activism
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‘Chile has entirely privatised water, which means that theft is institutionalised’
Following a year marked by massive mobilisation on the climate emergency, CIVICUS is interviewing civil society activists, leaders and experts about the main environmental challenges they face in their contexts and the actions they are taking. CIVICUS speaks with Rodrigo Mundaca, Agronomist and National Spokesperson of the Defence Movement for Access to Water, Land and Environmental Protection (MODATIMA), an organisation established in 2010 in the Chilean province of Petorca, in the Valparaíso region, to defend the rights of farmers, workers and local people. Since the 1990s, the region has been affected by the massive appropriation of water by agribusiness in collusion with the political establishment.
What is the main environmental issue in your context?
The main problem is water. We live in a territory characterised mainly by the monoculture of avocado, the production of which requires huge amounts of water. Water is in the hands of large producers who have dried out our territory and compromised the lives of our communities. Ours is an extreme case: Chile has entirely privatised water, which means that theft is institutionalised. Chile has clearly prioritised extractive industries over the rights of communities to water.
The privatisation of water sources in Chile dates back to the Pinochet dictatorship of 1973 to 1990. The 1980 Constitution enshrined the private ownership of water. This was maintained, and even deepened, following the democratic transition, since sanitation was also privatised. The privatisation process of sanitation began in 1998, under the administration led by Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, a Christian Democrat. Nowadays, people in Chile pay the highest rates in Latin America for drinking water, which is owned by large transnational corporations. Overall, the Suez group, Aguas de Barcelona, Marubeni and the Ontario teachers’ pension fund administrator from Canada control 90 per cent of the drinking water supply.
Right now, President Sebastián Piñera's government is auctioning off rivers. Piñera came into government with a mission to underpin the legal certainty of water rights ownership, and his cabinet includes several ministers who own rights to water use, the most prominent of which is the Minister of Agriculture, Antonio Walker Prieto. This minister and his family own more than 29,000 litres per second, which is equivalent to the continuous water supply used by approximately 17 million people.
Is it as simple as someone owning the rivers and being able to prevent others from using the water?
Yes, the 1980 Chilean Constitution literally states that the rights of individuals over water, recognised or constituted in accordance with the law, grant their bearers ownership over it. In 1981, the Water Code established that water is a national good for public use but also an economic good. Water ownership was separated from land ownership, so that there are water owners who have no land and landowners who have no water. It is the state's prerogative to grant rights for water use. These rights fall into two categories: water rights for consumption use and water rights for non-consumptive use, for example for generating electricity. In the first category, 77 per cent of the rights are held by the agricultural and forestry sector, 13 per cent by the mining sector, seven per cent by the industrial sector and approximately three per cent by the health sector. As for the rights for the use of water that is not consumed, 81 per cent are in the hands of an Italian public-private company. The owners of exploitation rights can sell or lease water use in the marketplace.
In 2018, the Piñera administration proposed a bill aimed at providing legal certainty to perpetuity to private owners of water and introducing water auctions. Currently, 38 rivers in Chile are being auctioned off; basically, what the state does is auction off the litres per second that run through a river. While this occurs in some territories where there is still water, areas accounting for 67 per cent of the Chilean population – some 12 million people – have become water emergency areas. Our region, Valparaíso, is a zone of water catastrophe due to drought. This is unheard of: while such a large population has serious difficulties in accessing drinking water, the state is auctioning off rivers.
What kind of work do you do to promote the recognition of access to water as a right?
For more than 15 years we have made visible the conflict over water in our territory. Although we originated in the Valparaíso region, from 2016 onwards our organisation has worked nationwide. We fight at the national level for water to be regulated as a common good. The right to water is a fundamental human right.
Our original strategy was to kickstart the struggle for water, render the conflict visible and bring debate to parliament about the need to repeal private ownership of water, despite our lack of confidence in the political class that has the responsibility to make the law and watch over its implementation.
In 2016 we took an important step by putting forward an international strategy that made it known throughout the world that in our province the human right to water was being violated in order to grow avocados. We were featured in a German TV report, ‘Avocado: Superfood and Environmental Killer’, in several articles in The Guardian describing how Chileans are running out of water and in an RT report in Spanish, ‘Chile’s Dry Tears’, among others. Last year Netflix dedicated an episode of its Rotten show to the avocado business and the violation of the human right to water in Chile. We have had a positive reception. In 2019 alone, we received two international awards: the International Human Rights Prize awarded by the city of Nuremberg, Germany, in September, and the Danielle Mitterrand Prize, awarded by the France Libertés Foundation, in November.
Another thing we do is develop activists and leaders. We have long-term training programmes and do ongoing work to develop theoretical and political thinking. We also mobilise. In the context of the widespread protests that started in Chile on 18 October 2019, we have made our demands heard. Clearly, although at the national level the main demands concern the restitution of workers’ pension funds and improvements in education and health, in some regions further north and further south of the capital, the most important demand concerns the recovery of water as a common good and a human right.
In addition to mobilising, our work on the ground involves more radical actions such as roadblocks and occupations. Among direct actions carried out on the ground are the seizure of wells and the destruction of drains. Some local grassroots organisations seize wells owned by mining companies, resist as long as they can – sometimes for 60 or 70 days – and divert the water to their communities. In places where rivers no longer carry water, groundwater has been captured through drains, works of engineering that capture, channel and carry all groundwater away. Some communities destroy the drains that transport water for use by agribusiness such as forestry companies. Such actions of resistance have increased since the start of the social protests in October 2019.
The struggle for water is a radical one because it erodes the foundations of inequality. The origin of the major Chilean fortunes is the appropriation of common goods, basically water and land. President Piñera's fortune is no exception.
Have you faced reprisals because of your activism?
Yes, because of our strategy to give visibility to the conflict over water, several of our activists have been threatened with death. That is why in 2017 Amnesty International conducted a worldwide campaign that collected more than 50,000 signatures to demand protection for us.
Between 2012 and 2014, I was summoned 24 times by four different courts because I denounced a public official who had been Minister of the Interior under the first administration of President Michelle Bachelet (2006 to 2010). As well as being a leading Christian Democratic Party official, this person was a business owner who diverted water toward his properties to grow avocado and citrus. I reported this in 2012, during an interview with CNN, and that cost me 24 court appearances over two years. I was finally sentenced, first to five years in jail, which were then reduced to 540 days and then to 61, and finally our lawyers managed to put me on probation. I had to show up and sign on the first five days of each month. We also had to pay a fine.
We have been attacked and threatened with death many times. In November 2019, an investigation published on a news site revealed that we were being targeted by police intelligence surveillance. However, in response to an amparo appeal – a petition for basic rights – against the police, in February 2020 the Supreme Court issued a ruling that the surveillance to which we are subjected does not violate our constitutional rights. This is Chile in all of its filthy injustice.
Government behaviour has always been the same, regardless of the political colour of the incumbent government. All governments have reached agreements to keep the private water model because it is business, and one that is highly profitable for the political class. When they leave their positions in government, former public officials go on to occupy positions in the boards of the companies that appropriate the water.
Did you join the global climate mobilisations of 2019?
In Chile we have been mobilising since long before. In 2013 we had our first national march for the recovery of water and land, and from then on we have mobilised every year on 22 April, Earth Day. We also demonstrate to commemorate World Water Day on 22 March. We have been on the move for a long time. Chile is going through a social, environmental and humanity crisis. We face the need to safeguard human rights that are essential for the fulfilment of other rights. The human right to water is a basic precondition for people to be able to access all other rights.
We have also been mobilised for a long time to denounce that Chile's development model is extremely polluting and deeply predatory. We have privatised marine resources: seven families own all of Chile’s marine resources. Our country has five areas of sacrifice, that is, areas that concentrate a large number of polluting industries. These are in Colonel, Huasco, Mussels, Quintero and Tocopilla. The areas of sacrifice are not only an environmental problem but also a social problem; they discriminate against the poorest and most vulnerable communities. They are overflowing with coal-fired thermoelectric plants and, in some cases, with copper smelters. The are 28 thermoelectric plants: 15 of these are US companies, eight are French, three are Italian and two are owned by domestic capital. The population in these areas has endured the emission of toxic gases and heavy metals for decades. We have been mobilising in these areas for years in defence of common natural assets.
Have you engaged in international forums on the environment and climate change?
Yes, I have been involved several times. In 2014, before I was convicted, I went to Paris, France by invitation of several European civil society organisations to attend a forum on human rights defenders, where I spoke about the private water and land model. In 2018 I was invited to a global meeting of human rights defenders at risk, held in Dublin, Ireland. That same year I was also invited to a regional meeting of human rights defenders that took place in Lima, Peru.
We have also been involved in intergovernmental forums such as the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. In 2019, Chile was going to host the COP 25, and the global mobilisation for climate throughout the year had a tremendous echo in Chile. Obviously neither the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, planned for November, nor COP 25, scheduled for early December, could be held in Chile, because the government was completely overwhelmed by the popular mobilisation that began in late October, and because it responded to this with systematic human rights violations.
Several of our members were at COP 25 in Madrid, Spain, and were able to speak with the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón and with some officials of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Shortly after this meeting we had a meeting in Chile with Baltasar Garzón, the judge who prosecuted former dictator Pinochet and had him arrested in the UK. Garzón was very impressed with the water model and the stories our activists told him. Also recently we met with the delegation of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) during their visit to Chile. We met with Soledad García Muñoz, the IACHR Special Rapporteur on Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights, and presented an overview of the Chilean situation and what it means to live deprived of water.
Do you think that forums such as the COP offer space for civil society to speak up and exercise influence?
I have a critical opinion of the COP. I think that in general it is a fair of vanities attended by many presidents, and many ministers of environment and agriculture, to promise the world what they cannot fulfil in their own countries. The main greenhouse gas emitting countries have leaders who either deny climate change, or are talking the talk about climate change but don’t seem to have the intention to make any change in their country’s predatory economic behaviour. The countries that are most responsible for climate change and global warming are currently the main detractors of the COP.
However, the summits do offer a space for civil society, from where it is possible to challenge the powerful, speak up about the climate injustice that affects the entire planet and promote the construction of a new development model that is viable and economically competitive while also socially fairer and ecologically healthier. But for that we need new paradigms: we cannot continue to think that there are unlimited development prospects on a planet that has finite natural resources.
Civic space in Chile is classified as ‘narrowed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with MODATIMA through theirwebsite andFacebook page, or follow@Modatima_cl on Twitter.
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1. The green shoots of a new civic activism
The name “CIVICUS” is inspired by the Latin word relating to community. Today, as we celebrate the 25th anniversary of our alliance, community is more important than ever. Whether it is to solve local issues or tackle the biggest global challenges, we need people to come together to speak out, organise and take action. We need to adopt a more collective idea of humanity and more sophisticated view of solidarity. And we must deploy every means we can to promote social justice and sustainable development.
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Activism and the state: How African civil society responds to repression
By David Kode and Mouna Ben Garga
In most African countries, freedom of expression, assembly and association are stifled by state and non-state actors through the use of restrictive legislation, policies, and judicial persecution as well as physical attacks, threats and detention of activists and journalists. While these restrictions generally occur when civil society groups speak out in direct opposition to public policy, there is strong evidence that restrictions increase during politically sensitive periods, like elections and prior to constitutional changes on term limits of political leaders. African citizens, activists and organisations are finding new and innovative ways to resist, organise and mobilise in the face of mounting restrictions on their rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association.
Read on: Pambazuka
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ALGERIA: ‘The authorities are arresting human rights defenders to suffocate civil society’
CIVICUS speaks about the situation of human rights and civic freedoms in Algeria with Rachid Aouine, Director for SHOAA for Human Rights.
SHOAA for Human Rights is an independent civil society organisation (CSO) aimed at supporting and protecting human rights in Algeria. Founded in 2020 and based in London, UK, it raises human rights awareness and monitors, documents and denounces abuses committed against citizens by those in power.
What is the current situation of human rights and civic space in Algeria?
As a result of the escalation of repressive practices by the Algerian authorities, human rights are in a critical state. Arbitrary arrests have increased, targeting journalists, human rights defenders, civil society activists and political activists associated with political parties linked to the Hirak protest movement for their exercise of the rights to the freedoms of association, expression, belief and peaceful assembly. In recent months they have been criminalised in an unprecedented way.
The authorities are unjustly prosecuting people for their alleged association with the political opposition movements Rachad and the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie, which in May 2021 were designated as ‘terrorist organisations’ by the High Security Council. This is a consultative body chaired by the president. It has also blamed these organisations for the devastating forest fires that overtook north-eastern Algeria in August 2021 and the murder of activist and artist Djamel Bensmaïl while he was in police custody. It announced it would intensify efforts to arrest their members until their ‘total eradication’.
Since early 2021, prosecutions on bogus terrorism charges have proliferated alarmingly. For those convicted of these charges, the Penal Code dictates sentences ranging from one year in jail to lifelong imprisonment and the death penalty.
Of course, those arrested and prosecuted have seen their due process and fair trial guarantees systematically violated.
A new wave of arrests started in February 2022. Why are the authorities targeting human rights defenders in such large numbers?
The Algerian authorities are arresting human rights defenders to suffocate civil society. Human rights defenders are the only limit to their power, because they are the only ones defending and advocating for human rights in Algeria. Their elimination would effectively end the flow of information about the human rights violations they commit to the outside world.
Rather than addressing the problems that civil society denounces, the authorities are attacking those advocating for change, because they view change as a threat and a limitation to their power. To cover up the ongoing human rights violations, they are using systematic repression, specifically targeting human rights defenders and the exercise of the freedom of expression.
Three years after the Hirak protests, the authorities continue to restrict protests. What tactics of suppression do they use?
Indeed, three years after Hirak (which stands for ‘movement’ in Arabic) peacefully pushed for political change and forced President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s resignation, at least 300 activists, many of them associated with Hirak, are being held by the authorities.
Through presidential decrees, the Algerian authorities have recently enacted new legislation hostile to the freedoms of expression and assembly. In June 2021, the Penal Code was amended by presidential decree, leading to the expansion of an already too broad definition of terrorism. People are now being accused of crimes such as ‘offending public bodies’, ‘spreading false information’, ‘membership of a terrorist group’, ‘apology for terrorism’, and ‘conspiracy against state security’. A Facebook post may lead to charges such as ‘using information technologies to spread terrorist ideas’ and ‘disseminating information that could harm the national interest’. Even a simple remittance is listed as an act of treason.
All human rights defenders and advocates who fall under the thumb of these new laws, in particular articles 87 bis and 95 bis of the Penal Code, are automatically slapped with vague charges such as ´undermining national unity’ as well as bogus terrorism-related charges. Despite the presentation of evidence of their innocence by their defence, judicial authorities impose the verdicts sought by the authorities.
The authorities are also accusing pro-Hirak CSOs of allegedly holding activities contrary to the objectives listed in the Law on Associations and in their own by-laws. On this basis, some of them have been dissolved, including Rassemblement Action Jeunesse and the cultural association SOS Beb El Oued, whose president was sentenced to a year in prison for ‘undermining national unity and national interest’ in connection with the association’s activities.
