblea General de la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA), por ejemplo, solicitó remover de los documentos finales toda mención del género, la población LGBTQI+ y el cambio climático. Creemos que la OEA, las Naciones Unidas y sus mecanismos de derechos humanos deberían seguir de cerca el desempeño del gobierno argentino.

  ¿Cómo han repercutido estos procesos sobre el espacio cívico?

  El espacio cívico se ha visto severamente restringido. Las protestas han pasado a ser tratadas como delitos. Estas prácticas fundamentales en toda democracia son representadas, en el mejor de los casos, como obstáculos al tránsito y, en el peor, como actividades sediciosas que buscan derrocar al gobierno.

  Esto se materializa en normas claramente inconstitucionales como la Resolución 943/2023 del Ministerio de Seguridad, conocida como el “protocolo antipiquetes”, que establece que toda manifestación que altere la circulación en ciudades o rutas es un delito flagrante y autoriza la intervención policial directa, sin necesidad de orden judicial, para dispersarla e investigar a los manifestantes.

  Sobre la base de esta resolución se autorizan enormes despliegues de fuerzas de seguridad cada vez que ocurre una protesta, las cuales con frecuencia hacen uso abusivo e indiscriminado de armas “menos letales”, como balas de goma o gases irritantes, y de violencia física y detenciones arbitrarias. En los últimos meses hemos registrado al menos 80 detenciones de este tipo. Los manifestantes han recuperado su libertad porque el gobierno no cuenta con pruebas concretas para sostener procesos penales. Pero como resultado del uso de estas tácticas, muchas manifestaciones se disuelven o directamente no suceden.

  En los últimos seis meses, asimismo, al menos 47 periodistas han sido heridos en manifestaciones. Muchos más han sido hostigados en redes sociales y llevados ante la justicia penal por sus dichos en contra del gobierno.

  El gobierno ha desmantelado los medios públicos al punto que no tenemos manera de enterarnos qué está pasando en los distintos puntos del país, a no ser que algún hecho llame la atención de medios privados y de corresponsales internacionales y decidan darle cobertura. En la Argentina de hoy se vulneran los derechos a generar información y ser informado con una pluralidad de voces.

  ¿Cómo se está organizando la sociedad civil para hacer frente a estas restricciones?

  Las organizaciones de la sociedad civil han presentado múltiples medidas cautelares con anterioridad a la realización de protestas para que el derecho a protestar quedara protegido. Pero el poder judicial no las ha aceptado, aduciendo que no hay un riesgo a priori, sino que hay que evaluar cómo se desarrolla la manifestación. El poder judicial también tiene un rol muy débil a la hora de controlar las detenciones arbitrarias y evaluar los excesos de violencia policial.

  Como la vía judicial no está dando frutos, es hora de recurrir a los mecanismos internacionales de protección de derechos humanos, cosa que el CELS ha hecho muchas veces a lo largo de su historia, desde su surgimiento bajo la dictadura. Trabajamos llevando información sobre las violaciones de derechos humanos que están ocurriendo en Argentina.

  El 11 de julio participamos en una audiencia ante la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos. El Estado Nacional estuvo presente, pero no hizo más que confirmar su postura en favor de la criminalización de la protesta social, justificándola como un mecanismo para hacer frente a la sedición y a los intentos de desestabilización. Ante preguntas como cuáles eran los protocolos vigentes para controlar el uso de armas menos letales o por qué se había derogado una norma sobre el control de la actuación policial en manifestaciones públicas, el gobierno se mostró evasivo y no respondió.

  También estamos armando un registro de ataques físicos y digitales procedentes de fuentes no estatales, y específicamente de sectores de la derecha radicalizada. Gracias al trabajo junto al Equipo de Investigación Política de Revista Crisis, ya registramos en el portal Radar alrededor de 280 casos de hostigamiento offline, y comenzamos a registrar ataques en línea, que incluyen la revelación de datos personales que podrían derivar en ataques físicos.

  Hoy más que nunca es necesario organizarse en redes nacionales e internacionales para llevar adelante campañas de información y de denuncia con una voz colectiva. Si esperamos a la destrucción total de los derechos para levantar la voz, será demasiado tarde.

  El espacio cívico en Argentina es calificado como “estrecho” por elCIVICUS Monitor.

  Póngase en contacto con el CELS a través de supágina web o sus cuentas deFacebook eInstagram, y siga a@CELS_Argentina y a@vaninaescales en Twitter.

  
  

   

• BELIZE: ‘Many laws remain that keep LGBTQI+ people as second-class citizens’

  CIVICUS speaks about the situation of LGBTQI+ rights in Belize and the ongoing impacts of the British colonial legacy with Caleb Orozco, the chief litigant in a case successfully challenging Belize’s discriminatory laws and co-founder of the United Belize Advocacy Movement (UNIBAM).

  Founded in 2006, UNIBAM was the first LGBTQI+-led policy and advocacy civil rights organisation in Belize. Focused on dismantling systemic and structural violence that impacts on human rights, it uses rights-based approaches to reduce stigma and discrimination.

  What was the process leading to the overturn of Belize’s so-called anti-gay laws?

  The process of overturning the sodomy laws contained in Section 53 of the Criminal Code started with a preliminary assessment that guided the development of the University of the West Indies’ Rights Advocacy Project (URAP) led by Tracy Robinson, whose group initiated my case in 2010. In 2011 we worked with Human Dignity Trust, which joined as interested party, to engage on international treaty obligations.

  In 2007, a conversation started at a meeting in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, organised by the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition. URAP engaged by email and Viper Messenger, with additional regional conferences to flesh out legal arguments. The process identified Lisa Shoman as local Senior Counsel and Chris Hamel Smith, who argued the case in 2013.

  Meanwhile, we submitted reports for Belize’s Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations Human Rights Council to test the government’s response to the challenge to the sodomy laws. We also resorted to thematic hearings at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The response of the government was that it needed a ‘political mandate’. We worked with the subcommittee for policy and legislation of the National AIDS Commission to monitor legislative opportunities and gauge the position of the government and the prime minister. We knew the government would not significantly fight the process.

  In late 2010 we filed a challenge to Section 53 and a fight with the group of churches ensued. UNIBAM’s role was eventually reduced to that of an interested party, with the churches relegated to the same role, and I remained as the sole claimant.

  We did not have a communications strategy, so we developed one. Nor did we have a security strategy, but we got help from the Human Dignity Trust. We participated in around 300 media interviews, collectively, over the years. The process included the derailment of the government’s revised national gender policy of 2013, with hundreds protesting across the country. Also, in Jamaica, 25,000 people protested to demand the removal of Professor Brendon Bain, an expert witness in my case in support of the churches, from his job at the University of the West Indies. 

  The case was heard by the Supreme Court in May 2013. We submitted personal experiences of discrimination and tried to strike out the churches, but we failed. Three years later, on 10 August 2016, the judge ruled in our favour, establishing that Section 53 was unconstitutional, which effectively decriminalised consensual same-sex activity held in private by consenting adults.

  The Attorney General launched a partial appeal focused on the freedom of expression and non-discrimination on the grounds of ‘sex’, but the Court of Appeal’s judgment was reaffirmed in December 2019, with the expectation that the sodomy law had to be modified by parliament after the Court reaffirmed its unconstitutionality. Over time, the political tone changed: from claiming a political mandate was needed to change our sodomy law, to supporting 15 out of 17 Universal Periodic Review recommendations on LGBTQI+ rights in 2018. We are now waiting for parliament to modify the law as per the instruction of the Court of Appeal.

  Did you experience backlash?

  I experienced a lot of backlash throughout the process. This included character assassination and death threats, to the point that a personal security plan had to be put in place for me to go to court in 2013 and for my daily movement. Christian TV stations pushed negative propaganda and social media platforms buzzed with homophobia and threats. 

  How much progress has the LGBTQI+ rights movement achieved so far? 

  The LGBTQI+ rights movement became part of a National Working Group, in which I helped draft a cabinet note to advance the Equal Opportunities Bill and Hate Crime Legislation, with support from the Human Dignity Trust. Even though the Equal Opportunities Bill was endorsed by the cabinet, it didn’t reach parliament before the 2020 general election, because the evangelical ‘Kill the Bill’ campaign succeeded in derailing it just in time. We are not giving up in 2022!

