Credit: Save the Children Vanuatu/Facebook

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, May 25 2023 (IPS)

As a matter of global justice, the climate crisis has rightfully made its way to the world’s highest court.

On 29 March 2023, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) unanimously adopted a resolution asking the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue an advisory opinion on the obligations of states on climate change. The initiative was led by the Pacific Island state of Vanuatu, one of several at risk of disappearing under rising sea levels. It was co-sponsored by 132 states and actively supported by networks of grassroots youth groups from the Pacific and around the world.

Civil society’s campaign

In 2019, a group of law students from the University of the South Pacific formed Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC), a regional organisation with national chapters in Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu. PISFCC advocated with the Pacific Island Forum – the key regional body – to put the call for an ICJ opinion on its agenda. The government of Vanuatu announced it would seek this in September 2021, and Pacific civil society organisations (CSOs) formed an alliance – the Alliance for a Climate Justice Advisory Opinion – that has since grown to include CSOs and many others from around the world, including UN Special Rapporteurs and global experts.

The campaign made heavy use of social media, with people sharing their stories on the impacts of climate change and emphasising the importance of an ICJ opinion to help support calls for climate action, including climate litigation. It organised globally, sharing a toolkit used by activists around the world, and took to the streets locally. In Vanuatu, where it all started, children demonstrated in September 2022 to call attention to the impacts of climate change as their country’s single greatest development threat and express support for the call for an ICJ opinion.

In the run-up to the UNGA session that adopted the historic resolution, thousands of CSOs from around the world supported a letter calling for governments to back the vote.

The ICJ’s role

The ICJ is made up of 15 judges elected by the UNGA and UN Security Council. It settles legal disputes between states and provides advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by other parts of the UN system.

The questions posed to the ICJ aim to clarify the obligations of states under international law to protect the climate system and environment from human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. They also ask about the legal responsibilities of states that have caused significant environmental harm towards other states, particularly small islands, and towards current and future generations.

To provide its advisory opinion, the ICJ will have to interpret states’ obligations as outlined in the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 2015 Paris Agreement as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a variety of international covenants and treaties. It may consider previous UNGA resolutions on climate change, such as the recent one recognising access to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a universal human right, and other resolutions by the UN Human Rights Council and reports by the Office of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights and its independent human rights experts. It may also take into account decisions by UN treaty bodies and its own jurisprudence on climate and environmental matters.

Next steps

According to its statute, the ICJ can seek written statements from states or international organisations likely to have relevant information on the issue at hand. On 20 April, it communicated its decision to treat the UN and all its member states as ‘likely to be able to furnish information on the questions submitted to the Court’ and gave them six months to submit written statements, after which they will have three months to make written comments on statements made by other states or organisations.

Civil society doesn’t have any right to submit formal statements, so climate activists are urging as many people as possible to advocate towards their governments to make strong submissions that will lead to a progressive ICJ opinion. After submissions close, the ICJ is likely to take several months to deliberate, so its opinion may be expected at some point in 2024, likely towards the end of the year.

Advisory opinions aren’t binding. They don’t impose obligations on states. But they shape the global understanding of states’ obligations under international law and can motivate states to show their compliance with rising standards. An ICJ opinion could positively influence climate negotiations, pushing forward long-delayed initiatives on funding for loss and damage. It could encourage states to make more ambitious pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It might also help raise awareness of the particular risks faced by small island states and provide arguments in favour of stronger climate action, helping climate advocates gain ground within governments.

A progressive advisory opinion could also help support domestic climate litigation: research shows that domestic courts are increasingly inclined to cite ICJ opinions and other sources of international law, including when it comes to determining climate issues.

The risk can’t be ruled out of a disappointing ICJ opinion merely reiterating the content of existing climate treaties without making any progress on states’ obligations. But climate activists find reasons to expect much more: many see this as a unique opportunity, brought about by their own persistent efforts, to advance climate justice and push for action that meets the scale of the crisis.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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Credit: Martín Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, May 19 2023 (IPS)

On 7 May, Chileans went to the polls to choose a Constitutional Council that will produce a new constitution to replace the one bequeathed by the Pinochet dictatorship – and handed control to a far-right party that never wanted a constitution-making process in the first place.

This is the second attempt at constitutional change in two years. The first process was the most open and inclusive in Chile’s history. The resulting constitutional text, ambitious and progressive, was widely rejected in a referendum. It’s now far from certain that this latest, far less inclusive process will result in a new constitution that is accepted and adopted – and there’s a possibility that any new constitution could be worse than the one it replaces.

A long and winding road

Chile’s constitution-making process was born out of mass protests that erupted in October 2019, under the neoliberal administration of Sebastián Piñera. Protests only subsided when the leaders of major parties agreed to hold a referendum to ask people whether they wanted a new constitution and, if so, how it should be drafted.

In the vote in October 2020, almost 80 per cent of voters backed constitutional change, with a new constitution to be drafted by a directly elected Constitutional Assembly. In May 2021, the Constitutional Assembly was elected, with an innovative mechanism to ensure gender parity and reserved seats for Indigenous peoples. Amid great expectations, the plural and diverse body started a one-year journey towards a new constitution.