Political activists and leaders of parties linked to Hirak are also punished for ‘crimes’ such as ‘calling for a gathering’, and parties are accused of not complying with the Law on Political Parties by organising ‘activities outside the objectives stipulated in its by-laws’. This happened, for example, after several activists gathered to discuss the establishment of a united front against repression.
What needs to change in Algeria?
Civil society must be preserved while there is still something left. Civil society plays a major role in any movement for change. When CSOs are absent or disabled, people are left without protection and guidance. This is especially true in efforts to avoid violence and prevent human rights violations; when a society is devoid of CSOs, people lack guidance in knowing what steps to take and human rights violations go unaccounted for. Civil society associations, centres and bodies are key for framing the protest movement – to provide it with structure, strategy and a goal.
If nothing is done about it, the authorities will continue repressing independent civil society and the human rights situation will worsen. If nothing is done, the goal of democracy and respect for human rights will float further and further away, until it’s completely out of reach.
How can international civil society support Algerian civil society in its struggle for human rights and democratic freedoms?
Algerian civil society cannot achieve its goals on its own; it needs cooperation and support from the international community. To address human rights violations and promote democratic freedoms in Algeria, domestic civil society must establish relationships of cooperation and work jointly with international organisations.
Algerian civil society can develop an effective strategy by opening international lines of communication and becoming a major source of information on the real conditions of human rights on the ground. On the basis of this information, international organisations can help activate international monitoring mechanisms and put pressure for change on Algerian authorities.
Civic space in Algeria is rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with SHOAA for Human Rights through itswebsite or itsFacebook page, and follow@shoaa_org on Twitter. -
ALGERIA: ‘The state must respect the freedoms of those calling for truth and justice on enforced disappearances’
CIVICUS speaks about the repression of civil society in Algeria with Nassera Dutour, a Franco-Algerian human rights activist and president of the Collective of Families of People Disappeared in Algeria (CFDA) and the Euro-Mediterranean Federation against Enforced Disappearances.
The CFDA was founded in Paris in May 1998 by Algerian mothers living in France who had relatives who had disappeared in Algeria. It defends the right to truth and justice of the families of the disappeared and has worked from the outset to raise national and international public awareness of the scale of human rights violations in Algeria.
What’s the reason for the recent increase in repression in Algeria?
In February 2019, the people of Algeria mobilised spontaneously and peacefully to demand democratic change. They took to the streets of Algiers and other cities to protest against incumbent President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s bid for a fifth term. Even after his resignation, the protest movement, known as the Hirak, lost none of its momentum, broadening its demands to call for a radical overhaul of the regime, a civilian government and a ‘free and democratic Algeria’.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic put the demonstrations on hold from March 2020 onwards, mobilisation resumed in February 2021 before experiencing a definitive decline, partly due to concerted pressure from the authorities to suppress the movement. Human rights activists, particularly those who dare to criticise the government’s rhetoric and policies, are constantly harassed and intimidated. The security forces monitor and threaten them, creating a climate of fear that is gradually becoming fatal to human rights activism. In some extreme cases, activists face physical violence, which compromises their safety and their ability to continue their essential work.
Algerian courts have used numerous provisions of the Penal Code to silence critical voices online and offline. Journalists such as Mustapha Bendjama, Khaled Drareni, Ihsane El-Kadi and Rabah Karèche have been targeted with long prison sentences for exposing corruption and abuse. The authorities have also arbitrarily restricted or blocked access to independent news websites, further undermining access to diverse information.
Among other tactics, the authorities have often invoked the ‘national interest’ to restrict the freedom of action of human rights defenders. For example, Nacer Meghnine, president of the SOS Bab El Oued association, was sentenced in 2021 for publications found at his association’s headquarters denouncing repression, arbitrary arrests and torture. The judges considered that these writings tarnished Algeria’s international image, and that by criticising Algeria for failing to apply the United Nations (UN) Convention against Torture, he was inciting foreign interference. Nacer Meghnine was also convicted of direct incitement to unarmed assembly for leaflets displaying portraits of prisoners of conscience. One of the most formidable tools used by the authorities to repress dissent is anti-terrorism legislation, which has broadened the definition of terrorism.
Are independent civil society organisations able to operate in Algeria?
The CFDA remains a clandestine association despite numerous attempts to legalise it with the Ministry of the Interior and the prefecture. There has never been any justification from the government for refusing to authorise its registration.
From 2001 to 2013, the CFDA had to move its offices in Algeria every year, due to intimidation of the owners by the Algerian authorities. In France, there were two particularly violent intrusions into our offices, which were completely ransacked. The Algerian government puts a great deal of psychological pressure on the members of the organisation both in Algeria and France.
In 2023, police officers came to the Algiers offices and threatened members of the association. No action was taken, although the association’s lawyer tried to find out whether there was an investigation file on the CFDA or on the owner of the premises.
When we were organising a conference in Algiers, the authorities came to the hotel and ‘suggested’ that we should not hold the conference. CFDA staff and partners tried for hours to stand up to the police and gendarmerie, but they forced us to leave. This international seminar, which was to have been held over two days on the theme of ‘Truth, Justice and Conciliation’, was simply banned.
Our telephone and internet have been regularly cut off without any explanation, and our website and social media accounts have been hacked twice. The CFDA radio station that we set up in 2016 was immediately censored and made inaccessible in Algeria. Six years later, the site was hacked and the CFDA was forced to create another site under a different name.
CFDA members have been subjected to psychological harassment, including repeated death threats. In 2002, the French authorities warned me that Algeria had given the order to kill me.
In addition, recourse to foreign funding is drastically limited, while it is virtually impossible to gain access to state funding, which is only available to organisations affiliated with the Algerian state.
Since the Hirak, the dissolution of associations has increased exponentially. An association can be suspended if it ‘interferes in the country’s internal affairs or undermines national sovereignty’. The Youth Action Gathering and the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights have been dissolved.
Demonstrations organised in Algeria to defend human rights are often repressed by the police, with numerous arbitrary arrests and detentions, cases of short and long-term enforced disappearances and incidences of torture.
As a result of this repression, many human rights defenders, lawyers and journalists have had to leave Algeria for France or other European countries. But the diaspora continues to present a united front through joint actions such as demonstrations in Paris every Sunday, advocacy missions to national, European and international institutions, documentation and the drafting of reports for decision-making and investigative and judicial bodies, the publication of press articles and official press releases, conferences and round tables, and social media campaigns.
How does the CFDA work to protect and promote human rights in Algeria?
The CFDA advocates with international bodies and invites human rights activists and members of civil society in Algeria to take part.
The CFDA immediately informs the public as soon as it becomes aware of a human rights violation in Algeria. However, we don’t stop at denunciations: we make calls on states in writing and urge international bodies to take action through urgent appeals to various UN special procedures and to the commissioners of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
The CFDA has produced several reports on human rights in Algeria, the non-independence of the judiciary, women’s rights, arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances.
In 2014 in the city or Oran, we inaugurated the Centre for the Preservation of Memory and the Study of Human Rights. This is a space open to the public for documentation, meetings and reflection on human rights issues. It has a wide range of publications on enforced disappearances and transitional justice.
The CFDA trains and informs people. It provides information through its social networks and website, as well as through its online radio station, Radio of the Voiceless. Since 2016, the radio station has covered human rights issues through regular podcasts and interviews. It is an integral part of our memorialisation work because it offers a space for expression to people who have been silenced. Since 2019, the radio station has also been following up and commenting on the Hirak and the authoritarian excesses of the Algerian regime.
The CFDA trains human rights activists in international and African human rights protection mechanisms, internal and external communication and conflict management. It invests heavily in the independence of the judiciary because it believes that the rule of law and democracy cannot exist without an independent judiciary, and that without the rule of law, the truth about enforced disappearances in Algeria will never be established.
What are your demands to the Algerian government?
With regard to the search for the truth, we demand an exhaustive and impartial investigation into all cases of disappearance so that the victim, if alive, is placed under the protection of the law, and if not, their remains are returned to their family. All those concerned by the disappearance must have access to the final results of the investigation.
The authorities must use all technical and legal means available to locate mass graves and unmarked graves, identify bodies, clarify the circumstances in which they were buried and return the remains to the families. They must set up a DNA database for identification purposes.
To put an end to impunity, the authorities must carry out immediate and impartial investigations into each alleged case of disappearance in which the instigator, perpetrator or accomplice is a public official. Any criminal complaint against an unknown person or public official must be declared admissible and investigated immediately. The state must also take urgent measures to guarantee the independence and impartiality of the judiciary.
In addition, appropriate and adequate reparations must be made to the victims, including adequate financial compensation, moral and psychological rehabilitation, and the fullest and most visible remembrance possible.
To ensure that the crimes of the past are not repeated, the state must respect, protect, guarantee and promote freedoms of opinion, expression, association and peaceful assembly for those who demand truth and justice. It must protect all the victims and their families against potential attacks on their physical and moral integrity that they may suffer as a result of their demands.
What support does Algerian civil society receive from international allies, and what other international support do you need?
International civil society organisations such as Amnesty International and the International Federation for Human Rights are constantly alert to the Algerian government’s repression.
In addition, these organisations, along with the CFDA and other Algerian organisations, have led and taken part in advocacy missions to international bodies, particularly in Europe, for the release of prisoners of conscience. We have obtained three resolutions from the European Parliament on human rights violations in Algeria.
Despite these actions, to our knowledge and great despair, no state has spoken out or denounced the repression in Algeria.
In this context, it is necessary to strengthen international solidarity to show a united front in order to create a balance of power that leads states to urge the state of Algeria to respect its international obligations regarding collective and individual freedoms and the establishment of the rule of law in Algeria, starting with judicial independence.
As for enforced disappearances, it is necessary to raise international awareness of the fact that this practice can occur under any repressive government and concerns all societies, all the more so in a globalised world where intergenerational traumas and practices are particularly mobile. This tactic first surfaced in the Latin American dictatorships of the 1970s and 80s, and is now used on every continent by authoritarian regimes of all political persuasions. Yet decision-makers and various stakeholders have shown themselves to be disengaged. We absolutely must mobilise a broad public and organise internationally to combat and prevent this crime.
Civic space in Algeria is rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with CFDA through itswebsite, Instagram account orFacebook page, and follow@SOS_Disparus on Twitter.
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AZERBAIJAN: ‘Operating on the ground has become increasingly difficult due to security concerns’
CIVICUS speaks about the links between the exploitation of fossil fuels and human rights violations in Azerbaijan with Kate Watters, Executive Director of Crude Accountability.
Founded in 2003, Crude Accountability is a civil society organisation that works to protect the environmental and human rights of people in the Caspian and Black Sea regions and in areas of Eurasia affected by oil and gas development.
How do extractive industries fuel human rights violations in Azerbaijan?
The key problem is corruption, which results from the close relationship between the executive branch of government and the oil industry. The use of the state oil company by the regime led by president Ilham Aliyev is a key feature of Azerbaijan’s kleptocracy.
Corporations operating in Azerbaijan handle vast sums of money and oversee massive projects. For example, British Petroleum (BP), the largest foreign investor, is involved in many of the key fossil fuel projects and is the majority shareholder and operator of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, through which around 80 per cent of Azerbaijan’s oil is exported. BP has a monopoly in the industry that dominates the national economy, with oil and gas accounting for 95 per cent of all exports, 75 per cent of government revenue and 42 per cent of national GDP.
Those in charge of the oil and gas sector control the financial and economic dynamics of the whole country. The vast revenues generated by the hydrocarbon industry make it difficult for smaller environmentally sustainable alternatives to gain traction and create fertile ground for corruption and secrecy. International mechanisms that promote transparency in the industry rely on a level of adherence to the rule of law that Azerbaijan lacks.
That’s why Crude Accountability’s advocacy efforts focus on advancing transparency and accountability. We aim for the adoption of cleaner technologies that ensure the wellbeing of local communities and call for international financial institutions to cease financing fossil fuels and redirect their investments toward sustainable green energy projects. We urge companies to be transparent about the social and environmental impacts of their operations and strive for continuous improvement.
What work do you do in Azerbaijan?
Crude Accountability’s involvement in Azerbaijan dates back to the early 2000s. We work with communities, organisations and people affected by oil and gas developments. Our efforts encompass extensive research, educational and advocacy activities that address the specific impacts of the hydrocarbon industry, such as gas flaring from the BP’s Sangachal Terminal, which is causing villagers health problems and sleep disruption, along with the broader impacts of onshore and offshore oil and gas development in Azerbaijan.
As an organisation, we’ve shed light on previously undisclosed areas. One of our achievements is the collaborative report ‘Flames of Toxicity‘, produced in partnership with Omanos Analytics. Using satellite imagery and other technologies, we proved that oil spills and flaring were happening during extraction and refining processes in several locations. By doing this we reminded industry stakeholders that, even when it’s unsafe for activists to conduct extensive on-site verification, there are technologies we can use to gain insight into environmental and human rights violations.
For the past few years, operating on the ground in Azerbaijan has become increasingly difficult due to security concerns for our partners. Since mid-2023, our primary focus in Azerbaijan has shifted to advocating for the release of Gubad Ibadoghlu, a prominent economist and anti-corruption activist. He was arbitrarily detained in July 2023 and is currently held in miserable conditions in a pretrial detention centre outside the capital, Baku, facing mistreatment and denial of medical attention. During his arrest, both he and his wife were severely beaten after the car they were driving was surrounded and forced to stop. The physical violence perpetrated against Ibadoghlu and his wife during arrest is extremely concerning.
We are part of an international coalition of activists, academics, policymakers and journalists that works for the release of Gubad Ibadoghlu and other Azerbaijani political prisoners, including independent journalists affected by the recent crackdown on civil society.
Is the level of repression in Azerbaijan increasing?
Repression has intensified over the last five years, and particularly in the past couple of years, as President Ilham Aliyev and the presidential apparatus have sought to solidify their position and power. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, authoritarianism and the repression of civil society have escalated across Eurasia. This is certainly the case in Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijani people are afraid to speak out about the Azerbaijani offensive against Nagorno-Karabakh. Even those who refrain from criticising the offensive and work to address other related issues risk being labelled as ‘pro-Armenian’, a smear used by authorities against activists and dissenters.
The snap presidential election scheduled for 7 February will serve to further consolidate Aliyev’s rule amidst regional turmoil. In this context, independent journalists face a heightened risk of repression. In June 2023, protests erupted in the village of Soyudlu, already threatened by environmental degradation, against the construction of an artificial lake to contain waste from the nearby Gadabay goldmine. Police severely beat community activists and journalists who came to cover the story. The village remains under lockdown, and although it appears that the goldmine’s activity has been limited or halted, it remains a challenge to obtain verified information. The community has been under stress since the incident.
Environmental activists are also at risk. People with information about issues such as flaring or emissions are often afraid to speak out. Sometimes they have family members employed by the oil company or refinery and fear that they may lose their jobs, jeopardising the family’s livelihood. Fear of repercussions silences environmental activists and others who are aware of environmental violations. Still, some environmental and human rights defenders continue to operate discreetly in Azerbaijan.
What forms of international support does Azerbaijani civil society currently need?