  I run the only LGBTQI+-led observatory of human rights in Belize, which provides litigation support to clients. We produce knowledge products on systemic and structural violence that feeds into a national and transnational advocacy framework that includes LGBTQI+ economic inclusion and livelihoods. 

  The process influenced and inspired the development of several niche organisations focused on LGBTQI+ families, health, trans issues and lesbian and bisexual women. It helped launch the global mandate of the Human Dignity Trust’s campaign on decriminalisation. Ours was in fact their first case back in 2011.

  What challenges do LGBTQI+ people continue to face in Belize? How can challenges be addressed?

  There is the denial of gender markers for trans people. Violence against us can take place in the family and the workplace. Kids experience discrimination in schools. In addition, family insecurity for LGBTQI+ parents is a huge deal. We endure economic rights violations and economic exclusion, as well as unequal access to economic benefits such as social security and government pensions. 

  LGBTQI+ Belizeans experience daily deficits in the police’s work that deals with us as victims of violence and detainees. If you’re of African descent and gay, expect police harassment.

  We need resources to advance 20 amendments to laws that exclude LGBTQI+ Belizeans as citizens, which attack our dignity and rights and keep us as second-class citizens. The functions of the Human Rights Observatory, which provides redress to LGBTQI+ Belizeans and marginalised women, should be strengthened.

  What kind of international support does Belizean LGBTQI+ civil society need? 

  International allies can support us with donations through our GoFundMe page. We also really value offers of pro-bono legal support for the work of our Human Rights Observatory, including legal research, legal defence,  protection work, bill drafting, litigation support, and branding strategies, as well as offers of pro bono support to produce investigative or victim advocacy training.

  Civic space in Belize is rated ‘narrowed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
  Get in touch with UNIBAMthrough itswebsite and follow@UNIBAMSupport on Twitter.

• BERMUDA: ‘A right that the LGBTQI+ community enjoyed for four years has been stripped away’

  CIVICUS speaks about the recent court decision on same-sex marriage in Bermuda with Adrian Hartnett-Beasley, a founding board member of OUTBermuda.

  OUTBermuda is a civil society organisation that promotes and supports the wellbeing, health, dignity, security, safety and protection of the LGBTQI+ community in Bermuda. It provides educational resources on issues of diversity, inclusiveness, awareness and acceptance of LGBTQI+ people, and advances human rights, conflict resolution and equality and diversity in Bermuda.

   

  What is the significance of the recent court ruling declaring the ban on same-sex marriage constitutional? How has it affected LGBTQI+ people in Bermuda?

  In March 2022, Bermuda’s highest judicial body, the Privy Council’s Judicial Committee, sided with the government of Bermuda, stating that it may regulate and restrict marriage licences only to unions between a man and a woman. According to the judgement, this does not violate the Bermudian Constitution. It would have violated the Human Rights Act of 1981 if the Bermuda Government had not amended it to allow discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

  This judgement reversed previous decisions that starting in 2017 made it possible for same-sex couples to get legally married in Bermuda. As a result, a right that we as a community enjoyed for four years was stripped away.

  We don’t have survey data, but the general feeling of disappointment is palpable. Our community and our allies are disappointed that this fundamental human rights issue was ever made political in the first place, first with an irresponsible referendum held in 2016 – a non-binding consultation that failed due to low turnout – and then again by successive administrations who used our community as leverage in two electoral campaigns.

  We are still reviewing the case, but overall, we have concerns that our constitution has failed us and what this means, if people are paying attention, is that our constitution is not fit for purpose anymore.

  How was OUTBermuda involved in the case, and what will it do next?

  OUTBermuda was heavily involved throughout the process. We ran very successful arguments at the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, with the guidance and hard work of our legal teams. We believe our leadership and standing helped bring together a consortium of plaintiffs, which together supported the novel and intricate legal arguments being made before the courts, including two churches and a couple of individuals – together encapsulating a broad range of perspectives, as reflected in the evidence we submitted to the courts.

  In its former life, that is, before it became a registered charity, OUTBermuda was known as Bermuda Bred and successfully sued the Bermuda government in 2015 to secure some immigration rights for non-Bermudian same-sex partners to live and work on the island. As a result of that victory, its members pivoted the organisation into OUTBermuda and registered it as a charity. The organisation has been leaning into the empty space in which the LGBTQI+ community had no voice ever since.

  This adverse ruling does not change that. We will continue to advocate for equality, justice and dignity for all LGBTQI+ Bermudians. If anything, the negative decision of the court highlights that OUTBermuda must continue its work.

  What other challenges do LGBTQI+ people face in Bermuda?

  The issues we face are as diverse as the community itself. At the core of all of it is acceptance; without acceptance, our community is subjected to unfair and illegal housing discrimination, which alongside family disapproval results in young people having nowhere to live and having higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse. Not surprisingly, this leads to members of our community staying in the closet longer, or at least being less comfortable about being themselves in public. All of this ends up resulting in our community not reaching its collective full potential.

  OUTBermuda gets requests for help regularly, and this is the typical story we hear over and over. Marriage has been one, very public, issue but it’s by no means the only one – probably not even the most important one. We will continue working to educate people, including our political leaders, about the human rights of LGBTQI+ people. The next government must re-amend the Human Rights Act to reinstate the full protection of sexual orientation.

  How much progress has the LGBTQI+ rights movement achieved so far? Have you experienced any anti-rights backlash?

  We have made a lot of progress. When we started litigating for same-sex marriage, polls showed a slight majority of Bermudians were against it, and within five years, when same-sex marriage became legal, a clear majority supported it.

  A poll we conducted in 2020, three years into same-sex marriage being legal, showed that 92 per cent of Bermudians believed that LGBTQI+ people deserved human rights protection, 95 per cent believed we deserved civil rights protection, 53 per cent were in favour of same-sex marriage and 72 per cent thought that a church should be allowed to perform a wedding between two consenting adults. An overwhelming majority of 75 per cent opposed the government spending more money on litigation to ban same-sex marriage, while a mere three per cent claimed they had been negatively affected by same-sex couples being able to marry, adopt or live together.

  But this progress was met with backlash, particularly by organisations such as Preserve Marriage, which grew markedly since the early days of the public debate on marriage equality. They are well-organised and well-funded and are reacting quite violently to the evidence that public perceptions on all LGBTQI+ issues is increasingly more accepting.

  What kind of support would Bermudian LGBTQI+ civil society need from their international counterparts?

  Bermudian LGBTQI+ civil society, while physically isolated – more than 600 miles away from North Carolina – is fortunate to have great internet accessibility, so resources are easy to access and connections are easy to make. OUTBermuda as an organisation has been fortunate to receive the support of comparable – but larger and more sophisticated – organisations overseas in the form of resources, ideas and solidarity. As we have just hired our first employee – a part-time executive director – we are looking forward to building out those relationships and capitalising on the great work that has already been done in other jurisdictions – while still doing it the uniquely Bermudian way.

  Get in touch with OUTBermuda through itswebsite or itsFacebook page, and follow@OUTBermuda on Twitter. 

• CANADA: ‘The Pope didn’t deliver a clear apology to Indigenous people on behalf of the Catholic Church’

  CIVICUS speaks with Virginie Ladisch of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) about the recent apology of Pope Francis to Canadian Indigenous peoples and the legacy of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

  ICTJ is a civil society organisation (CSO) working in partnership with victims and survivors to obtain acknowledgment and redress for massive human rights violations, hold those responsible to account, reform and build democratic institutions and prevent the recurrence of violence and repression.

  What human rights violations committed against Indigenous people did the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reveal?

  The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada very clearly details the human rights violations and cultural genocide that resulted from the ‘Indian residential school’ system, which was the focus of the recent apology by Pope Francis.

  The Indian residential schools and the abuses that occurred at them are among many other human rights violations suffered by Indigenous people in Canada, which include sexual and gender-based violations against Indigenous women and girls, land dispossession, violation of the right to safe drinking water, disproportionate rates of incarceration, excessive use of force against land rights protesters, discriminatory practices and lack of access to basic services, including healthcare.

  How significant is the Pope's apology?

  The Pope’s apology is a significant first step in the journey to acknowledge and repair past wrongs. In his apology, the Pope acknowledged the assimilationist intent of the residential school system and the harm it caused by systematically marginalising Indigenous people, denigrating and suppressing their languages and cultures, taking young children away from their homes, indelibly affecting their relationship with their parents and grandparents and subjecting them to physical, verbal, psychological and spiritual abuse.