Azerbaijan’s selection as the host for this year’s United Nations climate change conference, COP29, poses significant challenges from both a human rights and an environmental perspective. Azerbaijan has fallen short of its climate commitments. It hasn’t signed the Global Methane Pledge, a step taken even by countries like Turkmenistan. There are also serious concerns about civil society’s ability to participate in COP29 due to ongoing repression and severe human rights violations taking place in the host country. The imprisonment of a prominent Azerbaijani economist investigating corruption in the oil and gas sector raises further concerns.
The international community should demand transparency and accountability from the Azerbaijani authorities in the run-up to COP29 and throughout the conference. A legitimate discussion on climate change in the framework of sustainability and human rights can only occur with the active participation of civil society.
It is also very important to building international coalitions to confront authoritarianism, repression and closed civic space. Autocratic governance seeks to make people feel isolated and disunited, so collaborative efforts are vital. By working together, sharing resources and leveraging each organisation’s expertise for knowledge exchange, we can enhance our impact.
Azerbaijani civil society requires financial resources, solidarity and support from the international community. The more we can offer to activists on the ground, the more successful our collective efforts will be.
Civic space in Azerbaijan is rated ‘closed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with Crude Accountability through itswebsite orFacebook page, and follow it onLinkedIn andTwitter.
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BANGLADESH: ‘Protecting water amounts to protecting basic human rights in all nations’
Following a year marked by massive mobilisation on the climate emergency, CIVICUS is interviewing civil society activists, leaders and experts about the main environmental challenges they face in their contexts and the actions they are taking. CIVICUS speaks with Sharif Jamil, an environmental activist and the General Secretary of Bangladesh Paribesh Andolon (BAPA), a platform that organises civil society movements against environmental degradation. Since 2009 Sharif has been involved with the Waterkeeper Alliance, a global network aimed at ensuring every community’s right to clean water, and he is currently the Coordinator of Waterkeepers Bangladesh.
What is the key environmental issue that you work on?
The Waterkeeper Alliance is a global platform and network that now includes over 400 organisations in 40 countries across the globe. We protect the water bodies that we all need and use, but that cannot speak for themselves. We call for people to respect water bodies and defend their rights, so when a waterkeeper speaks it is as if a water body spoke.
We focus on water, but we don’t work only on water, because if there is no rainforest there is no water, if there are no mountains there is no water: if you don’t preserve the environment and ecology as a whole, then the water is also in trouble. So our water protection movement is not limited to protecting water bodies.
We have launched a global campaign because water does not respect borders, so it needs to be protected globally. Climate change and global warming are threatening the entire planet, and we need the planet to come out of this crisis as a whole.
While thinking globally, you are also acting locally. Can you tell us about the work you are doing in Bangladesh?
I started my activism 20 years ago. BAPA was formed in 2000 at an international conference on the environment in Bangladesh. The conference was held to discuss what we could do for the environment from the civil society level. It was agreed that civil organisations were doing good work but a platform was still needed for all of them to act as a unified pressure group, to bring the conflict to the table and apply pressure to come up with a solution. When BAPA started, we prioritised the issues directly affecting the environment in Bangladesh, but as rivers do not follow political boundaries, we realised that protecting water amounts to protecting basic human rights in all nations. That is why I also got involved with human rights organisations and members of a human rights group based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and we are now tracking human rights violations related to ecological degradation.
Specifically in Bangladesh, in recent times, we are focusing our work on the conflict between fossil fuels, the energy system and environmental degradation. In 2010 the government updated a power system master plan required for the country to grow economically. The government decided to focus on industrialisation, so it formed a special economy zone authority and declared more than 100 special economic zones across the country. These were meant to attract investment from foreign investors and to facilitate the establishment of multinational companies in the country. Industry requires energy, so to foster industrialisation the government came up with a plan to produce the power that it estimated would be required up to 2030. In order to meet the requirement, it decided to increase dramatically the share of energy produced from coal, from 2.5 per cent of total electricity to over 50 per cent. The government made this decision just as the world was shifting away from coal because of global warming.
At this point there were civil society reactions, but initially we did not know enough. We lacked information, expertise and funding. But we worked hard to understand how much this master plan would impact on water and climate. With the collaboration of the Waterkeeper Alliance, in 2015 we organised an international conference in Dhaka, ‘Coal energy in Bangladesh: impact on water and climate’, and we came to understand that coal is more of a problem than a solution. The government’s plan identified three major hubs to establish coal-based power plants in the coastal region, and each of those hubs is threatening a unique ecological treasure.
One of them is the Sundarbans, a mangrove area in the delta formed by the confluence of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers in the Bay of Bengal. The Sundarbans, a World Heritage Site, is the largest remaining mangrove forest in the world. It covers an area of about 10,000 square kilometres in both Bangladesh (60 per cent) and India (40 per cent) and it is the last habitat of the endangered Bengal tiger. The Sundarbans protects the entire nation from cyclone and storm surges because Bangladesh is a densely populated country and is highly vulnerable to global warming, climate change and extreme weather hitting the land from the Indian Ocean. Bangladesh is almost a flat country and is therefore affected by floods. The Sundarbans is a lot more than just a huge forest – it is also a barrier that protects all of our country’s land.
So we started protesting against the Rampal and Orion coal power-plant projects, located only around four kilometres away from the Ecologically Critical Area of the Sundarbans. We first started protesting against the coal-based power developments that were closest to home and then found out that on the other side of the Sundarbans, there were also huge numbers of coal-based power production plants going on in and around Payra, which were also threatening the Sundarbans as well as one of the rarest sea beaches where you can see the sunrise and sunset. And more importantly, thinking about the food security of our nation, the pollution that it causes threatens our national fish, hilsa. This is a fish that migrates from sea to freshwater and from freshwater to sea. The region is one of the major landing stations for this migratory fish and would be entirely destroyed by the coal plants.
What we are trying to do is to reach a balance and understand what we should do and how we can protect this environment while keeping development moving onwards, that is, how we can make development sustainable. But the most urgent thing to do is protecting our water and air from this kind of pollution. We have been organising people’s movements. We are trying to convince our government, doing research and presenting global data and studies to our policy-makers. We are also inviting global investors like China, Japan and the UK to review their strategies. Some of the biggest investors are phasing out coal in their own countries while funding its use in this poor, overpopulated nation. We want the global community to influence and engage global investors to keep development progressing while ensuring that it is done with renewable energy. The global community should understand that producing 5,000 megawatts in Australia is not the same as producing 5,000 megawatts in Bangladesh. We are an overpopulated deltaic country, with more than 1,084 people per square kilometre.
Have you participated in global climate mobilisations?
I was the national coordinator of the climate march in Bangladesh in 2015, when the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 21) was held in Paris, France. We took people out on the street and had a very good turnout. We held a procession together with other civil society organisations in the capital, Dhaka, and more than 30,000 people participated in the march.
More recently, in September 2019, we mobilised in the context of the global climate strike called by Greta Thunberg. Waterkeepers Bangladesh, Waterkeepers Nepal, the Nepal River Conservation Trust and BAPA jointly organised a series of events and activities in solidarity, including a mobilisation to protect the Himalayas by the banks of the Sunkoshi River in Nepal, near the source of the Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers, on 23 September, and another focused on protecting the Sundarbans, held at Katka Beach in the Bay of Bengal, near the source of the sea, on 29 September.
I also took part in COP 25 in Madrid, Spain, and joined the European Union’s 21st EU-NGO Human Rights Forum in Brussels, Belgium, both in December 2019. Discussions there revolved around building a fair environmental future.
So yes, Bangladeshi people are the victims of climate change, which they face every day, but they are also protecting themselves with their own knowledge and capacity, and reaching out to the global community.
A big problem is that many in the global community are ready to help people with adaptation, but no one is putting enough attention on mitigation. So we request help for Bangladesh not only regarding adaptation to climate change, but also for mitigation, to keep our forest, to protect the Sundarbans, to protect the water bodies. The truth is that if you don’t keep this place alive, the entire region will be in trouble.
The situation is urgent because water is depleting and there are no shared protocols. So we have started efforts within civil society, with people-to-people communication. We are working on the five countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India and Nepal – to manage the entire Brahmaputra, Ganges and Meghna basins together on the basis of equity and trust. These countries should come up with a treaty or some form of consensus to deal with the problem of melting Himalayan glaciers. Bangladesh is a water-scarce country as we get only 20 per cent of total water over half of the year from upstream during the lean period. When a neighbouring country blocks all the water, water bodies die, agriculture collapses and the economy is destroyed.
Do you think international climate forums provide a useful space for civil society?
I have participated in many global talks; in September 2018 I was even invited as a speaker to the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, USA. The problem with these forums is that sometimes good things are said, but actions do not match words. The government of California was one of the organisers of the summit in San Francisco, but California’s policies are all about protecting themselves while exporting fossil fuels to other countries. It’s irrational to think that you can save yourself alone. What you have to do to protect the planet from climate change is to keep fossil fuel underground. You cannot exploit mines in poor nations and then organise a nice summit to come up with recommendations to solve the problem you have created and that you do not have any intention to implement.
Still, we are invited to these forums and we attend. The former BAPA general secretary was a member of the Bangladeshi government team for the climate negotiations at three successive sessions of the COP. We try to help our government in the negotiations, for instance by providing data and analysis. True, our government still needs to change its mindset and understand that economic growth needs to be sustainable. Our government needs to conduct itself diplomatically while being firm in searching for funding for sustainable development.
But we support our government in international negotiations because Bangladesh is a poor nation and there are many things that our government is not in a position to do or decide by itself; we depend on developed nations in many respects. We understand that responsibility falls on our government when it comes to changing its mindset and becoming more inclusive in its decision-making processes, but it is the responsibility of the global community to come up with a holistic approach to deal with a global problem.
Civic space in Bangladesh is rated as ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with Waterkeepers Bangladesh through itswebsite and itsFacebook page, or follow@WaterkeepersBD on Twitter. -
BANGLADESH: ‘This is a one-sided election in which we already know who the winner will be’
CIVICUS speaks with Dr Mubashar Hasan about the ongoing crackdown on dissent in Bangladesh ahead of 7 January general elections.
Mubashar is a Bangladesh-born academic and social justice activist. He is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, Norway.
What’s the current political climate in Bangladesh?
The political climate in Bangladesh is tense. The election is being organised under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the world’s longest-serving female head of government. The main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), has said it’s not going to participate in an election held under this administration, arguing that there isn’t a level playing field for parties to compete freely and fairly.
Judicial harassment is rife. In September, the New York Times reported that 2.5 million opposition activists faced judicial cases, with each facing multiple cases and some up to 400. Journalists have found that many cases against the opposition were fabricated. The police have even reportedly filed cases against BNP activists who were long dead or living abroad.
On 28 October 2023, the opposition organised a massive rally. To stop this becoming a full-blown people-led movement, the government aggressively repressed it. A few opposition activists retaliated and then the government blamed the violence on the opposition. At least 15 people were killed, including two police officers. More than 20,000 opposition activists have been incarcerated since late October.
This election-related violence is largely the result of state violence. Human Rights Watch recently described the ongoing developments as an autocratic crackdown. Freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly are being restricted and forcefully violated, affecting the legitimacy of the election process. Extremely politicised state institutions are being used as an extension of the ruling party, a trend many argue could lead to the materialisation of a totalitarian state.
Is there any space for civil society to operate in Bangladesh?
The space for civil society in Bangladesh is closed. Civil society organisations are free to operate only as long as they don’t challenge the ruling system.
Just as in any autocratic country, there is an increasing activism going on in the diaspora. There are many Bangladeshi activists living in Australia, as well as in Malaysia, Sweden, the USA and elsewhere. BNP leader Tarique Rahman lives in exile in London.
People in the diaspora are using the leverage that comes with living under democratic governments to spread information about what happens in Bangladesh. Those diaspora activists argue that it is their duty to expose what is going on back home.
There are also key investigative journalists working from exile. A site called Netra News runs out of Malmö in Sweden, and it is still quite influential in exposing serious illegal acts by the government. There are several emerging YouTube commentators and analysts who have been very courageous. They have millions of followers.
How big a problem is disinformation in Bangladeshi politics?
Disinformation has always been a problem. Authoritarian governments don’t like the free flow of information. They want to control information and seek to discredit independent voices, just as Trump did in the USA, trashing fact as fiction and making fiction fact. And he was the authoritarian leader of a democratic country, which Bangladesh is not.
Partisan elements within the government of Bangladesh and ruling party members treat those who dare challenge the official narrative as enemies. As I mentioned in one of my recent articles for the Diplomat Magazine, the government is the dominant force promoting political disinformation. The main opposition party has also promoted disinformation in some instances but independent factcheckers have concluded that the volume of political disinformation promoted by the opposition is miniscule compared to the government.
There has been recent reporting by the Financial Times focused on how the Bangladeshi ruling party is using AI-driven disinformation to disrupt the upcoming election. But this is a one-sided election in which we already know who the winner will be. In this election voters do not have real choice. Why the ruling party is promoting AI-driven disinformation is therefore a mystery.
What are your expectations for election day and its aftermath?
Many things will unfold in the coming days. Voter turnout will most likely be low. The government will deploy military forces nationwide, perhaps even putting them in charge of distributing ballot boxes and election materials.
There will be some violence, probably by the opposition, followed by arrests. The opposition will persist in demanding a free and fair election and the resignation of the government. Some loss of life is sadly to be expected.
This election is also taking place within a wider geopolitical context. China, India and Russia are strongly supportive of the Bangladeshi government, whereas the USA keeps talking about free and fair elections, which puts it on the side of Bangladeshi people.
At this point, not much is in the hands of Bangladeshi people. Without effective external pressure towards democracy, change is unlikely. Civil society’s work will only become more challenging in Bangladesh as the government steps up its repression.
Civic space in Bangladesh is rated ‘closed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with Mubashar through hiswebpage and follow@mh23rights on Twitter.
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BELGIUM: ‘We need systemic transformation to stop the climate crisis’
CIVICUS speaks with Sarah Tak, General Coordinator of Klimaatzaak (‘Climate Case’), about a recent ruling by the Brussels court of appeal mandating drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in Belgium by 2030.
Klimaatzaak is a civil society group founded in 2014 by 11 concerned citizens who wanted to take action against Belgium’s inadequate climate policy.
What’s the significance of the court ruling ordering the government to take more decisive action to cut greenhouse gas emissions?
Governments have been aware of the climate crisis for decades and committed to work together to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the situation becoming truly dangerous. They have signed United Nations treaties on climate change to that end, yet unfortunately very little has been achieved. Scientists have been long telling us we must halve emissions by 2030 if we are to have a chance of limiting global warming to below 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times. That is the danger threshold governments said they would strive not to cross when they signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, and they reaffirmed this commitment in 2021 at the COP26 climate summit. Yet they fail to translate these promises into domestic action and global emissions continue to rise, even to this day.
What this shows is that politicians are not able – or willing – to act on the climate crisis in the decisive way needed. Meanwhile the situation is becoming increasingly alarming, which is why judges are asked to step in, often by citizens or civil society groups who see their most fundamental rights threatened by climate change.