  The last residential schools closed in the 1990s, so it was important for him to acknowledge the intergenerational harm caused, which persists to this day. However, several survivors noted with disappointment his omission of sexual abuse – rampant in Indian residential schools – which continues to have detrimental impacts on survivors and their families.

  While the Pope highlighted the systematic nature of harm perpetrated against Canadian Indigenous people, his apology stopped short of naming the Catholic Church’s role as part of a system intended to ‘kill the Indian in the child’. He said: ‘I am sorry. I ask forgiveness, in particular, for the ways in which many members of the church and of religious communities co-operated, not least through their indifference, in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time, which culminated in the system of residential schools’.

  The Pope’s words reflect a personal apology and an apology on behalf of individual Catholics, but not a clear apology on behalf of the Catholic Church as an institution. Since the Pope represents the Catholic Church, it is possible to interpret this personal apology as an apology on behalf of the Church. However, given the deeply embedded systemic nature of the violations committed by the Catholic Church against Indigenous people, it is necessary to clearly acknowledge that the system was at fault and that there was a concerted institutional effort to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children. This was not the work of a few misguided individuals.

  There needs to be a concerted effort to unravel the colonialist ideas that underpinned the residential school system and are at the root of persistent racism today.

  What next steps should the Catholic Church and the Canadian government take?

  ICTJ recognises apologies as an important part of a transitional justice process because of their significant moral and symbolic value. But to be meaningful, they need to be followed by real action and material reparations. The Pope acknowledged this in his apology and noted that ‘a serious investigation into the facts’ and efforts ‘to assist the survivors of the residential schools to experience healing from the traumas they suffered’ would be key to prevent such situations happening again. Ultimately, the significance of the Pope’s apology will depend on how he leads the Catholic Church in turning those words into action.

  In terms of next steps, the Catholic Church and the Government of Canada should follow the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action, which address the lasting harms of residential schools and call on all sectors of society to invest in new and respectful ways of moving forward together. Where more information is needed, for example around missing children and unmarked graves, the Catholic Church should open its archives and undertake a rigorous investigation.

  How is ICTJ working to advance the rights of Indigenous people?

  ICTJ works side by side with victims and survivors in their quest for justice and helps ensure they have a say in the policies that affect them. We raise awareness about their rights and support efforts to hold perpetrators accountable, uncover the truth about the violations they and their communities suffered and obtain acknowledgment and redress.

  We also partner with civil society groups, including women’s, youth and minority groups, that have a stake in building a more just, peaceful and democratic society. Together, we press forward the institutional reforms and guarantees necessary to prevent the violations from happening again.

  Over the past three decades, transitional justice processes have been recognised as an opportunity to address longstanding historical injustices against Indigenous peoples around the world. Specific processes and institutions associated with transitional justice – such as truth commissions, special prosecutorial bodies, memorialisation and reparations – may be the catalyst for political, social, institutional and cultural changes that contribute to the recognition and materialisation of Indigenous peoples’ rights, as we point out in a report we published in 2012.

  ICTJ has worked to advance the rights of Indigenous peoples in various countries, including Australia, Canada, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru and the USA. In Canada, it accompanied the Truth and Reconciliation process from before its inception in 2008 to the end of its mandate in 2015.

  Recognising the importance of involving young people in Canada’s truth and reconciliation process, ICTJ partnered with the Commission to spearhead youth engagement activities. Initiatives included a series of youth retreats in which participants developed the technical and communication skills needed to better engage their peers on Indigenous issues, and a youth-led video project that covered the history of the residential schools and young people’s knowledge – or lack of knowledge – of this history and the contemporary situation of Indigenous people in Canada.

  As expressed by a high school student from Edmonton who participated in one of ICTJ’s events, ‘We are the next generation. After 10 years, we are going to be the adults – the lawyers, the prime ministers. We have to know when we are young, and when we are older, we can make sure this doesn’t happen’.

  Civic space in Canada is rated ‘open’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
  Get in touch with ICTJ through itswebsite orFacebook and, and follow@theICTJ on Twitter.

• CHILE: ‘Anti-rights groups attacked the Pride march to try to undermine its peaceful character’

  CIVICUS discusses the struggle for LGBTQI+ rights in Chile with Ramón Gómez, human rights officer of the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation (MOVILH). Founded in 1991, MOVILH is a civil society organisation that defends the rights of LGBTQI+ people.

  In June 2024, a group of hooded men attacked the Pride march in the capital, Santiago de Chile. The attackers tried to break through the security fence protecting the marchers and attacked volunteers who tried to stop them. They beat activists and participants, threw rocks and paint at floats and damaged a truck. The attack came amid a climate of growing homophobia, including calls for a boycott of the event.

  What advances and setbacks have there been for LGBTQI+ rights in Chile?

  From 1991 until 2022, when the law on equal marriage was passed, Chile experienced accelerated change in favour of LGBTQI+ rights. This was reflected in the repeal of discriminatory regulations, the adoption of 18 protective laws and the introduction of anti-discrimination public policies in education, health and labour, as well as a positive cultural shift.

  However, since 2022, both people and institutions that publicly supported LGBTQI+ rights have started being silenced, while opponents have reorganised. Hate speech has overtaken friendly speech, particularly on social media. This is partly due to the misconception that passing an equal marriage law will solve everything, and partly due to a retreat in democratic values that has brought anti-rights exponents into public office.

  The consequences are alarming. Our annual report shows that 2023 was the worst year for the promotion of LGBTQI+ rights. Discrimination cases increased by almost 53 per cent, up to 1,597, the highest number recorded, while hate speech increased by 123 per cent.

  This situation has been exacerbated by an unprecedented offensive by far-right groups that have gained power, particularly in the National Congress. Therefore, one of the main priorities for the LGBTQI+ movement is to campaign against hate speech and protect the rights that have been won.

  How serious were the incidents at the Pride march?

  At the last Pride march, a small group of no more than 10 hooded people carried out an attack with hate messages directed at marchers and activists. This attack, typical of anti-rights groups, was an unsuccessful attempt to undermine the peaceful nature that has historically characterised these marches, with the aim of portraying them as conflictual or dangerous to majority interests.

  Although the government did not react specifically to this case, the Metropolitan Presidential Delegation played a key role in ensuring the smooth progress of the march, helping to maintain its peaceful character and protecting participants along the route. This intervention was crucial in preventing the incident escalating and preserving the inclusive and festive spirit of the march.

  What are the priorities for LGBTQI+ rights, and how are organisations working to achieve them?

  In addition to campaigning against hate speech, Chile needs a reform of the anti-discrimination law to provide effective protection and the approval of a comprehensive sex education law with a human rights perspective to strengthen cultural change in schools, educate young people about diversity and protect the rights of LGBTQI+ children and young people.

  There are around 50 LGBTQI+ groups in Chile, spread throughout the country. Specialisation is a new way of working: the collectives that have emerged in the past decade focus exclusively on issues such as children and adolescents, education or health, and have a limited geographical scope of action, unlike the older movements that worked at a national level and tried to cover all areas. Regardless of the issues they address, collectives carry out communication campaigns and legislative and public policy advocacy, and form coalitions to leverage their expertise, present common demands –  such as the reform of the anti-discrimination law – and confront the anti-rights offensive.

  In addition, these groups do research on the reality of LGBTQI+ people in Chile, compile statistics on cases of discrimination and violence, provide legal and psychological counselling to victims and give talks and training workshops on sexual and gender diversity to public and private sector bodies.

  Through this combination of expertise and collaboration, LGBTQI+ groups are able to address violence and discrimination more effectively and continue to advance rights.

  How are local groups connected to the global movement and what international support do they need?

  LGBTQI+ organisations in Chile are part of various international networks. MOVILH, for example, has worked with international organisations such as ILGA and is part of several Latin American and Ibero-American networks where organisations exchange experiences and join forces. In addition, LGBTQI+ collectives collaborate bilaterally with similar groups in other countries, sharing experiences and providing mutual support.

  Globally, LGBTQI+ collectives need funding, as they are one of the vulnerable parts of society that globally receive the least resources. In the case of Chile, this need is constant, as the fact we are considered an upper-middle income country generally prevents groups receiving external funding. This has a negative impact on the struggle for equality, as the country lacks targeted state funding to address LGBTQI+ people’s needs.

  Civic space in Chile is rated ‘narrowed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.

  Get in touch with MOVILH through itswebsite or itsFacebook andInstagram pages, and follow@Movilh on Twitter.

• CHILE: “Grupos antiderechos atacaron la Marcha del Orgullo para intentar socavar su carácter pacífico”

  CIVICUS conversa sobre la lucha por los derechos LGBTQI+ en Chile con Ramón Gómez, encargado de derechos humanos del Movimiento de Integración y Liberación Homosexual (MOVILH). Fundado en 1991 MOVILH es una organización de la sociedad civil que defiende los derechos de las personas LGBTQI+.

  En junio de 2024, un grupo de hombres encapuchados atacó la marcha del Orgullo en Santiago de Chile, la ciudad capital. Los agresores intentaron romper el cerco de seguridad que protegía a los asistentes, agrediendo a voluntarios que intentaban detenerlos. Golpearon a activistas y participantes, lanzaron piedras y pintura a las carrozas y dañaron un camión. El ataque ocurrió en medio de un clima de creciente homofobia, que incluyó llamados a boicotear el evento.

  ¿Qué avances y retrocesos han experimentado los derechos de las personas LGBTQI+ en Chile?

  Desde 1991 hasta 2022, año en que se aprobó la ley de matrimonio igualitario, Chile vivió un acelerado cambio a favor de los derechos de las personas LGBTQI+. Esto se reflejó en la derogación de normativas discriminatorias, la aprobación de 18 leyes protectoras y la introducción de políticas públicas antidiscriminatorias en educación, salud y trabajo, además de una transformación cultural favorable.

  Sin embargo, desde 2022, tanto las personas como las instituciones que apoyaban públicamente los derechos LGBTQI+ han comenzado a silenciarse, mientras que los opositores se han reorganizado. Los discursos de odio han superado a los discursos amigables, especialmente en redes sociales. Esto se debe, por un lado, a la percepción errónea de que con la aprobación del matrimonio igualitario todo está resuelto y, por el otro, a un retroceso en las convicciones democráticas que ha llevado a sectores antiderechos a ocupar cargos públicos.

  El impacto ha sido alarmante. Nuestro informe anual mostró que 2023 fue el peor año para la promoción de los derechos LGBTQI+. Los casos de discriminación aumentaron casi 53%, llegando a 1.597, la cifra más alta registrada, mientras que los discursos de odio se incrementaron 123%.

  Esta situación se ha agravado a causa de una ofensiva sin precedentes de grupos de ultraderecha que han ganado poder, especialmente en el Congreso Nacional. De ahí que una de las grandes prioridades para el movimiento LGBTQI+ sea el armado de campañas para contrarrestar los discursos de odio y proteger los derechos conquistados.

  ¿Cuán graves fueron los incidentes durante la reciente Marcha del Orgullo?

  En la última Marcha del Orgullo, un grupo reducido, de no más de 10 personas encapuchadas, perpetró un ataque con mensajes de odio dirigidos a los asistentes y activistas. Con este ataque, típico de los grupos antiderechos, intentaron, sin éxito, erosionar el carácter pacífico que ha caracterizado históricamente a estas marchas, con el objetivo de presentarlas como conflictivas o peligrosas para los intereses de las mayorías.

  Aunque el Ejecutivo no reaccionó específicamente en este caso, la Delegación Presidencial Metropolitana jugó un papel clave para asegurar que la marcha se desarrollara sin inconvenientes, ayudando a mantener su carácter pacífico y protegiendo a los participantes durante el recorrido. Esta intervención fue crucial para evitar que el incidente escalara y para preservar el espíritu inclusivo y festivo de la marcha.

  ¿Cuáles son las prioridades en la agenda LGBTQI+, y cómo trabajan las organizaciones para concretarlas?

  Además de la realización de campañas contra los discursos de odio, Chile necesita una reforma a la Ley Antidiscriminatoria para que provea protecciones efectivas y la aprobación de una Ley de Educación Sexual Integral con perspectiva de derechos humanos para reforzar el cambio cultural en las escuelas, educar en la diversidad y proteger los derechos de niños, niñas y adolescentes LGBTQI+.

  En Chile hay unas 50 agrupaciones LGBTQI+ distribuidas a lo largo del país. Una nueva forma de trabajo es la especialización: los colectivos surgidos en la última década se dedican exclusivamente a temas como salud, educación o infancia y adolescencia, y tienen un ámbito geográfico de actuación limitado, a diferencia de los movimientos más antiguos, que trabajaban a nivel nacional y buscaban abarcar todas las áreas. Independientemente de los temas que aborden, los colectivos hacen campañas comunicacionales e incidencia legislativa y en políticas públicas, y forman coaliciones para potenciar sus respectivas experticias, presentar demandas comunes, tales como la reforma de la Ley Antidiscriminatoria, y hacer frente a la ofensiva antiderechos.

  Además, las agrupaciones desarrollan estudios sobre la realidad de las personas LGBTQI+ en Chile, recopilan estadísticas sobre casos de discriminación y violencia, brindan asesoría legal y psicológica a las víctimas e imparten charlas y talleres de capacitación sobre diversidad sexual y de género a organismos tanto públicos como del sector privado.

  Mediante esta combinación de especialización y colaboración, los grupos LGBTQI+ logran enfrentar la violencia y la discriminación de manera más efectiva y continúan avanzando en la conquista de derechos.

  ¿Cómo se vinculan con el movimiento global y qué tipo de apoyo internacional necesitan?

  Las organizaciones LGBTQI+ en Chile integran diversas redes internacionales. MOVILH, por ejemplo, ha trabajado con organizaciones internacionales como ILGA e integra varias redes latinoamericanas e iberoamericanas, que permiten intercambiar experiencias y aunar esfuerzos. Además, los colectivos LGBTQI+ colaboran bilateralmente con grupos de otros países, intercambiando experiencias y proporcionando ayuda mutua.

  A nivel global, los colectivos LGBTQI+ necesitan financiamiento, ya que son uno de los sectores vulnerables que globalmente reciben menos recursos. En el caso de Chile, esta necesidad es constante, ya que el hecho de que seamos un país considerado de ingresos medios-altos generalmente les impide recibir aportes externos. Esto tiene un impacto negativo en la lucha por la igualdad, ya que el país carece de financiamiento estatal focalizado para atender las necesidades de las personas LGBTQI+.

  El espacio cívico en Chile es calificado como “estrecho” por elCIVICUS Monitor.

  Póngase en contacto con MOVILH a través de susitio web o sus páginas deFacebook eInstagram, y siga a@Movilh en Twitter.

  
  

   

• CIVICUS concerned about repressive wave in Cuba

  Spanish

  CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance, is deeply worried about rising repression in Cuba. Despite the restoration of diplomatic relations with the United States and the expectations generated by the possibility of an imminent lifting of sanctions, Cuban journalists and civil society activists and their organisations are facing a serious clampdown for exercising their rights to freedom of association, expression and peaceful assembly.

  “As activists attempt to reclaim public space following recent political developments, short-term detentions have been on the rise as a way to discourage acts of democratic dissent,” said Inés Pousadela, policy and research officer with CIVICUS. “In addition to high-profile activists and protest-oriented organisations who have been traditionally targeted, groups engaged in research, monitoring and providing information to citizens have also faced increased government repression.”
   
  In October, several journalists were victims of raids on their homes and subjected to verbal threats, physical violence and the confiscation of equipment in clear acts of intimidation intended to stop them from doing their work. The Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and the Press (ICLEP) denounced a wave of repression directed against nine independent journalists for cooperating with the organisation. A group of journalists of the new independent media project Periodismo de Barriowere detained for reporting on the effects of Hurricane Matthew without a permit.
   
  In September, the offices of the Center of Legal Information (Cubalex), which provides free legal advice to Cuban citizens and reports on human rights issues, were raided. Police sought to justify breaking into Cubalex’s offices, intimidating its staff and confiscating paperwork and equipment on the grounds that its lawyers were carrying out “illicit economic activity” even though Cubalex does not charge for its services. The organisation’s application for legal status has been rejected by the Cuban Justice Ministry and its Director, Laritza Diversent has repeatedly faced harassment for engaging with regional and international human rights bodies.
   