The verdict issued by the Brussels Court of Appeal on 30 November 2023 is truly historic because it was only the second time worldwide that judges have imposed a binding obligation on governments to reach a defined emission reduction target. The first victory was achieved by the Urgenda Foundation in the Netherlands in 2015. Our verdict found the climate policy of the Belgian federal, Brussels and Flemish regional governments to be negligent to the extent that it constitutes a breach of the human rights of all 58,586 individual co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
What was Klimaatzaak’s role in the court case?
We are a movement of concerned citizens that decided to start court actions to force governments to act on climate. Initially we were just 11 people, but we grew to a grassroots movement of 58,586 citizens. This number makes the Belgian climate case the largest worldwide, which is why it considers itself to be a lawsuit by and for citizens.
We started the legal case in 2014, by sending a formal notice to the four parts of Belgian government that have competence for climate policy – the federal government, plus those of the Flemish, Brussels-Capital and Walloon regions. After disputes about the procedural language, the proceedings on the merits of the case started in 2019.
Legally we built the case on two pillars, where we argued that the inadequate climate policy pursued by the Belgian authorities was a violation of both the tort provision of the Belgian civil code (the ‘duty of care’) and of articles 2 and 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Given the importance and urgency of the matter, we requested a penalty payment of €1 million (approx. US$1.07 million) for every month’s delay in executing the judgment.
When oral proceedings started in March 2021, people mobilised in more than 100 municipalities and cities across Belgium. An estimated 7,000 citizen climate advocates took to the streets dressed as lawyers to show their support. The Court of First Instance of Brussels issued its decision in June 2021, confirming that the Belgian climate policy was so substandard that it violated the legal duty of care and human rights, but it did not impose any specific reduction target.
Since it soon became clear that the competent ministers had no intention of abiding by the judgment and changing their policy course, we decided to start the appeal procedure in order to complement the first instance verdict with binding reduction targets. And this time everything went much faster because the Brussels Court of Appeal decided to prioritise our case. Submissions from the federal and regional governments were received and we then filed ours throughout 2022 and 2023. Four intense weeks of oral pleadings took place in September and October 2023, and the historic verdict was out before the end of November.
It was the backing of our countless supporters that helped sustain our work for so long. They kept us upright financially and morally. If anything, this was a victory of civil society and the public.
Do you expect this ruling to set a precedent for others to follow?
Our case is part of a wider trend and sets an important legal precedent that is already today being used in other jurisdictions to try to impose similar climate targets. Steep national emission reduction targets are urgently needed for climate policies to have a chance of being effective.
We are now seeing a lot of civil society groups, individual citizens and even government authorities turning to courts to push for climate action. There are more than 2,000 climate cases worldwide, initiated by a wide array of claimants. In the USA, the state of California is suing major oil corporations over claims they misled the public for decades and seeking the creation of a special fund to pay for recovery. Organisations such as Milieudefensie in the Netherlands already won a pioneering climate case against the oil major Shell and recently initiated a new climate case against IGN Bank.
To stop the climate crisis, we need systemic transformation: we need governments, carbon majors and banking and insurance companies to drastically change course. In the coming years we can surely expect a lot more litigation against not only governments but also other powerful actors. We simply need to hold them accountable if we want to see the transition that is needed before 2030.
Our case is already being consulted and referenced by civil society in other countries. We were contacted by several groups seeking similar rulings in their countries who were trying to understand the reasoning of the judges and use their arguments in their own proceedings.
What are the next steps in your advocacy work?
Elections will take place in Belgium in June 2024, so we are working to keep the verdict alive in public debate. After the election we will continue to monitor compliance with the ruling. The judges set up a follow-up mechanism so we can go back to them in 2025 if climate policy continues to be unsatisfactory. The judges will then decide on penalty payments if need be. A good mix of advocacy and legal work awaits us in the coming months and years.
Civic space in Belgium is rated ‘narrowed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with Klimaatzaak through itswebsite orFacebook page, and follow @Klimaatzaak onTwitter andInstagram.
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BOLIVIA: ‘We empower young people so they can lead the climate movement’
Following a year marked by massive mobilisation on the climate emergency, CIVICUS is interviewing civil society activists, leaders and experts about the main environmental challenges they face in their contexts and the actions they are taking. CIVICUS speaks with Rodrigo Meruvia, general coordinator and researcher of the Gaia Pacha Foundation, a civil society organisation (CSO) dedicated to environmental protection and conservation. Based in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Gaia Pacha undertakes research, extension and development initiatives on the basis of cooperation with other CSOs, universities, research centres, government agencies and private companies.
What is the main environmental problem in the context where you work?
The central issue is climate change, a planetary phenomenon that is having impacts at all levels, on populations and their productive and food systems, and that exceeds local and institutional capacities. Among other things, this phenomenon is reflected in an increase in the frequency and magnitude of climatic events and the depth of their impacts.
We work with the aim of increasing the resilience of rural communities in the face of climate change, as well as building awareness among the urban population regarding the ways in which their consumption patterns affect the development prospects of many communities in rural areas. First of all we work to show how climate change impacts on areas of small family subsistence production and create mechanisms to help increase their resilience to climate change. We also work to empower young people both in rural communities and cities. We train them in technical issues as well as in matters of strategy and leadership, so that they can produce initiatives and generate alternatives on topics such as deforestation or greenhouse gas emission. We encourage them to generate projects applicable to their immediate surroundings and we foster networks and bridges with other civil society and academic organisations to support the implementation of their initiatives.
For example, at the moment we are working with universities in Cochabamba on the subject of alternative transportation, with the aim of establishing bike paths between the various university campuses within the city, so that young people can use bicycles as an emission-free and safe means of transportation. With that aim in mind, mobile phone apps are being developed that will indicate the safest routes, and parking lots for bicycles are being established, among other things. Work is also being done to educate car drivers, in partnership with the university and in a joint initiative with the municipality and some private companies that are interested in this issue.
Were there climate mobilisations in Bolivia during 2019?
Yes, in September, when the global climate mobilisations were held, major Bolivian cities joined as well. In Cochabamba, we provide support to the youth movement, providing them with resources so that they can lead the climate movement. We provide them with logistical and institutional support, which is needed because there is still a lack of trust in young people in our cities. We propel them without becoming the spokespeople for the movement. We provide training on a variety of topics and transmit the fundamentals and basic concepts to them so that they can account for the reasons for their mobilisation rather than just go to a march armed with a single slogan. The idea is for them to become the disseminators of accurate information regarding both the causes and local effects of global climate change.
With that aim we held several workshops targeted at young people. We trained about 100 young people directly, and indirectly we have reached around 1,400.
Did climate mobilisations in Bolivia echo global demands, or did demands have specific local components?
Demonstrations in Bolivia expressed demands related mainly to the forest fires that come hand in hand with the expansion of the agricultural frontier. Their main demand was the repeal of domestic laws that benefit agribusiness and neglect the protection of forests.
Bolivian laws do not protect forests, but rather the opposite. In mid-2019, just a few months before 2019’s great forest fires, the government enacted decree 3973, which authorised clearance for agricultural activities in private and community lands in the departments of Beni and Santa Cruz, and allowed controlled fires. In other words, the law gives free rein to any owner interested in expanding their production space, whether for livestock or agriculture. Unfortunately, this has been the position of the state so far, and in our experience whether there were leftist or right-wing governments in place has not made any difference. Beyond the party ideology of the incumbent government, there’s the interests of the agribusiness sector, which are much more permanent and broader, since they involve not only local actors but also transnational companies.
We believe that the cause of the fires is primarily human in origin, since they are started to expand the agricultural frontier. This is how about five and a half million hectares have already been burned. To give an idea ofthe dimensions of the disaster: the area that has been burned in the lowlands of Bolivia is almost the same size as Guatemala. And not only the forest is lost, but also the entire habitat is degraded, the water sources of some communities disappear and the effects of this extend beyond Bolivia, as bioclimates and rainfall change.
We understand that the phenomenon that affects us is part of a bigger problem, which this year had several expressions in the form of fires in the Brazilian Amazon, in African countries and in Australia. As there is insufficient rainfall due to climate change, forests are much more prone to burning. In addition to agricultural expansion policies, especially those aimed at growing soybeans – which in addition are genetically modified – this makes these places much more vulnerable. The consequences of this are suffered not only by the population living in the territories where these incidents occur, which is directly affected, but also by the general population.
At the same time, we also put forward the issue of urban deforestation. In Cochabamba there are around 200 deaths per year due to respiratory problems. It is one of the cities with the most polluted air in Latin America, so this was also one of the specific demands of our mobilisations, as well as the fact that we adhere to the global call for definitive and effective action by governments.
Have you had participated in international processes related to climate change?
We have participated from the local level, training young people to take part in the international negotiation processes, mainly at the COP – Conference of the Signatory Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – series of meetings.
We started by recruiting in various institutions that work with young people, and making a diagnosis to identify who were the ones who were ready and committed to addressing the issue of climate change, and then we made selections based on the issues we were working on. We gave workshops on topics ranging from the conceptual and technical approach to the issue of climate change, to the management of environmental projects, the characteristics of the negotiation process and strategies to participate, as well as workshops to improve people’s ability to express themselves adequately at these events. It was a long process, but it yielded very good results, because we already have leaders in the country’s nine departments who are trained to go participate in discussions and show the world the initiatives and projects that are being developed in Bolivia.
Unfortunately, the last-minute change of the venue for COP 25 to Spain – because it could not take place in Santiago de Chile due to the context of protests and repression – deflated us, because we were well prepared and had a firm position that in the end we could not contribute to the event. This was the case not just for us in Bolivia, but more generally for Latin America, where something very big was being prepared to share in Chile. The change of location and the short notice with which it was decided created a big complication for us, financially and logistically. On top of this, for us in Bolivia the consequences of recent socio-political conflicts also were an obstacle that prevented us from implementing our strategy before COP 25.
But we do not want to throw away the existing motivation and the accumulated work that we have done over approximately one and a half years, so we have continued to work to train young leaders. Our goal is to underpin the ability of young people to generate proposals and initiatives, both technically and politically, not only in their regions but also in international spaces.
Do you think that the disappointing outcomes of COP 25 had something to do with the absence of many people who were ready to influence the agenda but could not participate?
Yes, I think so. Without detracting from the work done by the countries and organisations that did participate, I think it ended up being a very improvised event, and if it had been held in Chile as planned, the results could have been a bit more significant and positive thanks to the presence and the participation of young people. For the first time, Bolivia was going to count on the participation of a group of young people recognised by the state, who were to carry out the mandate of a collective process developed in Bolivia’s nine departments through four or five prior forums.
However, we are trying to have a constructive attitude in the face of this setback, and we are taking advantage of the extra time we have to get ready. We already have these young people who are in a position to formulate demands and proposals wherever it might be necessary to do so – be it in the UK, where COP 26 will be held, or in any other international event if the opportunity arises.
Civic space in Bolivia is rated as ‘obstructed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with the Pacha Gaia Foundation through itswebsite and itsFacebook page, or follow@GaiaPacha on Twitter.
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BRAZIL: ‘If Bolsonaro continues as president, it is a threat to the Amazon and therefore to humanity’
CIVICUS discusses the state of environmental activism in Brazil with Daniela Silva, a socio-environmental educator and co-founder of the Aldeias Project, an education, art, culture and environment project for children and young people in the municipality of Altamira, in the Brazilian state of Pará.
What inspired you to become an environmental activist?
I live in a territory that has suffered great social and environmental impacts following the establishment of the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant on the Xingu River. And like thousands of people, including riverbank dwellers, fishers, Indigenous people, farmers, boat people, women and young people, my family and I also had our lives strongly impacted on by the project.
We lived in a neighbourhood called Aparecida, in a community where neighbours supported each other and children and young people played in the streets without fear. When a mother went out, she would leave her children in the custody of her neighbour. One of my best memories is our backyard. It looked like a farm: we had many fruit trees. We didn’t need to spend money to eat fruit. Solidarity was strengthened by a sense of community, which I think was intrinsically linked to the sense of belonging to a territory. All this was destroyed by a ‘development’ approach that disregards the subjectivity of peoples and populations.
The displacement caused by the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant pushed families far away from the Xingu River and separated communities that had lived together for decades. It fragmented community ties. A negative consequence of these impacts on the territory and people’s sense of self was their disconnection from nature and the loss of the Amazonian sense of belonging. Not feeling part of the Amazon is dangerous, because generally speaking, people only defend what they love, what they know and what they feel a part of.
Before the construction of the dam, my father worked as a potter. Together with my mother, who worked as a civil servant, they raised eight children. This was all over when the dam was built. My father became unemployed and so did my brothers. My father began to fight for the right to a ridiculously small pension. My brothers were forced to look for odd jobs around town. It was a difficult time! I realised that adapting to an imposed reality is one of the worst forms of violence against human dignity.
I am an activist for socio-environmental rights and against racism. Since adolescence I haven’t had much choice but to fight. We are one with nature, so we need to fight for nature to ensure a better present and future for ourselves and our children.
How is Brazilian civil society mobilising on behalf of the environment and what challenges does it face?
There are many environmental movements in the Amazon mobilising to denounce the environmental crimes of the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, but unfortunately our country’s judicial institutions have not been functioning according to the law, and have left us in a vulnerable position.
There are many civil society organisations that have been working for a long time in the Amazon and other areas that face great challenges to sustain themselves since there is little availability of financial resources. Most of those that manage to survive do so with international funding, since there is little incentive in Brazil to mobilise resources for civil society. Financial suffocation is one of the tactics used by the current government. In addition, we live in a very unstable and negative economic context, with high inflation and a fall in real wages. The fact that Brazil is a country lacking a culture of giving makes it even more complicated. It all results in a shortage of resources for the sustainability of organisations and the security of environmental defenders.
Even so, new groups and collectives – including the one I lead, Aldeias Project – continue emerging to defend the Amazon. There are many young people in leadership positions in the movements to defend their territories.
Our challenge is to create a safe space, since we are under constant threat. To be able to carry out our work, we have established partnerships with more experienced organisations that are able to advise us on best practices for taking care of our staff, partners and the communities we serve. Networking helps us see the big picture and build powerful links.
What do you think about the recent verdict by the Brazilian Supreme Court to recognise the Paris Agreement as a human rights treaty?
The Paris Agreement is undoubtedly an important legal instrument, and it is good that, as a human rights treaty signed by the Brazilian state, it has acquired constitutional status. But like all of Brazil’s legal documents, including the Federal Constitution, it must be fully implemented, especially by public managers who keep on violating human and environmental rights regardless of what is stated in the Brazilian Constitution.
For the Paris Agreement to be implemented and make an impact on the daily life of Brazilians, it must be disseminated among the people who suffer the climate crisis the most: Indigenous populations, riverside dwellers and Black communities in city outskirts. It is also important for the international community to take decisive action and put pressure on the Brazilian government for it actually to fulfil the agreement.
Will the result of the upcoming election make any difference to your struggles?
The October elections are perhaps one of the most important in Brazil's history. There is a lot at stake when it comes to the Amazon region. Bolsonaro, the incumbent, has unleashed uncontrolled deforestation, land grabs and illegal mining on Indigenous lands. He is also encouraging violence against human and environmental rights defenders in the Amazon.