  CIVICUS calls on the Cuban government to enable the exercise of civic freedoms to speak up, organise and petition the authorities. Accordingly, we urge Cuban authorities to (i) cease the harassment of activists and journalists carrying out their regular legitimate activities, (ii) begin a process of dialogue to create a more enabling environment for civil society and the independent media, and (iii) initiate reforms to give legal recognition to a wider plurality of civil society endeavours.
   
  Cuba is listed in the ‘closed’ category of the CIVICUS Monitor

• CIVICUS Fellowship Programme

  The CIVICUS Fellowship Programme is an exciting new venture in which key experts will be placed into national and/or regional organisations for the period of two years. Host organisations will be selected from CIVICUS’ Affinity Group of National Associations (AGNA), which brings together national and regional associations from across the globe to foster greater co-operation and increased ability to collaborate on mutual areas of interest. The primary aim of the programme is to promote knowledge exchange and learning, and build the capacity of both the host organisation and their members by providing specialised support in a particular focal area. Examples of these focal areas include research, fundraising, communications, project management, advocacy and network management.

  We're pleased to announce the second round of the CIVICUS Fellowship Programme is now open!

  In this round, we invite AGNA members from Africa, Caribbean and Central America, Asia, and the MENA region to apply as the host organisation by 13 March 2017. Please send your completed application (in English, French, or Spanish) or any questions you may have to .

  If you are interested in becoming a fellow, please note that recruitment will start at the end of March 2017. 

• CIVICUS: #WhyWeMarch

  On Saturday, 21 January 2017, millions will gather in Washington D.C. and in hundreds of other cities around the world to take part in the Women’s March. CIVICUS stands in solidarity with the demonstrators who in the spirit of democracy, seek to honour the champions of human rights, dignity, and justice, and reject the sexist and bigoted rhetoric used during the US election against minorities and excluded groups.

  Globally, the sister marches carry a message of solidarity in celebration of our multiple, diverse and intersecting identities and reject all forms of patriarchy and the discriminatory systems that support them worldwide. We will not rest until women have parity and equity at all levels of leadership in society.

• Civil society in Latin America and the Caribbean under threat

  Restrictions on civic space rising despite prevalence of democracy

  Click hereto read a Spanish language version of this release

  Civil society in Latin America and the Caribbean is coming under increasing pressure despite the prevalence of electoral democracy in the region, says a new reportreleased today by CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance.

  While the core civil society freedoms of association, assembly and expression are constitutionally recognised in most countries, legal, administrative and de facto barriers to the exercise of these freedoms have risen throughout the continent. These restrictions are appearing after an upsurge of citizens’ protests over entrenched issues of inequality, corruption and abuses of political power.

• COLOMBIA: ‘Civil society is an important pillar in work with the migrant population’

  CIVICUS speaks with Carmen Aida Faria, director of Fundación Manitas Amarillas (Little Yellow Hands Foundation), about the difficulties faced by Venezuelan migrants in Colombia and the work being done by civil society to facilitate their access to rights.

  Manitas Amarillas is a Colombian civil society organisation (CSO) formed in 2018, in the context of mass Venezuelan migration to Colombia, to provide humanitarian assistance, access to health services and counselling to migrants and refugees.

  How has the situation of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia changed in recent years?

  Migration flows into Colombia have changed over time. The 2015 wave of Venezuelan migration was very important, but the number of migrants increased over the following years, peaking in 2017. Compared to the previous wave, this one included a lot more people in vulnerable situation.

  The new arrivals needed immediate healthcare and access to other fundamental rights that the system could not provide. Colombia did not have the infrastructure or the financial resources to respond, particularly in border areas, where local populations also experience deficits in access to education and healthcare, among other rights.

  Migrants in vulnerable situations were also unable to receive monetary aid through the Colombian government’s social assistance programmes or enter the subsidised health system. To access social programmes, people must have a regular migration status.

  In addition to a permanent migrant population, there is also the population in border areas that constantly crosses the border back and forth to access certain services. For instance, many children who live in Venezuela go to school in Colombia and are not included in school food programmes. There are organisations working specifically to ensure these children have access to food, as they arrive with significant nutritional problems.

  These processes created a demand for the community, but above all for the Colombian state, to respond to. And the country began to operate under a logic of solidarity and gratitude: Colombians remember that in the past it was Venezuela that received Colombian migrants. Thus, the government began to grant special residence permits to regularise this population in some way. But the definite milestone was the Temporary Statute of Protection for Venezuelan Migrants (ETPMV), approved in 2021 under an essentially humanitarian logic.

  What did the implementation of this new policy entail?

  The ETPMV implied temporary regularisation so that Venezuelans could benefit from the same rights and have the same duties as Colombian nationals. Upon receiving an identity document called a Temporary Protection Permit, migrants have the possibility of accessing the health system and the labour market, among other rights.

  Theoretically, the mechanism is well thought out. However, putting it into practice has been hard. Many people have been left out: more than 2.4 million migrants have registered in the Single Registry for Venezuelan Migrants, but there are still more than a million who, having completed the full process, have not received their permit.

  Some people applied for the permit in September 2021, more than a year ago, and have consulted Migración Colombia, the authority for migration control and monitoring, but still do not know what has happened to their application. Some have not received their permits due to logistical problems: this is a highly mobile population and when they change addresses it is often not possible to locate them to deliver the documentation.

  But it is also the case that difficulties continue once the permit has been obtained. This is an indication of deeper problems. When Venezuelans go with their permit to open a bank account or register with the health system, they are often rejected. The Temporary Protection Permit is a new document and many institutions, both public and private, are not yet familiar with it. A lot of education is needed to make these rights effectively accessible.

  The ETPMV was supposed to prioritise the most vulnerable population groups. The first to receive their permits were supposed to be people in need of immediate medical attention and children and adolescents who needed them to enter the education system due to lack of identity papers. This ultimately did not happen, to such an extent that legal appeals have had to be filed to ensure access to healthcare for people with chronic illnesses or other conditions in need of immediate attention.

  How is Colombian civil society supporting Venezuelan migrants?

  Since the last big wave of migration in 2017, many CSOs have emerged. It was the migrant community itself that first began to get together to help other migrants. We started giving food out on the street and providing humanitarian assistance to walkers, as we call the people moving on foot through Colombian territory, who did not have basic information or even warm enough clothing to withstand Colombia’s climate.

  CSOs have become an important pillar in work with the migrant population, because we are on the ground and we know the problems migrants have.

  Currently, many CSOs are working together in coordination with the Mayor’s Office of Bogotá and promoting several joint initiatives. We have launched public campaigns and signed a symbolic pact to promote integration, because Venezuelan migrants in Colombia continue to suffer from xenophobia and discrimination as a result of their poverty. We have asked the media to stop mentioning the nationality of crime perpetrators, because they only do so when the person involved is a foreigner, thus overstating the problem and contributing to discrimination against Venezuelans.

  We are also participating, in collaboration with the Colombian government and international cooperation agencies, in the first ‘Entregatón’, a massive permit delivery operation aimed at distributing 40,000 permits in five days. Migración Colombia has sent messages via mobile phone to migrants whose documents are ready, notifying them of the date and place where they can pick them up.

  But in addition to handing out the documents, as part of the operation, enrolment and biometric registration services are being provided for those who have not yet completed these stages of the process. People who have already received their permits are also offered vaccination services, access to healthcare providers, registration with the social assistance system, legal support and information on various other issues, from the transportation system to school access to programmes targeted at migrant women.

  There is so much work and CSOs are contributing enormously. The government and international cooperation agencies should take us into account not only as sources of diagnoses of migration issues, but also as partners when it comes to jointly implementing public policies arising from those diagnoses.

  ---

  Civic space in Colombia is rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.

  Get in touch with Manitas Amarillas through itswebsite orFacebook page, and follow@MANITASAMARI on Twitter.

• COLOMBIA: ‘The Chiquita case shows it’s possible to hold corporations accountable for human rights abuses’

  CIVICUS discusses a recent court victory that held multinational banana company Chiquita accountable for human rights violations in Colombia with Gabriela Valentín Díaz, a member of the EarthRights International legal team that represented victims in the case.

  After 17 years of litigation, a Florida court recentlyfound Chiquita responsible for funding the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), a paramilitary group responsible for numerous massacres that was declared a terrorist organisation by the US government. The court awarded US$38 million in damages to the families of eight victims involved in the lawsuits. The verdict was an important step forward in civil society’s efforts to hold corporations legally accountable for human rights abuses. Many more cases are expected to follow.

  What wasChiquita found liable for?

  The jury concluded that Chiquita Brands International, a major banana company with farms in Colombia, didn’t act like a ‘reasonable business person’ when it chose to fund the AUC.

  The AUC was a violent, far-right paramilitary group that was active during Colombia’s 50-year civil war. It was known for its many human rights abuses, including killings, massacres, kidnappings and forced displacement. This had a devastating impact on Colombian society, particularly in areas where large companies operated.

  Despite being aware of the AUC’s violent activities, Chiquita regularly paid them for years in exchange for what were described as ‘security services’. Although Chiquita claimed to have been forced to make the payments, the jury concluded that the testimony revealed they were not simply a response to extortion, but were made voluntarily. This financial support contributed to the AUC’s violent actions, resulting in numerous deaths and atrocities, and was found to have contributed to the deaths of the victims represented in the trial.

  Why is this ruling important?

  This ruling has important implications beyond the Chiquita case. For many Colombians, it confirms that Chiquita exploited the civil conflict and exacerbated the violence by financially supporting the AUC. Globally, the verdict serves as a warning that multinational companies can be held accountable for their complicity in human rights abuses, even when those abuses occur outside their home country.

  How should the Colombian justice system respond to similar cases of human rights violations?

  Colombia has taken steps to address crimes committed during its long civil conflict, including the establishment of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace and other transitional justice systems. These efforts aim to establish the truth and provide justice. However, we also support the demands of Colombian civil society that corporate actors should also be held accountable for their role in fuelling social conflict in Colombia.

  To address this, the Colombian justice system should focus on investigating companies that played a role in human rights abuses. If these companies are found guilty of supporting or profiting from violence, they should face the same legal consequences as other perpetrators. This approach would help ensure that justice is comprehensive and includes all responsible parties, not just armed groups and individuals.

  What can be done to hold companies accountable for the human rights impacts of their operations?

  In many countries such as the USA, corporate laws are designed primarily to maximise profits, often at the expense of people and communities. The emphasis on profit can lead to serious harms being ignored or minimised. This must change. Governments around the world must prioritise human rights when regulating business. Rather than letting them hide behind complicated legal tactics, governments should require companies to respect human rights and hold them accountable for any harm they cause.

  International organisations can play a crucial role. They can serve as platforms for bringing cases against companies that violate human rights. By sharing information and building international support, these organisations can help hold these companies to account. Accountability ensures that companies are not allowed to ignore the human impact of their actions in the pursuit of profit.

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  Civic space in Colombia is rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.

  Get in touch with EarthRights International through itswebsite orInstagram page, and follow@EarthRightsIntl and@gpvalentind on Twitter.

• Colombian activists: ‘We are paying with our lives to defend water’

  Spanish

  CIVICUS speaks to Carlos Andrés Santiago, spokesperson of CORDATEC, an organisation that defends water, the territory and the ecosystems of San Martín, in the Colombian region of Cesar. CORDATEC mobilises against oil extraction through fracking in the area.

  1. Now that the peace accords with the FARC have finally been ratified, one would think that violence in Colombia is over. However, aggressions against social activists have not diminished. You and your colleagues at CORDATEC have reported numerous intimidations and threats. What are the causes of the on-going violence against human rights defenders?
  The conflict between the FARC and the military has effectively de-escalated over the past several months, even before the peace treaty was signed, thanks to the bilateral ceasefire that was declared in August 2016. This is reflected in the information that President Santos provided a few days ago: at that time, a single wounded soldier was being treated at the Military Hospital, in contrast to very high figures just a year earlier.
  In regions such as Cauca changes became apparent as a result of the ceasefire, the signing and ratification of the peace agreements, and more recently the establishment of “normalisation border zones” (zonas veredales de tránsito y normalización). These are areas in which the guerrillas will carry out the process of laying down their weapons, demobilising and reintegrating into civilian life. This, however, has also meant that in these regions a vacant space has remained that is now being occupied by new armed groups or criminal gangs.
  
  In addition, we are witnessing a transition from a great conflict between two armed actors to a set of diverse conflicts around social issues, many of them linked to environmental causes. For instance, land use conflicts involving victims who demand the restitution of their land and struggles in defence of water and, particularly in communities like ours, mobilised against extractive projects.
  
  The extinction of the conflict with the FARC, which yielded countless victims, therefore correlates with an increase in the number of murders of social and environmental activists and also the visibility of human rights defenders active in territories and communities.

  2. What is CORDATEC’s role and aims in this context?
  It is important to note that, as part of its post-conflict strategy, in December 2015 the Colombian government signed a contract with two multinational companies (ConocoPhillips and Canacol Energy) to explore and exploit hydrocarbons from unconventional deposits through fracking in three municipalities. One of them is ours: San Martín, in the department of Cesar.
  
  So our community got organised and in early 2016 we formed the Corporation for the Defence of Water, Territory and Ecosystems, CORDATEC. We began to mobilise: we staged demonstrations, pot-banging protests, a civic strike and several marches. About 9,000 people took part in the most recent one, on 25 September 2016 – in a municipality that has 21 000 inhabitants. We also went to the media, resorted to strategic litigation and looked for allies in Congress. We even went along with CIVICUS to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

  We seek to defend the most fundamental good which is water. By resorting to peaceful resistance, we are trying to prevent oil exploitation through fracking because we acknowledge the environmental and social impacts that it causes, and we are not willing to pay the costs. Among other impacts, fracking uses large amounts of water, contaminates underground and surface water sources, increases induced seismicity, causes serious damages to public health, changes the uses of agricultural land, and releases large amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse effect gas.

  3. What sort of restrictions on the exercise of the freedoms of association, expression and peaceful assembly have you faced as environmental and anti-fracking activists?
  We face many. In retaliation for resisting fracking, the community of San Martín, and particularly CORDATEC members, have been subjected to harassment. It is clear that the municipal mayor, Saul Educardo Celis, has a strategy of intimidating all the people that are close to CORDATEC. For instance, CORDATEC members’ relatives have lost their jobs in the local administration. I have personally received death threats, and the comrades from the Workers Trade Union (Unión Sindical Obrera), who accompany us in our struggle, were threatened through a pamphlet just a few days ago.
  
  The company ConocoPhillips has also attempted to file civil lawsuits, and through several letters to the municipal government they have requested that the conflict be judicialised, that is, that measures be taken to arrest and imprison the leaders of the mobilisation and protest actions, and that guarantees be provided so the company could start work in the Pico Plata 1 well, which they had so far been unable to do.
  In the demands that they directed towards the government, the company appealed to the Criminal Code, according to which the obstruction of roads is a crime punishable with imprisonment. In response to these demands, the municipal government – in complicity with the Attorney General at the time and the national government – authorised the use of the ESMAD (Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios, or Anti-Riot Squad), the unit of the National Police that is employed to control demonstrations and carry out evictions. Our fundamental right to the freedoms of peaceful assembly and association, enshrined in Article 37 of our Constitution, was therefore ignored.
  
  Since then, the ESMAD has repressed the community of San Martín and our comrades from the department’s subdivision of Cuatro Bocas on three separate occasions, and several people have been injured. The ESMAD’s operations have resulted in numerous human rights violations, on top of the threats, intimidation, harassment and illegal surveillance that CORDATEC leaders have been subjected to. These events have been reported to the Office of the Attorney General, the Ombudsman Office, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia, of the Organization of American States, among other instances. Nevertheless, the government has taken no measures to safeguard the lives and physical integrity of the environmental defenders under threat.
  
  Ever since its first operation, on 19 October, the ESMAD has remained in San Martín. The camp and the entrances to the well are guarded by militarised police at all times. In other words, a significant number of military personnel have been assigned to guarding the interests of a multinational company instead of protecting the communities. In the context of a social state based on the rule of law, the communities should take priority – not a transnational corporation that has come to plunder those communities’ natural resources.
  
  The same is happening in other regions of Colombia, which is not surprising given that there are currently 43 blocks assigned to fracking that would eventually affect more than 300 municipalities across the country. In seven of those blocks there are already signed contracts, most of them adjudicated to foreign companies. To make it worse, despite the pronouncements by the Comptroller General, two additional contracts are currently being processed.
  