With Bolsonaro there is no possibility of dialogue or engagement of organised civil society in decision-making on environmental matters. If Bolsonaro continues as president of Brazil, it is a threat to the Amazon and its peoples, and therefore to humanity. We are experiencing a global climate crisis and we need world leaders focusing on working alongside civil society, scientists and the international community to put together short, medium and long-term solutions to tackle it.
The advances of deforestation in the Amazon should be a key factor driving a Bolsonaro defeat in this election, but unfortunately it is not. Brazilian society remains very oblivious to the reality of the Amazon. Brazil’s large urban centres do not recognise the everyday reality of the forest and its peoples. The consequence of their ignorance is their lack of active concern about the current ecocide being committed by the Bolsonaro government. Fortunately, many Amazonian environmental movements are trying hard to pierce their bubble so Brazilian society gets to know what is happening and takes a stand.
Now, while acknowledging the utmost importance of defeating Bolsonaro in the upcoming election, we also have strong criticism of his main rival, the Workers’ Party (PT). Like right-wing governments, PT governments, led by the current PT candidate, Lula da Silva, and his successor as president, Dilma Rousseff, also pushed initiatives that were environmentally destructive: the Belo Monte project was built under PT administrations, without any respect for the law and international agreements on human and environmental rights.
However, we believe that with Lula we would be able to have a dialogue and there could be more space for civil society engagement in environmental decision making.
What do you think should happen at the forthcoming COP27 climate summit, and what do you think will happen?
Firstly, I think it is very important that COP27 is taking place in Africa, because African nations are among those that are suffering the most due to a climate crisis that has been caused by a small powerful group of white millionaires. They now have the opportunity to have a greater involvement at COP27 and demand more assistance from the richer nations that have caused the climate crisis. I hope that this edition of COP27 will enable the implementation of the promises and targets already agreed upon. And that women, children and adolescents will play an active role in this struggle for social and environmental justice.
Although that is what I hope for, we all know that COPs are a space where difficult conversations must take place and the governments of big nations lack the will to face the reality of climate change, especially when it comes to financial investments and taking it upon themselves to counter the damage their developmentalist approach continues to cause. So we will be closely watching the negotiations and agreements. We are at a critical point regarding climate, and there is no time to lose.
What kind of support do Brazilian environmental activists need from the international community?
The international community is our ally in our struggle for climate, social and racial justice. One way to help is by shedding light on activists’ work and directly and indirectly supporting their struggles. Another is to put pressure on genocidal and ecocidal governments such as Bolsonaro’s so that they respect human and environmental rights. Be aware of our struggles and listen to the voices of those on the ground in the countryside, on the peripheries of cities and on the forefront of this war we wage on a daily basis.
Civic space in Brazil is rated ‘obstructed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with Daniela throughLinkedIn and follow@projetoaldeias on Instagram.
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BURKINA FASO: ‘For a major segment of civil society security is a more urgent concern than democracy’
CIVICUS speaks about therecent military coup in Burkina Faso with Kop'ep Dabugat, Network Coordinator of the West Africa Democracy Solidarity Network (WADEMOS).
WADEMOS is a coalition of West African civil society organisations (CSOs) that mobilises civil society around the defence of democracy and the promotion of democratic norms in the region.
What led to the recent coup in Burkina Faso, and what needs to be done for democracy to be restored?
The current head of Burkina Faso’s ruling junta, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, cited persistent insecurity as a reason for the military takeover – as did his predecessor, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba. Attacks by armed groups are said to have greatly increased in the months following the first coup led by Damiba, in January 2022. According to analysts, Burkina Faso is the new epicentre of conflict in the Sahel. Since 2015, jihadist violence by insurgents with links to al-Qaeda and Islamic State has resulted in the death of thousands of people and displaced a further two million.
The coup also revealed the presence of a schism in the Damiba-led junta. It was orchestrated by military officers who were part of the coup that installed Damiba as head of state, but who now claimed that Damiba did not focus on reorganising the army to better face security threats, as they had expected. Instead, he stuck with the military structure that led to the fall of the government under President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, and began to display political ambitions.
The security question remains the first challenge that needs to be addressed to make Burkina Faso a democratic state. The foremost role of a state, and more so of a democratic one, is to guarantee the safety of its citizens. A united Burkina Faso army will be necessary to achieve this.
The other thing that must be done is to see through the existing transition programme for the country to return to civilian rule by July 2024, to which the new junta has agreed.
Beyond the transition, the need to build a strong state and political institutions cannot be overemphasised. The challenges of corruption and economic marginalisation should be tackled in earnest. The need for stronger institutions is not peculiar to Burkina Faso: it is familiar to all the region, and particularly to those countries that have recently come under military rule, notably Guinea and Mali.
What was civil society’s reaction to the recent military coup?
In line with the disunity that characterises civil society in Burkina Faso, the civil society response to the coup has been mixed. But a notable section of civil society seemed to welcome the most recent coup because they saw the Damiba-led junta not only as authoritarian but also as aligned with politicians from the regime of President Blaise Compaoré, in power from 1987 to 2014. They saw the real possibility that those politicians could regain power and shut all doors on victims of the Compaoré regime ever seeing justice.
As a result, the view of the recent coup as a significant setback for the democratic transition agenda is not unanimously held among civil society. Additionally, for a major segment of civil society security appears to be a more urgent and priority concern than democracy, so the element that prevailed was the seeming incapacity of the Damiba-led junta to address the security situation.
The effort of the traditional and religious groups that negotiated a seven-point agreement between the Damiba and Traoré factions of the military, ending violence and forestalling further bloodshed, however, deserves commendation. That effort seems to have established a baseline of engagement between the Traoré-led junta and civil society. Such constructive engagement with the new government seems to have continued, with the notable participation of civil society in the 14 October 2022 National Conference that approved a new Transitional Charter for Burkina Faso and officially appointed Traoré as transitional president.
What is the situation of human right CSOs?
Burkinabe CSOs in the human and civil rights space have grown increasingly concerned about the victimisation of politicians and members of the public perceived to be pro-France as well as by the marked upsurge of pro-Russian groups demanding that France and all its interests be kicked out of the country.
On top of their concern about the raging jihadist insurgency, human and civil rights CSOs are also concerned about the stigmatisation and victimisation of citizens of Fulani ethnicity. This victimisation stems from the fact that many terrorist cells recruit Burkinabe people of Fulani extraction. There have been reports of arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings of Fulani people due to their alleged complicity in terrorist violence. Besides these two, no other notable cases of human rights abuses threatening civilians have been identified besides the ones already mentioned. Hence, even though it is still early in the Traoré-led government, it may be safe to rule out any consistent pattern of heightened human rights abuses under its watch.
How has the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) responded to the military coup?
In accordance with the letter of its 2001 Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance, the initial response of ECOWAS was to condemn the coup strongly and unequivocally, calling it an unfortunate and retrogressive development, especially in light of the progress made with the Damiba-led junta in preparing the ground for elections and democracy. ECOWAS also called for the junta to guarantee human rights and ensure stability.
Despite the ongoing sanctions against the country, following his meeting with Traoré, Mahamadou Issoufou, the former president of Niger and mediator sent to Burkina Faso by ECOWAS, said he was satisfied and that ECOWAS would remain by the side of the people of Burkina Faso. In what is the ECOWAS way to respond to military governments, ECOWAS will work closely with the junta to restore democratic order. The timeline stands and the deadline remains July 2024.
How have other international institutions reacted, and what should they do to support civil society in Burkina Faso?
Other international institutions have reacted similarly to ECOWAS. The African Union condemned the coup and said it was unfortunate in light of the progress already made towards the restoration of democracy. The coup was similarly condemned by the United Nations and the European Parliament.
If the international community wants to assist CSOs in Burkina Faso, what it first and foremost needs to do is support the junta’s efforts to stamp out the jihadist insurgency that continues to hold the country hostage. It should also assist the authorities in tackling not only the current refugee crisis but also the challenge of climate change, which is a contributing factor not just to the refugee crisis but also to the spread of terrorist violence.
The international community must also continue to mount pressure on the junta to deliver on its promise to adhere to the agreements the former junta reached with ECOWAS, to put an end to the victimisation of people on account of their political affiliations and ethnicity, and to set free anyone who has been imprisoned for political reasons.
Civic space inBurkina Faso is rated ‘obstructed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch withWADEMOS through itswebsite or its Facebook page, and follow @WADEMOSnetwork on Twitter.
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CAMBODIA: ‘This is a textbook case of organised crime with links to the state’
CIVICUS speaks with Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, a Spanish national and co-founder of Mother Nature Cambodia (MNC), a civil society organisation (CSO) that advocates and campaigns locally and internationally for the preservation, promotion and protection of Cambodia’s natural environment. Due to their work, the authorities have systematically intimidated and criminalised MNC activists. Gonzalez-Davidson has been convicted in absentia for his activism and currentlyfaces further charges.
What were the origins of MNC?
We founded MNC in 2013, and the most important factor leading to its founding was that the environment in Cambodia, and especially the forest, was being decimated so fast. Because I could speak Khmer, I was a translator and was reading about it in the news and eventually also seeing it happen.
This senseless destruction was being disguised as development, but in reality it was organised crime sponsored by the state, including the army, the police, politicians at all levels and local authorities. It was painful to see. Local Indigenous people were being cheated and this got me fired up.
I also came to the realisation that civil society, and especially international organisations that were allegedly protecting the environment, were not doing anything that was effective enough. Local groups were not able to do much, and some international groups were doing greenwashing: misleading the public with initiatives that were presented as environmentally friendly or sustainable, but were not addressing the real causes of the problems.
A small group of friends and I started a campaign to stop a senseless hydroelectric dam project, which we knew was never about electricity but about exploiting natural resources and allowing logging and poaching. I was deported a year and a half after we started MNC. Over time, we have had to evolve to try and expose environmental crimes by the state on a large scale.
What have been the main activities and tactics of MNC?
They have changed over time. Back in 2013 to 2015, we could still do community empowerment and hold peaceful protests. We could bring people from cities to remote areas. In 2015, the harassing and jailing of activists started. We realised peaceful protests could not happen anymore because protesters would be criminalised. We continued to do community empowerment until 2017, but then had to stop that too.
One of our biggest tactics is going to a location, recording short videos and presenting them to the public so that Cambodians can understand, click, share and comment. We have received millions of views. We also did shows on Facebook live and lobbied opposition parties in parliament. From 2019 onwards, activists could no longer appear in the videos and we had to blur their faces and distort their voices. Now we can’t even do that because it is too risky.
What is the state of civic space in Cambodia?
The regime of Prime Minister Hun Sen has destroyed democratic institutions, including active and independent civil society, independent media and opposition parties. It has dismantled all these as it realised people were ready and hungry for democracy.
There is a lot for the regime to lose if the status quo changes, mainly because of money. The regime is mostly organised crime. They don’t want pesky independent journalists, activists organising protests or CSOs doing community empowerment. They don’t want to lose power and be held accountable. This is why now there is very little space compared to five years ago, and the situation is still going downhill.
Most civil society groups have retreated and are not pushing the boundaries. They are afraid of their organisation being shut down, funding being cut, or their activists and staff being thrown in jail. Indeed, working in Cambodia is difficult but it’s not acceptable to have a very small number of CSOs and activists speaking up.
What gives me hope is that conversations and engagement among citizens about democracy are still happening, and that repression cannot go on forever.
Why has MNC been criminalised, and what impact has this had and what is impact of the court cases?
Cambodia doesn’t really have any other group like us. We are a civil society group, but we are made up of activists rather than professional staff. Other activists used to do forest patrols in the Prey Lang forest, but the government forced them to stop. There are also Indigenous communities and environmental activists trying to do some work, but what happened to MNC is also a message to them.
In 2015, three MNC activists were charged and subsequently convicted for their activities in a direct-action campaign against companies mining sand in Koh Kong province. In September 2017, two MNC activists were arrested for filming vessels we suspected were illegally exporting dredged sand on behalf of a firm linked to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. In January 2018, the two activists were fined and sentenced to a year in jail.
In September 2020, three activists affiliated with MNC were arbitrarily detained while planning a peaceful protest as part of a campaign against the planned privatisation and reclamation of Boeung Tamok lake in the capital, Phnom Penh. They were sentenced to 18 months in prison for ‘incitement’.
Most recently, in June 2021, four environmental activists affiliated with MNC were charged for investigating river pollution in the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh. They have been charged with ‘plotting’ and ‘insulting the King’. There are currently six MNC activists in detention.
We have been charged with threatening to cause destruction, incitement, violating peoples’ privacy – just for filming at sea – and the latest additions to the list are ‘plotting’ to violently overthrow institutions – just for recording sewage going into the Mekong river – and insulting the King. The government is no longer even pretending that this is about law enforcement and is now just picking crimes to charge us with.
As we become more effective in what we do, the state’s rhetoric against us has become more aggressive. The authorities have vilified us, calling us traitors and terrorists. Repression starts from the very bottom, with the local police, the mayor, the military police and their civilian friends who are in the business of poaching, logging and so on. They follow you, threaten you and even try to bribe you. They also control the media narrative and have trolls on social media. Even if all you do is a media interview, they will threaten you online.
This has created a climate of fear among activists. As in any other dictatorship, Cambodia has always been ruled by fear. This percolates down to young people, who make up the vast majority of our activists. Their families and friends get really worried too. When people feel there is less of a risk in getting involved, the state hits activists and civil society again with more arbitrary and trumped-up charges, as a way to instil further fear in people’s minds.
The impact of the court cases against MNC has been strong. At first we were able to put up with them by diversifying our tactics and putting new strategies in place, but over the last two years and with six people in jail, it’s become more difficult. But this won’t stop our activism. It will not defeat us.
Have you faced threats from private companies?
The line between the private sector and the state is blurred in Cambodia, and in certain cases is just not even there. You don’t have a minister or the army saying, ‘this is my hydroelectric dam’ or ‘we are doing sand mining’, but everyone knows the links are there.
Those representing the state will provide the apparatus and resources to threaten activists and local communities, and businesspeople – who sometimes are their own family members – will give them a percentage of the earnings. For example, sand from mining exported to Singapore – a business worth a few hundred million dollars – was controlled by a few powerful families, including that of the leader of the dictatorship, Hun Sen. This is a textbook case of organised crime with links to the state. And when a journalist, civil society group or local community tries to expose them, they use the weapons of the state to silence, jail, or bribe them.
Why did MNC decide to formally disband?
In 2015 the government passed a repressive NGO law with lots of traps that made it difficult for us to be in compliance. I was also no longer in the country, as I was not allowed to return even though I had been legally charged and convicted there. In 2013, when we registered, there were three of us, plus two nominal members who were Buddhist monks. The other two founders were taken to the Ministry of Interior and told to disband or otherwise go to jail, so they decided to disband.
We also thought it would be better not to be bound by the NGO law. Cambodian people have the right to protect their national resources. According to the Cambodian Constitution and international treaties the state has signed, we are not breaking the law. But we know this will not stop them from jailing us.