  Why is this happening? It’s fairly simple. The extractive industries create very strong economic interests that frequently involve politicians and government officials who receive bribes in exchange for facilitating contracts, granting environmental licences, providing congressional support or favouring the companies when under investigation. Corruption has pervaded this type of megaprojects: the Odebrecht case is a clear example of this. These are struggles led by small communities that are trying to defend themselves, like the Biblical David from a giant and corrupt Goliath that crushes whoever gets in their way. From their perspective, the end justifies whatever means.
  
  A few months ago the Minister of the Environment acknowledged that 75% of current conflicts in Colombia are environmental conflicts. And the pattern of threats, intimidation and ESMAD use is replicated throughout the country. It is part of a familiar script that often ends with activists being murdered. We are used to life not being worthy enough; therefore, we see it as relatively normal when physical elimination is resorted to so as to remove from an obstacle from the way. In Colombia, defending water is costing us our lives.

  4. Are there any civil society initiatives to overcome these limitations of civic space?
  Due to the long-standing conflict that we have experienced, many organisations in Colombia have long specialised in human rights issues. Numerous Colombian civil society organisations as well as the international community follow and give accompaniment in this sort of situations and provide support to communities regarding self-protection, visibility and denunciation.
  
  As the situation in San Martín unfolded, we have found allies willing to accompany the process. Along with trade unions and social and environmental organisations, we are in the process of forming the Alliance Colombia Free of Fracking as an arena in which to weave resistances, and we are moving forward from there.
  
  But this does not happen in all regions of the country: many struggles are being quietly fought in very small and distant territories that are not easily reached and where access to media and technology is extremely limited. In those places, the law of fear continues to prevail, and whoever gets in the way is easily taken out of the equation.

  5. What concrete actions should the Colombian government adopt in the short term to safeguard civic space and protect the rights of its citizens?
  First of all, the government must stop stigmatising and criminalising environmental activists and human rights defenders, and particularly those who oppose extractive industries. The Mayor’s accusation that we are terrorists, for instance, lapidates us and undermines the legitimacy of human rights defenders’ struggles.
  
  Secondly, the government must provide guarantees for the exercise of the constitutional rights to mobilise and protest, which is not presently the case. Third, it should stop relying on mining and fossil fuels, and instead reorient its development model towards alternative and sustainable energy sources that do not pollute the environment.
  
  Fourth, it must channel the required resources towards the National Protection Unit (Unidad Nacional de Protección, UNP), which provides protection schemes to persons under threat. The capacity of the UNP is currently insufficient, and only one out of every six submitted applications receives a positive answer entailing the provision of some type of protective measure. This means that five out of six persons seeking protection are left unprotected. Many social leaders who submit applications are told that their risk level does not warrant the granting of security measures.
  Recognising threat levels, however, does not automatically result in the adoption of timely and effective measures. For instance, on 29 November 2016 the Ombudsman’s Office – a human rights guarantor with no enforcement capacity – issued a report identifying several political groups and social organisations in various communities of Cesar, including CORDATEC, as facing imminent risk due to their work. On 1 December an early warning was issued for the authorities to guarantee these persons’ life and integrity. Protection however never came and one of those people – a member of the Community Board of Hatillo – was murdered a month later.
  
  This situation is a reflection of a very unequal country, where congressional representatives, former presidents and various politicians enjoy very generous protection schemes, with many people assigned to their protection detail, while community leaders and human rights defenders are left exposed.

  6. How connected is local civil society in Cesar with its counterparts in other parts of the world and how can external actors support activists and civil society organisations in Colombia?
  
  Given the high profile of both the armed conflict and the peace negotiations in Colombia, the organisations that form the United Nations and the Inter-American system, as well as international cooperation agencies and various CSOs around the world have spoken out about what is happening.
  
  Global Witness in its reports On Dangerous Ground and How Many More?, Front Line Defenders in its Annual Report on Human Rights Defenders at Risk 2016, and also CIVICUS in the report Against All Odds about the dangers of environmental activism, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) with their strong statements to condemn the assassinations of land rights defenders, and Amnesty International in their 2016/2017 Report – they all converge in alerting the world about the serious risks faced by social and environmental leaders in Colombia. This has originated a very strong movement to repudiate the wave of assassinations, forcing the Colombian state to acknowledge the problem.
  
  Concrete measures, however, are still very inadequate. That is why it is urgent for the international community to adopt a firmer position vis-à-vis the Colombian government. We need international actors to put more pressure on the Colombian state so it behaves more consistently.
  Indeed, there are currently major contradictions and inconsistencies between what the national government says out there and what they do domestically. The Colombian state promotes and ratifies international commitments in defence of the environment and against climate change; it proclaims the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreements while within its own territory it implements fracking and mining projects that contradict those agreements for the protection of the environment and its inhabitants. Not only does it fail to fulfil its environmental commitments, but it also receives the Nobel Peace Prize while its mining-energy locomotive opens the way for the murder of social leaders. Somebody needs to call them to account.

  Civic space in Colombia is rated as ‘repressed’ in the CIVICUS Monitor.
  Get in touch with CORDATEC through their Facebook page or website, or follow @CarlosSantiagoL on Twitter.

• CONSPIRACY THEORIES: ‘When social trust has been eroded, people don’t know what to believe’

  As part of our 2019thematic report, we are interviewing civil society activists, leaders and experts about their experience of facing backlash by anti-rights groups and how they are responding. CIVICUS speaks about the role that conspiracy theories are playing with Chip Berlet,an investigative journalist and activist who specialises in the study of extreme right-wing movements in the USA.

   

  You have done a lot of work around social and political speech that demonises specific groups in society. You call this the rhetoric of scripted violence. What is scripted violence, and how is it operating in the USA?

  Scripted violence is part of a dynamic process in a society under lots and lots of stress. It starts with stories circulating in a nation that warn of subversion and conspiracies. These stories are called ‘narratives of insecurity’ by Professor Abdelwahab El-Affendi, and he warns that these stories can lead to mass violence and other forms of terrorism. The process continues with ‘scripted violence’, which is when a high-status political or religious leader publicly identifies and demonises a specific group of people alleged to be conspiring to ruin the ideal nation. The result is called ‘stochastic terrorism’. That’s an awkward term, but it just means that the specific terrorist act is unpredictable. Yet the violence has been generated by this three-step process that starts with conspiracy theories.

  Conspiracy theories are nothing new, but now they seem to be more widespread than ever. What role has the internet played in spreading them?

  Conspiracy theories have always been around. Conspiracy theories are improbable explanations alleging a vast conspiracy by evil powerful people and their cronies. Stories circulate that make allegations posing as facts. During moments of societal stress and political change it is often harder for folks to separate what is reality-based, what is political propaganda and what is pure fantasy.

  The internet has been fertile ground for planting misinformation and conspiracy theories because it’s a new medium, and all new forms of mass media go through a phase in which they are easily misinterpreted, and there are as yet not enough safeguards in place, so it’s hard for folks to tell reliable and unreliable content apart. We live in a time in which too many people think stories are real if they are on the internet. When you go to a library, there is the fiction section, and then there’s the rest of the library, where you can find history, science and other material based on facts. But content has not yet been separated that way in the internet age.

  We are going through an adjustment period. We are still learning how to use the medium. In the past, misunderstandings arose when people were using a new medium that they didn’t truly understand. In the USA, the best example of this happened in 1938, when a fictional story about a Martian invasion, The War of the Worlds, was broadcast during a radio programme, and people didn’t realise it was not real news, so some people called the police and went running out into the streets in a panic. Similarly, it is really difficult for the average person to differentiate between what’s a reliable piece of information and what’s just a conspiracy theory recirculated by someone with no training or understanding of the subject they post on. Much worse is when sinister propaganda is spread for political gain. There currently is no mechanism to separate what’s true and what’s fake on the internet, although I hope someday there will be.

  Conspiracy theories abound on both right and left, but these days largely seem to be fuelling far-right movements. Do you see any affinity between conspiracy theories and the extreme right?

  I don’t think it has as much to do with the left or right side of the political spectrum, but rather with fear and instability in a specific society at a specific moment. What would cause relatively normal and average people, wherever they are on the political spectrum, to act out against a claimed enemy? It’s because they believe their society is under attack, and then act accordingly.

  In any healthy society there always are conspiracy theories circulating, but when you hear them from somebody pushing a shopping cart down the street with all their belongings and shouting about an imminent Martian invasion, almost nobody pays any attention. These conspiracy theories are dismissed because they are being circulated by marginal or low-status folks. Most rational people simply reject them.

  In an unhealthy and unstable society, in contrast, people don’t know what to believe, and may latch onto normally farfetched theories to explain why they feel so powerless. When social trust has been eroded and there is so much anger, increasingly less legitimacy is assigned to people who have actual knowledge. Instead, it is transferred to those who will name the evildoers. And some people lack the kind of restraints that most of us luckily have and prevent us from attacking others who are not like us and might seem threatening or dangerous.

  Let’s say I’m an average middle-aged, middle-class white male in the USA, and I’m stressed and anxious because I fear that my status in society is being diminished. And then someone comes and tells me it’s okay to feel that way because there are evil forces at play that are causing this and tells me who is to blame for what is happening to me. According to this narrative, I would be still seated near the top of the social ladder if it weren’t for those people.

  Of course, people who have privilege see it as normal. We are not aware of it. So, when the status quo that has folks like them near the top changes – because previously marginalised groups successfully claim rights for themselves – the privileged don’t see this as the loss of unfair privileges, but as undermining the natural order, the traditional community or the nation itself. They talk about themselves as real ‘producers’ in the society being dragged down by lazy, sinful, or subversive ‘parasites’.

  In other words, conspiracy theories are a reflection of a society that is under stress, and they cause people who would normally be ignored suddenly to have an audience to speak to because they appear to have the answer that everybody else is lacking. People are disoriented: they do not feel connected to a common narrative of a healthy nation. Folks feel that their society, ‘our’ society, is under attack by ‘the others’, whoever they might be. So, if someone comes and tells them the name of the group of ‘others’ who are destroying our idealised community or nation, then common sense will tell us to stop them. Perhaps we need to eliminate them before they attack us – and that’s the narrative storyline of every genocide in history.

  Isn’t it strange that so many ‘others’ in today’s conspiracy theories do not really have the power that they are attributed: they are usually already vulnerable groups whose rights are being attacked?

  There is an interesting dynamic storyline in many conspiracy theories about the sinister people below working with certain traitorous powerful people above. Conspiracy theories, especially in the middle class, tend to identify a group of evil people down below on the socio-economic spectrum when defining who belongs and who doesn’t belong to the nation. So, a lot of the problems are blamed on these people down below in the ‘lower’ class who are portrayed as lazy and ‘picking the pockets’ of the middle class by draining tax dollars. Barbara Ehrenreich, for example, wrote a book about this called Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class.

  But the middle-class conspiracy theorists generally also blame a sector of the ruling elites who are portrayed as traitors. So if you look, let’s say, at the US political scene today, the narrative during the Trump administration blames some people who are down below and who are portrayed as lazy, sinful, or subversive. These folks are breaking the rules or taking advantage. But some people listed as conspirators are high-status: such as those rich, Democratic Party bureaucrats who are depicted as the ones pulling the strings, as in a puppet show. Sometimes those spreading the conspiracy theories use a graphic of a huge mechanical vice squeezing the middle class from above and below.

  Is there anything that progressive civil society could do to counter these regressive trends?

  There sure is. Democratic civil society has historically developed mechanisms to face these challenges. Historically, religious leaders and journalists have played a very important role in making these kinds of claims become judged unacceptable. But the influence of both of these actors has now collapsed. Religious figures have been losing their status everywhere except in religious authoritarian countries. The internet is undermining the influence of major news organisations, and the cost of producing good journalism has become very high relative to the cost of posting a rumour on the internet. So, democracies need to develop new safeguards and mechanisms to counter these trends.

  In the age of the internet, these mechanisms have not yet been developed. But although we are going through a very unstable and stressful period, the situation is not hopeless. The history of democracy is a sort of cycle in which at some point things stabilise only to fall apart again eventually until resistance builds up and safeguards are put back in place.

  Leaders with some status and legitimacy within democratic civil society need to admit that we are in a really bad place and we’ve got to fix it together, so that the answer comes not from the demagogic and authoritarian political space, but from the democratic one – the demos – and that’s all of us. People need to start talking to their neighbours about the things that are not going well and about how to fix them, because these problems can only be solved collectively. When doing activist training sessions, I tell people to go sit at a bus stop and talk to the first person who sits down next to them. If you can get up the courage to do that, then you certainly can talk to your neighbours and co-workers. Regular people need to start doing just that.

  In the USA, there is a kind of smug, liberal treatment of people who feel that they are being pushed down the ladder. These folks are not ‘deplorables’; they are basically scared people. These are people who had a union job and worked in a machine shop or at building automobiles. They worked for 30 years and now have nothing: their whole world has been shot down while others have become billionaires. They cannot be dismissed as ‘deplorables’. That word slip may have actually cost Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton the election. We need to engage these people who are so angry and disoriented in face-to-face conversations. We need to care about them.

  How can these conversations take place when social media, increasingly the means of communication of choice, often operates as an echo chamber that solidifies beliefs and fuels polarisation?

  I know, I’m so old-fashioned. My solution is actually quite low-tech. You know, my wife and I have been political activists for many years, and as students in the 1960s we were involved in the anti-racist civil rights movement. At one point black organisers said: if white people really want to challenge racism against black people they should move into white communities where there is racism and try to turn it around. So in 1977, my wife and I picked up our household and moved to Chicago, Illinois. We lived in an overwhelmingly white Southwest side neighbourhood where there was white racism, but also Nazis, literally guys in Nazi uniforms, kicking black people out of the neighbourhood. A house on our street was firebombed.

  Eventually we became part of a community group, and for the first three years we were out-organised by neo-Nazis. Few things could be more mortifying for a leftist activist in 1970s USA. But in the Southwest side of Chicago there was also a multi-racial group, which we joined. One day some of us who were strategists were invited over to a house for a meeting with a group of black ministers. They sat us down and gave us coffee and tea, cakes and cookies, and then one of them asked, “Do you know why black parents take turns sleeping in your neighbourhood?” We looked at each other; we had no idea. They said, “That’s because when the firebomb explodes one of the adults has to be awake to get the kids out of the house.” It had never occurred to us that black parents had to take turns to stay up all night in their own homes so they could just stay alive. Then another of the ministers said, “Do you think all those white Catholic women want babies to get killed by firebombs?” We said no, and he replied, “Well, there’s your strategy.”

  Our strategy was to start talking to people: first to Catholic women who were horrified to learn what was going on, then getting them to talk to their neighbours and members of their congregations. Eventually some white Catholic priests started talking about what was happening. Five years later, the neighbourhood had become safe for black people to live in.

  It seems we still have a lot to learn from the civil rights movement and their organising tactics. Nowadays it’s so tempting to organise and mobilise online, because it’s so fast, but it’s also so much more difficult to create sustained commitment, isn’t it?

  Yes. I think face-to-face organising is still how you change neighbourhoods, and how neighbourhoods change societies. But of course, you cannot ask young people who are using technology to organise and protest to let go of the internet. You can’t tell people to ignore the technologies that exist. We do have a technology that enables instantaneity. I post constantly on the internet, I have a Facebook page and so on. I think it’s great to use the internet to organise people to confront racism online as well as to organise counter-demonstrations when white supremacists gather. But that’s not enough, in the same way as in the 1960s it wasn’t enough for writers to just write about the evils of racism. Those kinds of articles were published all along, but nothing really changed until people started organising – that is, talking to their neighbours to challenge the status quo.

  Take civil rights legend Rosa Parks, who sat down in the white section of a bus in Alabama. There is the misconception that her act was spontaneous, but it was nothing like that: it was a tactic created by a training centre that had been set up in the south by religious leaders and trade unions. Behind one black woman who refused to give up her seat in the front rows of a bus were 10 years of training and organising at the Highland Center.

  In a way, that’s also what the young climate activists and the members of the new democracy movements are doing. Look at Hong Kong: it is people rising up and saying ‘enough,’ often organising online while also organising and mobilising locally, staying in their neighbourhood, talking to their neighbours, building networks. And internationally we see young people demanding a right to stay alive – just stay alive.

  You need organisation, you need training in strategies and tactics, you need support groups, and you need to talk to your neighbours. That’s how it works; there is no magic formula.

  Civic space in the USA is rated as ‘narrowed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.

  Get in touch with Chip Berlet through hisFacebook profile andAcademia page, follow@cberlet on Twitter, and visit Chip’sonline resources page on these topics.