What can international community do to support MNC and civil society in Cambodia?
Some things are being done. Whenever there is an arbitrary arrest of activists, there are embassies in the capital, United Nations institutions and some Cambodian CSOs who speak up.
That’s good, but sadly it’s not enough. If you are doing business with Cambodia, such as importing billions of dollars per year worth of garments, you have to do more than just issue statements. You should make a clear connection between the health of democracy in Cambodia and the health of your business relationships. For example, the UK is working on a trade deal with Cambodia, and it must attach to it conditions such as ensuring a free media and halting the arbitrary jailing of activists.
The problem is that some diplomats don’t understand what is going on or don’t care about the human rights situation. Southeast Asian countries should also help each other and speak up on the situation in Cambodia. Not just civil society but members of parliament should call out, send letters to their ambassador and so forth.
Civic space inCambodiais rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with Mother Nature Cambodia through itswebsite or itsFacebook page, and follow@CambodiaMother on Twitter. -
CHILE: ‘The million-dollar question is how society will react if a new constitution does not come out of this’
CIVICUS speaks about Chile’s impending constitutional referendum with Julieta Suárez Cao, PhD in Political Science and Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at the Catholic University of Chile. Julieta played a leading role in the design and promotion of an innovative electoral system that ensured a gender-parity outcome in the 2021 election for Chile’s Constitutional Convention, for which she received the American Political Science Association’s 2022 Public Engagement with Research Award.
What do you think have been the most novel elements of the Chilean constitutional process?
A novel element has been the formation of the Constitutional Convention itself. While in other parts of the world there had already been experiences such as reserving seats for Indigenous peoples and allowing non-party candidates, in Chile these two elements were combined with a third, gender parity. This had been implemented in Mexico City but had never been done at the national level.
Another novel element has to do with the fact that it this a change of constitution, not a simple reform. It is a profound change starting from scratch, without any kind of agreement having set parameters that determine what can and cannot be changed. The only predetermined things were three key procedures: the two-thirds rule for voting on the norms that would go in the constitution, the so-called entry plebiscite to enable the convening of a constitutional convention and the so-called exit plebiscite, meant to have the new constitution approved.
It is also worth noting that this is a constitutional change taking place in a democratic context, and not in a moment of transition. Although a response to the social and political crisis that Chile is going through, it has not been a hasty reaction to a fleeting situation; the discussion about constitutional reform started long before the 2019 social outburst. Former president Michelle Bachelet had already tried to carry it forward during her last term in office, from 2014 to 2018, but did not succeed. The right wing, which ruled the country under Sebastián Piñera over the following period, warned that it would shelve any constitutional reform initiative, and so it did – until the social outburst forced it to re-evaluate this position, given the need to channel social demands institutionally, by means of a constitution-making process.
What are the divides in the run-up to the 5 September plebiscite on the new constitution?
The way dividing lines have been drawn in the face of the constitutional plebiscite is very interesting. The Constitutional Convention has been extremely transparent, perhaps too transparent, because according to some literature, politics sometimes needs a certain opacity. This, on the other hand, became a sort of constitutional reality TV, a show that was broadcast every day, 24 hours a day. Clearly, the news that made it into the media tended to be about inconsequential and even ridiculous issues, so it did not represent what was really going on there. For example, one convention member proposed to dismantle all state institutions; of course, this never even made it out of the commission, but still made headlines for a long time. Such things created an adverse climate around the Convention, which I think affected the campaign.
Seen in perspective, it was a very dynamic process that in just one year managed to produce a full document for a new constitution. The process was a good one, even if it made public opinion focus on some absurd debates that were magnified by the media.
This climate of opinion ended up shaping two camps. On the one hand, the rejection camp, which includes not only the right wing, but also many centre-left personalities, including many current senators. These are people who have joined the rejection camp for several reasons, and not only because they do not agree with many of the proposed reforms.
In short, the rejection coalition ranges from the far right – which not only exists in Chile, but also reached the second round of the presidential election less than a year ago – to some individuals in the political centre. But it was the latter who became the visible face of the campaign against the constitution.
This has been the result of a good communications strategy that consisted in delegating spokespeople roles to moderate figures while keeping extremists out of sight. They have held almost no marches or public events, because in the run-up to the initial plebiscite such demonstrations included weapons, Nazi flags, swastikas and other images that provoke strong rejection.
For its part, the coalition in favour of the new constitution includes numerous former convention members, most of whom have campaigned in favour of it, deputies, senators and many popular artists. The government is not allowed to participate in the campaign or speak directly in favour of one or other option. For this reason, it only intervened by providing information: in particular, it collaborated with the printing of the new constitution, which is now one of the best-selling books in Chile.
Is Chilean society similarly divided?
Public opinion polls show that Chilean society is not polarised, unlike the elites.
What we see in Chile is asymmetric polarisation, a phenomenon that also occurs in countries such as Brazil and the USA. What creates asymmetrical polarisation is the presence of right-wing extremism. The extreme left is very small: it collects very few votes and has no media presence and no national visibility. The far right, however, has almost been normalised.
What is happening now is that it a referendum is by its very nature polarising, simply because it only provides two opposing options. If a plebiscite takes place in a context where the elites are polarised, it deepens division. For the time being, however, I think its effects have not reached deep into Chilean society.
A few months ago opinion polls appeared to show a majority in favour of approval, but now the opposite seems to be the case. Has the consensus for reform shifted?
I wouldn’t say that reformist consensus has been eroded. Practically nobody defends Pinochet’s Constitution: almost everybody who promotes rejection does so with the argument that rejection must be followed by reform. In other words, almost nobody advocates for keeping the current constitution, although if rejection wins, that is precisely what will happen, at least in the short term. Given the lack of agreement within the rejectionist coalition, its victory would open up a period of enormous uncertainty.
While reformist consensus has not been eroded, a distorted climate of opinion has been created by disinformation campaigns, presenting implausible interpretations of debates and fake news to sow doubts about the contents of the constitutional text. For example, the claim that the new constitution does not protect private property or that Indigenous people would have ‘privileges’ was widely circulated. All of this has interfered with public debate and cast doubt over the viability of the proposal.
What do think are the most positive and the most negative aspects of the new constitution?
Personally, I like the new constitution very much. It establishes a political system with less presidential powers and a better balance between the executive and legislative branches. The current constitution is an authoritarian text that is very biased in favour of the ‘strong man’.
I also like the definition of Chile as a regional state, a sort of intermediate form between the unitary and federal state. Chile is one of the most centralised countries in Latin America and the most centralised among democratic Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries.
The whole agenda of rights and the social state embraced by the new constitution also seems very positive to me. The incorporation of gender parity, a gendered perspective and multiculturalism are great advances. It was high time for plurinationality and Indigenous peoples to be recognised.
The doubts I have concern some issues that are outside my area of expertise, related to some aspects of plurinationality, such as the implementation of differentiated justice systems and Indigenous autonomies. This is also one of the issues that has highest levels of rejection among public opinion, for reasons that include racism, classism and a complex context in the south of Chile, where there is an ongoing conflict between the state and some Indigenous Mapuche communities.
But the truth is, most of these issues are only stated in the constitution and will be subject to ordinary legislation that must come from the current Congress, which has no reserved seats for Indigenous peoples. Therefore, in my opinion, positions on these issues will be tempered and there won’t be any radical changes.
Among the public, it is social rights that have the most support. Few people defend the neoliberal or subsidiary state that Chile currently has, although certain sectors of elites are concerned about the cost of changes: they wonder where the money will come from to finance all these rights, as if this were a good argument for deciding whether or not to recognise a right!
What will happen if the new constitution is approved, and what will happen if it is rejected?
If the constitution is approved the process will continue, as many provisions in the new constitution require additional ordinary legislation. In that case, a process of intense legislative activity will begin to give form to the new constitution’s mandates.
If rejection wins, much will depend on how big its win is. If it wins by a large margin, it will be more difficult for the constitution-making process to continue. If the rejectionist option wins, the government will immediately submit a bill to call for a new election to select convention members. But the approval of such a bill requires over 57 per cent of the votes in both chambers, a majority the government does not have, so it will need the right wing’s votes. The right’s willingness to sit down and negotiate will depend on its margin of victory.
If it wins narrowly, it will try to design a more inoffensive constitution-making process, with a smaller convention, a shorter mandate, no gender parity and no Indigenous peoples or very few reserved seats. If it wins by a landslide, there will be no constitutional convention, but a reform passed through Congress or designed by a commission of experts. We would be back to square one and absolutely everything would have to be renegotiated.
The million-dollar question is how society will react if a new constitution does not come out of this and the process does not continue or continues in a deficient way. I do not dare to venture an answer to this question.
Civic space in Chile is rated ‘obstructed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Follow@jujuchi on Twitter.
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CHILE: ‘There is social consensus that the arbitrary exclusion of diverse families is unacceptable’
CIVICUS speaks with Marco Becerra, director of ACCIONGAY, about the process leading to the recent passage of Chile’s Equal Marriage Law. ACCIONGAY is a civil society organisation founded in 1987 in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which was then ignored or minimised as a problem that only affected ‘risk groups’. Over time it expanded its scope of action to advocate for the rights of LGBTQI+ people, based on the principle that all people have the right to self-determination in relation to their lives, bodies, health, relationships and sexuality.
What was the process leading to the legalisation of equal marriage in Chile, and what role did ACCIONGAY play in it?
It was a long process, lasting about 30 years. The movement for sexual and gender diversity in Chile began to emerge in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This process had different stages. At first, work focused on the consolidation and visibility of the movement in a context of post-dictatorship political transition that was very unfavourable to the demands for equality of LGBTQI+ people. In the second stage, work focused on political advocacy to achieve effective commitment by political groups to tackle the challenges related to the inclusion of LGBTQI+ people.
By the late 1990s, some important changes began to take place, such as the repeal of a law that criminalised sexual relations between adult men. However, other demands – such as that for equal marriage – only came into the public conversation around 2005, when equal marriage was legalised in Spain. Around that time ACCIONGAY received a visit from Spanish activist Pedro Zerolo, who helped us understand the importance of broadening the debate on civil unions and the recognition of LGBTQI+ people’s rights.
In a broader sense, I would venture to say that demands for equality before the law were the result of a social and cultural change that Latin America had been experiencing for several years. The legalisation of equal marriage in Argentina and Uruguay, as well as its progress throughout Europe, prompted Chilean LGBTQI+ movements and sexual diversity organisations to mobilise around equality issues.
It is important to highlight the contributions of numerous organisations and activists who worked consistently over the years to build alliances with progressive political groups, which became committed to these struggles. The idea of civil unions became a reality during the first government of President Michelle Bachelet, in 2015, and later on, as favourable public opinion grew and the perception of these inequalities as an injustice increased, the demand for equal rights for same-sex families gained momentum.
The Equal Marriage Bill was sent to Congress by Bachelet’s second government in 2017 and finally passed in December 2021. It will come into force in March and will represent a very significant change for the lives of hundreds of families with same-sex parents who did not have any legal recognition and therefore experienced complete defencelessness before the state.
The keys to achieving this breakthrough were movement coordination, advocacy with political decision-makers and campaigning to raise awareness and sensitise public opinion.
How did this process interact with the 2019 wave of protests and the process to develop a new constitution that followed?
Chile is going through a complex, epoch-changing process that came about as a result of the 2019 social outburst. But the demands for equality and recognition of the rights of LGBTQI+ people largely predate this. This movement was already very strong before the social outburst, including a network of organisations that was very active and mobilised since the 1990s. However, the context of social mobilisation helped create an environment conducive to the consolidation of LGBTQI+ movement as a presence recognisable on the streets in citizen protests demanding more equality.
The profound social change that began to take place in Chile picked up on the historical struggles of LGBTQI+ organisations and movements that rose up in the context of the 2019 social outburst. To a large extent this was reflected in the number of LGBTQI+ people who recently got elected, especially for the Convention in charge of drafting the new constitution, as well as in the ministerial appointments of LGBTQI+ people made by the next president, Gabriel Boric.
Why did approval take so long, when polls showed very high levels of public support?
Although Chile has a very active civil society, its political system, even following recent changes, still includes extremely conservative enclaves. This was reflected in the difficulty that Congress had in moving this law forward, not least because there was no strong commitment from successive presidents. Nevertheless, Bachelet’s second government did act on the idea of legalising equal marriage. It was during her government that the Civil Union Law was passed and the Gender Identity Bill was sent to Congress, which was then passed during President Rafael Piñera’s term.
From the point of view of people’s perceptions, changes occurred because a social consensus was reached that the arbitrary exclusion of diverse families is unacceptable. Support for equal marriage is striking: almost 70 per cent of Chileans agree, and a similar number support adoption by same-sex couples.
Campaigns for equal marriage were mainly developed by LGBTQI+ organisations with the support of other social movements, human rights organisations and feminists, to name a few. At the same time, alliances, solidarity and trust were built not only with other social organisations but also with progressive sectors within political parties. Support for the Equal Marriage Law was quite cross-cutting, including a segment of the liberal centre-right that contributed their votes to make it possible. Only ultra-conservative sectors excluded themselves.
Some leaders of Evangelical Pentecostal churches, which have achieved some social influence in Chile, mobilised against the Equal Marriage Law, but were defeated in the parliamentary debate. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, remained silent, probably because in recent years it has lost social and political relevance as a consequence of the scandals of paedophilia and sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy against children and adolescents.
What will be the immediate effects of the new law, and what remains to be done?
This law will have immediate consequences as it will guarantee the enjoyment of all rights and the positive effects of marriage regardless of people’s sex or sexual orientation. As the law includes issues of adoption and parentage, it will solve a number of problems experienced by families of same-sex partners with children. For instance, non-biological parents had no legal rights to the children they were raising as theirs; now they will get legal recognition.
Chile has experienced a series of legal advances: the Anti-Discrimination Law in 2012, the Civil Union Law in 2015, the Gender Identity Law in 2018 and the Equal Marriage Law starting in 2022. However, high levels of discrimination persist in work and education. Violence against LGBTQI+ communities is rampant.
From March onwards, we will face the enormous challenge of reviewing our work agenda, especially since after 11 March we will have a progressive government that has incorporated equality and recognition of LGBTQI+ communities in its policy programme.
We are sure that this will be a very different government from its predecessors, and we are very hopeful that it will be possible to start closing the gap of real inclusion of LGBTQI+ people in all areas of social life, from public administration institutions to the educational sphere.
Civic space in Chile is rated ‘obstructed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with ACCIONGAY through itswebsite orFacebook page, and follow@acciongay on Twitter. -
Civil society tackling global challenges with ‘resolute resistance,’ says new report
As 2017 gave way to 2018, many in civil society found renewed purpose in striving to make democracy real, and demanding human dignity and justice.
Even as attacks on civil society have become more brazen, the story of the past year was one of resolute resistance against the rising tide of restrictions on fundamental freedoms and democratic values, according to CIVICUS’ 2018 State of Civil Society Report, released 6 March 2018. Sobering data from the CIVICUS Monitor reveals serious systemic problems with civic space in 109 out of 195 countries covered. However, there are also numerous examples of civil society successfully advocating for progressive new laws on women’s rights, access to information and protection of human rights defenders.
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CIVIL SOCIETY: ‘Music can be an entry point because it’s the last thing someone could take away from you’
CIVICUS speaks with Darcy Ataman,founder and CEO of Make Music Matter, a civil society organisation based in Canada that uses the creative process as a therapeutic tool to help empower excluded groups and people.
Music isn’t necessarily the first thing people associate with civil society work. How do you use music as part of your work?
We use music for two main purposes. One is the healing of trauma, and particularly of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. The second is to create opportunities or vectors for advocacy. We do all this through our Healing in Harmony music therapy programme.
We work with groups, usually of 10 to 25 people. Working as a group brings safety, especially when you’re in the creative process of singing and writing. But we don’t work with groups so large that participation gets diluted and ceases to be effective.
We always recruit participants through local partnerships. All operational staff are local and Indigenous, wherever we work. And programmes are set up to fit into a larger care model. For example, our flagship site is at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Patients come to us from the hospital: women who come in for surgery get their physical healing and then get referred to us for mental, psychological and spiritual healing before going back to their villages.
In eastern DRC there are lots of survivors of sexual violence, due to way sexual violence has been used as a weapon of war there. But trauma can come in a multitude of ways and our results are always the same.
What we do is build little recording studios wherever we operate and insert our programme into a larger holistic care model. People come in twice a week. They work for about an hour with a local music producer in tandem with a local therapist.
It’s a four-month cycle: for the first three months they go through the creative process of writing and recording an album, just like any other artist. While that is happening, we interject cognitive behavioural therapy in a way that’s not particularly noticeable.
So people don’t come in thinking they are coming for a therapy appointment, which has a lot of stigma; they come in to do art in a fun setting.
That is why our attrition rates are almost nil. We’ve had at least 11,000 people go through the programme globally and you could count with one hand the amount of people who didn’t finish – and that was typically because they got a good economic opportunity.
We analyse the music that comes out of this process. A lot of experiences people have gone through are so overwhelming that talking about them directly would retraumatise and retrigger the brain. But through lyric writing and metaphor and music, it gets out of people’s heads in a way that doesn’t cause retraumatisation. And once it’s out of their head and articulated in one form or another, we can set a treatment pathway.
How did you get started?
Our origins were organic. While I have a psychology degree, professionally I started as a music producer. In 2009 I was in Rwanda for five weeks filming a documentary and recording an album. We had one day off and decided to give local kids a fun day of recording, so we took some equipment to this little school in a village three hours away in the hillsides. When we got there, we learned the entire village had been waiting for us for hours. The schoolroom was packed. There were kids literally crawling through the windows trying to get in. These were kids 12 to 15 or 16 years old, dressed in homemade hip-hop outfits. They knew the lyrics of all the latest rap songs, even though they didn’t have electricity at home.
They handed us the lyrics of the songs they had written for us to record, and it was all very heavy subject matter: about HIV/AIDS and what it does to communities, about they not wanting to sell their bodies to live another day, about their desire to go to school. There was not one frivolous song in there. We had given them no direction. We didn’t tell them what to write. This was simply what was on their minds, and we realised that for them music was an acceptable way to talk about taboo issues they couldn’t normally talk about.
I had the realisation that something special was happening and thought this was what I, as a professional producer, could do to help. And it was something that nobody else was doing.
How effective is the programme, and what do you think explains this?
We monitor and evaluate our programme very closely. We quantify everything. We analyse our impact on variables from school enrolment and permanence to adherence to drug recovery programmes. A year or two ago our first peer-reviewed study was published. It was terrifying, because we couldn’t ethically keep going if we found we were not achieving results. But the results showed that this was very much like a magic pill: it really worked better than anything else.
I think effectiveness lies in the programme’s insertion into a larger model. We want to be the last missing psychosocial piece. We don’t want to set people up for failure. For instance, we have another site in rural DRC that started in 2016 and even though we had the funding – we even constructed our own buildings for the studio – we paused and waited until our partners’ microfinancing programme was operational because we didn’t want to heal people psychologically, pump them up and then have them fail due to lack of opportunity to be financially independent. So we have these checklists we do before we start operating.
Our outcome is the healing, and our output is the music. We lead with music: it’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s our passion. But behind the scenes is a very serious therapeutic intervention. We use music almost as a trick that attracts people and retains them. And in the meantime, we do other things, so at the end of each four-month cycle there’s an album done by this group.
The music they help create with the local producer comes back to us for mixing and mastering. We have a team of about 100 engineers from all over the world who do this as volunteers. And the music gets sent back to the community and disseminated in whatever ways the local community consumes music, be it AM radio, MP3 players or CDs. We also release the music globally on digital platforms.
People own the rights to all their music so they can get royalties. And it helps in terms of advocacy because this is how they tell their stories directly to the world. This gives power back to people on the ground and also helps rebuild their sense of self-worth. The final piece of that four-month cycle is a community concert where they perform the songs they have written.
For participants, it is a sort of symbolic graduation, and it also brings communities back together. Survivors of sexual violence who’ve been stigmatised or kicked out of their homes or villages now go on stage in front of a lot of people – we easily get over 1,000 people per show. They sing a song they wrote about their story. Shame is gone, agency is back. Owning your story changes the way the community sees you. I’ve seen husbands who kicked their wives out ask them back and wives say no and laugh at them. I’ve seen mothers of children born of rape start to take care of them for their first time, breaking the cycle.
Do you work exclusively in places where there’s collective trauma from war? Is your focus on violence against women, or do you also work with other target groups?
Our data demonstrates that our results are equal across the board, no matter what culture or context or reasons for trauma. We have six sites in the DRC, but we also work in Guinea, Peru, Rwanda, South Africa, Turkey and Uganda, and we’re just starting to work in Canada.
The idea started in Rwanda, where we worked with the trauma caused by HIV/AIDS, orphaned children and obviously the genocide. Our work took off in the DRC, where participants were primarily survivors of sexual violence, but also with former child soldiers and former sex slaves. In Peru we work with Venezuelan refugees, mostly young kids. In Turkey we work with Syrian refugees who not only have mental trauma from the war but also have physical injuries and disabilities on top of the stigma of being refugees. And in Canada we will be working with Indigenous communities; this work involves a lot of generational trauma that gets passed down.
The most decisive criterion is whether the community wants us there. We do not parachute in or force ourselves in. We start with community sensitisation aimed at the community taking ownership. We wait for them to ask us to come in, otherwise it just doesn’t work. There needs to be community ownership, because if it is just about the funding or the opportunities you are bringing to an impoverished community, on the first bad day you are going to lose them.
One of our sites in rural DRC is literally triangulated by three rebel groups. Sadly, this village gets attacked regularly. But we’ve been there since 2016 and haven’t lost a single cable. No one has ever touched the studio. In fact, quite miraculously we haven’t lost anything from any of our sites. Community partnerships really work.
Do you have any advice to give to other civil society groups about the value of incorporating art into their work?
Music plays a bigger role than you can imagine, simply because it’s the last thing someone could take away from you. If you’re in an active conflict zone, or you live in extreme poverty, or your community has shunned you, or you are in the hospital after being raped, you may have nothing, but you still have your ability to express yourself through art and music. It doesn’t require any equipment and it doesn’t cost anything: you only need to write some lyrics and a melody in your head to express what you feel.
I’ve spent a lot of time in some awful places, and it may sound silly but it’s true: music is the last thing people hold on to get up in the morning. It’s the one thing people hold on to no matter what. That makes it an entry point to so much work that civil society can do.
When I first started with this idea, I was ignored, I was laughed at, I was told point-blank that this was never going to work. But third-party, peer-reviewed research has proved that this works for healing trauma. It works better than literally anything else on offer. It is always hard when you come up with an original idea, but you should persevere.
Get in touch with Make Music Matter through itswebsite orFacebook page, and follow@mmm_org on Twitter.
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COLOMBIA: ‘Citizens are outraged and tired of the policies that have plunged them into poverty’
CIVICUS speaks with Alexandra González Zapata, coordinator for democracy and social protest at the Solidarity Committee with Political Prisoners Foundation, and a member of the Campaign to Defend Freedom. The Solidarity Committee Foundation is a Colombian civil society organisation that works to defend the rights to life, freedom, physical and moral integrity, decent, fair and impartial treatment and other rights of people deprived of liberty, prosecuted for political crimes and criminalised for participating in social protest. The Solidarity Committee Foundation is a member of the Campaign to Defend Freedom, which focuses on denouncing arbitrary detentions, judicial persecution and the criminalisation of social protest in Colombia. A network made up of social, student, cultural, community and human rights organisations, Defend Freedom works in a coordinated manner to challenge the illegal use of force as a mechanism of persecution against those who, individually or collectively, demand and promote human rights through social mobilisation in Colombia.
What triggered the 2019 protests in Colombia, and why did they escalate?
Outrage has been building up little by little in Colombia. Even as it was inaugurated in August 2018, President Iván Duque's government did not enjoy wide margins of legitimacy and support. The electoral results showed that a broad segment of the citizenry rejected traditional power and all that it represented: policies in favour of war, privatisation and indebtedness. This discontent increased as the government announced a series of policy measures, including among those who had voted for Duque.
The government's proposals were aimed at eliminating the state pension fund Colpensiones, raising the retirement age and lowering the salary for young people to 75 per cent of the minimum wage, among other measures. A widespread atmosphere of indignation emerged as a result, yielding a unified call for mobilisation on 21 November 2019.
What few expected by then was that the mobilisation would continue over the days that followed 21 November. On that day some acts of vandalism were committed, which the national government tried to use as an excuse to criminalise social protest and adopt measures to restrict freedoms, including a curfew. In response to this, citizens went out to demonstrate freely. We really do not know which was the first neighbourhood or the first block to start banging pots and pans on 22 November, but what we do know is that this dynamic expanded throughout the capital city, Bogotá, as well as other cities around Colombia, shifting the narrative that had prevailed on the media, which was all about vandalism, towards a public discourse that highlighted citizen outrage and social demands.
How have these mobilisations managed to be sustained over time? How are they different from others in Colombia in the past?
From 2013 onwards, social mobilisation in Colombia has been on the rise. In 2013 there was an agricultural strike that lasted for more than 20 days and managed to keep several major national roads closed. Then came the agricultural strikes of 2015 and 2016, and the so-called ‘mingas for life’, marches and protests of tens of thousands of Indigenous peoples, and the student strikes of 2018 and 2019.
In other words, we’ve seen numerous massive and sustained mobilisations over the past few years. What is different about the ongoing national protests in comparison to past mobilisations is that they have been characterised by a majority participation of urban citizens and mainly middle-class people. This caused them to be viewed not as the actions of a particular group of people – Indigenous peoples, peasants, or students – but instead as the work of outraged citizens who are tired of the policies that have increasingly plunged them into poverty, even though the country keeps flaunting positive economic growth indicators. Hence its massive and sustained character.
What do the protesters demand, and what response do they expect from the government?
The National Strike Committee has submitted a list of petitions around 13 major issues: guarantees for the exercise of the right to social protest; social rights; economic rights; anti-corruption; peace; human rights; the rights of Mother Earth; political rights and guarantees; agricultural and fishery issues; compliance with agreements between government and social organisations; withdrawal of legislation; the repeal of specific laws; and reform of the law-making process.
On the first item, guarantees for the right to social protest, protesters urge the government to dismantle the Mobile Anti-Riot Squadron (ESMAD) and refrain from establishing any other similar force. They demand that those responsible for the death of Dylan Cruz, an 18-year-old who was shot dead in the head while running unarmed to escape ESMAD in the early days of the protest in Bogotá, be brought to justice and held accountable.
On the second item, social rights, protesters demand an end to labour subcontracting, the establishment of an interest rate for mortgage loans that is fair and correlated to people’s real incomes and the repeal of the tax that is currently used to finance the electricity company Electricaribe.
So far the government has shown no willingness to enter into any real dialogue and negotiation; instead, it insists on beginning ‘exploratory dialogues.’ Protesters expect the government to convene a negotiating table as soon as possible to address the substantial issues that have been raised.
How did the government react to the protests? What human rights violations were committed by the security forces?
On 15 November 2019, six days before the first protest was scheduled to take place, the national government made the decision to involve the army in control and security operations in Bogotá. Nine Brigade XIII contingents were deployed and more than 350 soldiers took part in monitoring, patrolling and security controls in Bogotá. This militarisation still persists in the city. The presence of a ‘riot squad’ of the national army, according to information released by the authorities, is particularly concerning. It should be noted that, except in exceptional circumstances, military forces should not intervene in operations to control, contain or even guarantee the celebration of social mobilisations.
In addition, as confirmed by the authorities, starting at 6am on 19 November, 37 raids were carried out in the residences and workplaces of media professionals throughout Colombia. To date, 21 of those raids have been declared illegal after undergoing judicial scrutiny, because they did not comply with legally established requirements, including being based on reasonable suspicion. According to information provided by the authorities, the raids involved people who were thought to be prone to committing acts of vandalism during the protest. However, it was mainly people linked to artistic groups, alternative media and social movements. Among the items seized were posters, brushes and paintings.
Also on 19 November, the Ministry of the Interior issued Decree 2087/2019, establishing new measures for the maintenance of public order. Article 3 made “a very special call to district and municipal mayors, so that in their duty to preserve public order in their respective territories, they comply [with the provisions of the Law] in matters of public order.” This call prompted the authorities of at least eight cities – Bogotá, Buenaventura, Cali, Candelaria, Chía, Facatativá, Jamundí and Popayán – to declare curfews. These affected the exercise of the rights to free movement and social protest for all citizens, even though acts affecting public order had been extremely localised.
Throughout the protests, the authorities made an improper and disproportionate use of force. Although Resolution 1190/2018 states that “the use of force must be considered the last resort of intervention by the National Police,” in most cases ESMAD has intervened without any apparent reason to do so. On 22 November it intervened in Plaza de Bolívar, where more than 5,000 people had assembled, although the demonstration was completely peaceful. On 23 November, Dylan Cruz was killed as a result of an unjustified intervention by ESMAD during a peaceful mobilisation. Although the weapon uses was among those authorised, the ammunition fired by ESMAD caused the death of this young man because of improper use, since according to international standards this type of weapon can only be fired at a distance greater than 60 metres, and only against lower extremities; otherwise, it is deemed to entail lethal risk. Strikingly, on a video recorded live by the Defend Freedom Campaign, an ESMAD agent can be heard encouraging another one to shoot, saying: “Shoot anyone, just anyone, come on daddy.”
During the protests more than 300 people were injured, including 12 who had eye injuries. Some young people were injured by firearms shot by the police, including Duvan Villegas, who might remain paralysed as a result of a bullet hitting him in the back. Another young man lost his right eye in Bogotá after being hit by a rubber bullet fired by the ESMAD, and two other people could face the loss of their legs due to the impact of teargas canisters thrown by the police from close range.
Overall, there were 1,514 arrests during the protests, 1,109 of them in Bogotá. Out of 914 people who were arrested, 103 (6.8 per cent) were prosecuted for allegedly being caught in the act of committing violence against a public official; however, arrest procedures were declared illegal in a high number of cases, both because there were not enough grounds for conducting them and because they were accompanied by physical violence against detainees.
The rest of the people who were detained (93.2 per cent) were transferred for protection or by police procedure. According to the law, detention in these cases is justified when the life or integrity of the person or a third party is at risk or danger. However, in practice an abusive use of this power was made, since these were mostly administrative detentions, used as a mechanism of intimidation and punishment against citizens who were exercising their right to protest. Therefore, these were mostly arbitrary detentions.
In some of these cases, cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment was documented during detention, particularly in Immediate Attention Commands or police stations. Cases came to our attention of people who were forced to undress, others who received electric shocks through electrical control devices and some who had broken bones in their hands as a result of baton charges or being kicked.
Additionally, in Bogotá, more than 620 people who were transferred to the Protection Transfer Centre were punished with police appearance orders, in many cases for the crime of disruption, for having obstructed transport. This mechanism, which results in fines amounting to around 200,000 Colombian pesos (approx. US$60), was used indiscriminately and has affected the exercise of social protest.
How has civil society organised in the face of these abuses?
In 2012, the Defend Freedom Campaign was established. Through its Verification and Intervention Commissions, recognised in Resolution 1190 of 2018, the campaign does on-site monitoring of social mobilisation, documents cases of arbitrary and excessive use of force by police authorities, arbitrary detention and transfer for protection and various forms of repression and abusive use of police power against protesters and human rights defenders, and it systematises the information collected. The campaign also promotes the creation of a National Network of Civil Society Commissions for Verification and Intervention in situations of social mobilisation.
Likewise, through a joint demand, the National Process of Guarantees, the Agrarian, Peasant, Ethnic and Popular Summit and the Defend Freedom Campaign have obtained verifiable commitments from the national government and the government of Bogotá to establish public policies aimed at enforcing respect for the freedoms of individuals, communities and social organisations that promote and defend rights. The most important of these were Decree 563/2015 (Protocol of Action for Social Mobilisations in Bogotá: For the Right to Mobilisation and Peaceful Protest) issued by the Office of Bogotá’s Mayor and Resolution 1190/2018 (Protocol for the coordination of actions to respect and guarantee peaceful protest) issued by the Ministry of the Interior.
What immediate measures should the Colombian government adopt in response to the protests?
First, the government should convene the monitoring mechanism (‘Mesa de Seguimiento’) to respect and guarantee peaceful protest, as a space for negotiation and dialogue that should define mechanisms to guarantee the right to protest, as envisaged in Resolution 1190. Likewise, the government should immediately suspend the use of 12-calibre shotguns by ESMAD members, due to their high impact on people’s physical integrity and life. Second, it should refrain from pursuing stigmatisation and criminalisation campaigns against those who engage in social protest. Third, the government should initiate a negotiation process with the National Strike Committee to address its demands. And in response to the substantive demands made by the National Strike Committee, the government should start by withdrawing its proposals for labour and pension reform that are due for congressional debate, and initiate a broad and participatory process towards the formulation of new laws concerning those issues.
Do you think the response of the international community has been adequate? How could international groups and organisations support Colombian civil society and contribute to safeguarding civic space in the country?
I believe that the international community and the United Nations system were able to issue a timely warning regarding the risks of repression of social protest. The call made by human rights organisations in the USA to urge their government to start a moratorium on the sale of US riot weapons to Colombia was also timely.
However, it would also be important for Colombian civil society to receive longer-term support to undertake medium-term strategies that allow for a deeper and more detailed follow-up of the human rights situation, and particularly to help make progress in judicial investigations for the human rights violations allegedly committed during the protests.
Civic space in Colombia is rated as ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with the Solidarity Committee Foundation through itswebsite andFacebook page, or follow@CSPP_ on Twitter.
Get in touch with the Defend Freedom Campaign through itswebsite andFacebook page, or -
COLOMBIA: ‘The protection of the environment is inseparable from the success of the peace process’
Following a year marked by massive mobilisation on the climate emergency, CIVICUS is interviewing civil society activists, leaders and experts about the main environmental challenges they face in their contexts and the actions they are taking. CIVICUS speaks with a young Colombian student, active in the climate movement, who for security reasons asked to remain anonymous. In addition to mobilising in the context of the #FridaysForFuture movement, the interviewee is part of Post-Conflict Children (Hijos del Posconflicto), a recently created group that seeks to render the experiences of people on the ground visible and defend the peace process in Colombia. On the crossroads of various struggles, the interviewee emphasises the defence of the peace process as a key to preserving Colombia’s environment and biodiversity.
From your perspective, what is the most urgent environmental problem in Colombia?
The most urgent environmental problem is deforestation. Deforestation rates in Colombia are very high, and the situation has not improved following the signing of the peace agreements. That is because, in times of armed conflict, the Colombian guerrillas, mainly the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), controlled much of the jungle territory of Colombia. Of course, no one dared get into that territory: multinationals and oil companies did not have a presence there; nor did the industry of cattle-raising. After the peace agreements were signed and the guerrillas withdrew, the problem that has plagued Colombia since the 1950s – land distribution – increased.
Colombia has extremely regressive land distribution, with land property concentrated in very few hands. With the withdrawal of the guerrillas and the arrival of multinational corporations, land grabbing has increased. Lands are privately appropriated, deforested and used for raising livestock, while the local population continues to be displaced.
At the same time, there are still active armed groups operating outside the law, particularly far-right paramilitary groups, alongside the smaller guerrilla force of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and some FARC dissidents who refused to engage with the peace process. These armed groups are fighting over the territory with the aim of taking control of coca crops and expanding them, causing greater deforestation.
Therefore, both the continuation of the conflict in some territories and its termination in others are having a direct influence on deforestation. The peace process contains a series of mechanisms to counteract deforestation, but its effects will depend on whether it is effectively implemented. In that sense, the protection of the environment is inseparable from the success of the peace process.
What mechanisms in the peace agreements would help stop deforestation?
The peace agreements include two specific mechanisms to stop deforestation. The first one is comprehensive rural reform, aimed at distributing land in the Colombian countryside and enforcing respect for the uses assigned to the land – for example, by ensuring that if land is for agricultural use, it is not used for raising livestock. The second mechanism is the Programme of Substitution of Crops for Illicit Use, aimed at tackling the drug problem. It is important to understand that many poor peasant families have had to grow coca in order to survive; through this programme, the state is offering them economic incentives to transition towards other sustainable crops.
How does youth activism contribute to the effective implementation of the peace agreements?
The struggle for peace is taking place on all fronts. We do three things: we mobilise on the streets in defence of the peace process; we do educational work so that people understand why the peace process is so important; and we do advocacy in various spaces.
The context in which we do this work is quite difficult. As soon as he took office, President Iván Duque objected to the peace process and tried to modify all aspects that he did not agree with or that he claimed were not fair. If he succeeds, this would ultimately mean a deactivation of the process that resulted from the agreements and the need to start over from scratch. This was no surprise: his entire campaign revolved around the peace process and was based on the dissemination of lies about it. He won the elections by manipulating people’s fears; he told people that the agreements would enshrine impunity. He tried to scare us by telling us that if the left won, we would become a second Venezuela. He also lied regarding his plans for extractive industries: he stated that oil exploration and exploitation through fracking would not be authorised, but in late December 2019 he drafted a decree that would allow fracking.
As an activist for peace and the environment in Colombia, have you had any participation in the global movement for climate justice?
Yes, along with a small group, I joined the Fridays for Future initiative. But our participation was limited to a series of actions and strikes aimed at launching the climate movement in our country.
It has been quite difficult for us to elicit mobilisation around the global climate crisis. First of all, there is much ignorance. In Colombia, most people have no idea what it is being done to them; the current president took advantage of this to spread lies, run a disinformation campaign and win the elections. In a country where public education is of very low quality and only rich people are able to further their studies, it is very easy to lie to people and make them believe you. So, the first problem is ignorance. Add to that fear: in Colombia people are afraid to speak, organise and protest. Colombians live in a state of incredible anxiety due to the systematic murders of social and environmental leaders. Colombia is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for human rights defenders in general and for environmental leaders in particular.
All of this has limited climate mobilisation. Some isolated actions have been held, but there has not been a big national, high-impact demonstration. That is why we were surprised to find out that a massive school mobilisation took place in the south of the country, in the department of Huila, where we least expected it to happen due to the complex security dynamics in those territories. We managed to get in touch with the young people who mobilised in Huila and together we took part in a national meeting held in the department of Caquetá, also known as the golden door to the Colombian Amazon. At that meeting we managed to coordinate our work with the communities that live in Amazonian territory and so far we are in the process of raising the cause of the Amazon and initiating a resistance to defend our forest.
We are currently starting to bring all the environmental groups together into a single climate front. We hope this will inspire those who are afraid to join as well.
Have you had any participation in international climate forums?
We have been to a Latin American meeting of Fridays for Future that was held in Chile with the support of 350.org. It was a meeting of climate advocates to build a Latin American network and take the movement to the regional level. It helped us a lot to meet other young people from other parts of the region who were also mobilising, to discover that we could get together and feel that we had international support to do our job. It gave us some hope.
Right after that meeting, we began to try to form a national environmental network, travelling to as many territories as possible and enlisting young people from other Colombian regions. There is still a lot to be done, but we are growing exponentially because when a new group joins in, they reach out to three or four other groups. Throughout 2019 we focused on this process, touring territories, communicating our message to people and creating links. We believe that the next time we may be able to mobilise at the national level. We will do so on 24 April 2020, on the occasion of the next global strike.
What kind of support would you need to be able to hold in 2020 the mobilisation that was not possible in 2019?
Right now our window of opportunity is the national strike, the series of protests that have taken place in several Colombian cities since November 2019. In a country where people are afraid to speak, on 21 November last year millions of people took to the streets. It was one of the largest mobilisations Colombia has witnessed over the past 40 years. This is a unique opportunity. Within the framework of these protests, the environmental movement has also put forward its proposals and demands. We may not be able to mobilise people specifically around climate, but we can take advantage of these mass mobilisations and put our issues out there. If there are people willing to mobilise, we can approach them, tell them what is happening to the environment and communicate our demands so that they understand that our issues also concern them and they start mobilising for them as well. By doing this, we succeeded in getting the national strike committee to include the declaration of a climate emergency in Colombia among its demands. This has been a very big breakthrough.
Civic space in Colombia is rated as ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with Fridays for Future through itswebsite, and with the Colombian campaign byemail or through itsFacebook page, and follow @FutureColombia on Twitter. -
COP26 : « Mon espoir est que les gens se rassemblent pour demander justice »
À la veille de la 26ème Conférence des Parties des Nations Unies sur le changement climatique (COP26), qui se tiendra à Glasgow, au Royaume-Uni, du 31 octobre au 12 novembre 2021, CIVICUS a interrogé des militants, des dirigeants et des experts de la société civile sur les défis environnementaux auxquels ils sont confrontés dans leur contexte, les actions qu’ils entreprennent pour y faire face et leurs attentes pour le sommet à venir.
CIVICUS s’entretient avec Mitzi Jonelle Tan, une jeune militante pour la justice climatique basée à Metro Manila, aux Philippines, membre des Young Climate Champions Philippines et participante active du mouvement international Fridays for the Future.
Quel est le principal problème climatique dans votre communauté ?
Les Philippines subissent de nombreux impacts du changement climatique, qu’il s’agisse de sécheresses plus longues et plus chaudes ou de typhons plus fréquents et plus intenses. Outre ces impacts climatiques - auxquels nous n’avons pas été capables de nous adapter et qui nous laissent sans soutien pour faire face aux pertes et aux dommages - nous sommes également confrontés à de nombreux projets destructeurs de l’environnement, souvent entrepris par des multinationales étrangères, que notre gouvernement autorise et même encourage.
Young Climate Champions Philippines, la version philippine de Fridays for Future, milite pour la justice climatique et pour que les voix des personnes issues des communautés les plus touchées soient entendues et amplifiées. Je suis devenue militante en 2017, après avoir travaillé avec des leaders autochtones aux Philippines, car ce travail m’a fait prendre conscience que la seule façon de parvenir à une société plus juste et plus verte est une action collective menant à un changement systémique.
Avez-vous été confrontée à des réactions négatives face au travail que vous réalisez ?
Oui, comme pour toute personne qui s’élève contre l’injustice et l’inaction, notre gouvernement, par l’intermédiaire de ses agents rémunérés, désigne les militants comme des terroristes : pour résumer, il nous traite de terroristes pour avoir demandé des comptes et poussé au changement. Être militant du climat s’accompagne toujours de la peur aux Philippines, le pays qui, pendant huit années consécutives, a été classé comme le plus dangereux d’Asie pour les défenseurs et militants de l’environnement. Nous ne vivons plus seulement avec la peur des impacts climatiques, mais aussi avec celle que la police et les forces de l’État s’en prennent à nous et nous fassent disparaître.
Comment établissez-vous des liens avec le mouvement international pour le climat ?
Je collabore beaucoup avec la communauté internationale, en particulier par le biais de Fridays for Future - MAPA (Most Affected Peoples and Areas), l'un des groupes de Fridays for Future dans le Sud. Nous y parvenons en ayant des conversations, en apprenant les uns des autres et en élaborant des stratégies conjointes, tout en nous amusant. Il est important que le mouvement mondial des jeunes soit très bien mis en réseau, uni et solidaire, afin de s’attaquer réellement au problème mondial de la crise climatique.
Quels sont vos espoirs que la COP26 débouche sur des progrès, et quelle utilité voyez-vous à de tels processus internationaux ?
Mon espoir ne réside pas dans les soi-disant dirigeants et politiciens qui se sont adaptés au système et l’ont géré pendant des décennies au profit d’une minorité, généralement issus du Nord global. Mon espoir repose sur les gens : sur les militants et les organisations de la société civile qui s’unissent pour réclamer justice et dénoncer le fait que le système axé sur le profit qui nous a conduits à cette crise n’est pas celui dont nous avons besoin pour en sortir. Je pense que la COP26 est un moment crucial et que ce processus international doit être utile, car nous en avons déjà eu 24 qui n’ont pas donné grand-chose. Ces problèmes auraient dû être résolus lors de la première COP et, d’une manière ou d’une autre, nous devons veiller à ce que cette COP soit utile et débouche sur des changements significatifs, et non sur de nouvelles promesses vides.
Quels changements souhaiteriez-vous voir se produire pour commencer à résoudre la crise climatique ?
Le seul changement que je demande est un grand changement : un changement de système. Nous devons changer ce système qui donne la priorité à la surexploitation du Sud et des peuples marginalisés au profit du Nord et de quelques privilégiés. Un développement bien compris ne devrait pas être basé sur le PIB et la croissance éternelle, mais sur la qualité de vie des gens. C’est possible, mais seulement si nous nous attaquons à la crise climatique et à toutes les autres injustices socio-économiques qui en sont la cause.
L’espace civique auxPhilippines est classé « réprimé »par leCIVICUS Monitor.
Contactez les Young Climate Champions Philippines via leursite web ou leur pageFacebook, et suivez Mitzi Jonelle surTwitter etInstagram.