Pushed by the same winds of change, in December 2021 Chile elected its youngest and most unconventional president ever: former student protester Gabriel Boric. But things soon turned sideways, and support for the Constitutional Assembly – often criticised as made up of unskilled amateurs – declined steadily along with support for the new government.

In September 2022, a referendum resulted in an overwhelming rejection of the draft constitution. Although very progressive in its focus on gender and Indigenous rights, a common criticism was that the proposed constitution failed to offer much to advance basic social rights in a country characterised by heavy economic inequality and poor public services. Disinformation was also rife during the campaign.

The second attempt kicked off in January 2023, with Congress passing a law laying out a new process with a much more traditional format. Instead of the large number of independent representatives involved before, this handed control back to political parties. The timeframe was shortened, the assembly made smaller and the previous blank slate replaced by a series of agreed principles. The task of producing the first draft is in the hands of a Commission of Experts, with a technical body, the Technical Admissibility Committee, guarding compliance with a series of agreed principles. One of the few things that remained from the previous process was gender parity.

Starting in March, the Commission of Experts was given three months to produce a new draft, to be submitted to the Constitutional Council for debate and approval. A referendum will be held in December to either ratify or reject the new constitution.

Rise of the far right

Compared with the 2021 election for the Constitutional Convention, the election for the Constitutional Council was characterised by low levels of public engagement. A survey published in mid-April found that 48 per cent of respondents had little or no interest in the election and 62 per cent had little or no confidence in the constitution-making process. Polls also showed increasing dissatisfaction with the government: in late 2022, approval rates had plummeted to 27 per cent. This made an anti-government protest vote likely.

While the 2021 campaign focused on inequality, this time the focus was on rising crime, economic hardship and irregular migration, pivoting to security issues. The party that most strongly reflected and instrumentalised these concerns came out the winner.

The far-right Republican Party, led by defeated presidential candidate José Antonio Kast, received 35.4 per cent of the votes, winning 23 seats on the 50-member council. The government-backed Unity for Chile came second, with 28.6 per cent and 16 seats. The traditional right-wing alliance Safe Chile took 21 per cent of the vote and got 11 seats. No seats were won by the populist People’s Party and the centrist All for Chile alliance, led by the Christian Democratic Party. The political centre has vanished, with polarisation on the rise.

 
What to expect

The Expert Commission will deliver its draft proposal on 6 June and the Constitutional Council will then have five months to work on it, approving decisions with the votes of three-fifths of its members – meaning 31 votes will be needed to make decisions, and 21 will be enough to block them. This gives veto power to the Republican Party – and if it manages to work with the traditional right wing, they will be able to define the new constitution’s contents.

 
The chances of the new draft constitution being better than the old one are slim. In the best-case scenario, only cosmetic changes will be introduced. In the worst, an even more regressive text will result.

People will have the final say on 17 December. If they ratify the proposed text, Chile will adopt a constitution that is, at best, not much different from the existing one. If they reject it, Chileans will be stuck with the old constitution that many rose up against in 2019. Either way, a once-in-a-generation opportunity to expand the recognition of rights will have been lost, and it will fall on civil society to keep pushing for the recognition and protection of human rights.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Apr 7 2023 (IPS)

The uncertainty that’s the hallmark of a democratic election was absent on 26 March, the day Cubans were summoned to appoint members of the National Assembly of People’s Power, the country’s legislative body. A vote did take place that day – people went to the polls and put a ballot in a box. But was this really an election? Cubans weren’t able to choose their representatives – their only option was to ratify those selected to stand, or abstain.

If each seat already had an assigned winner, why even bother to hold an election? Why would people waste their Sunday lining up to vote? And why would the government care so much if they didn’t?

Voting, Cuban style

According to its constitution, Cuba is a socialist republic in which all state leaders and members of representative bodies are elected and subjected to recall by ‘the masses’. Cuba regularly goes through the motions of elections, but it’s a one-party state: the Communist Party of Cuba (CPC) is constitutionally recognised as the ‘superior driving force of the society and the state’.

The CPC is indistinguishable from the state, and the party and its ideology penetrate every corner of society. This means the nomination process for elections can be presented as ‘non-partisan’, with candidates nominated as individuals rather than party representatives – they are all party members anyway.

Cubans vote in two kinds of elections: for municipal assemblies and the National Assembly. Candidates for municipal assemblies are nominated by a show of hands at local ‘nomination assemblies’. The most recent local elections took place on 27 November 2022, with a record-breaking abstention rate of 31.5 per cent – an embarrassment in a system that’s supposed to routinely deliver unanimous mass endorsement.

According to the new constitution and electoral legislation, National Assembly candidates are nominated by municipal delegates alongside nominations commissions controlled by the CPC through its mass organisations, from whose ranks candidates are expected to emerge. The resulting slate includes as many names as there are parliamentary seats available. There are no competing candidates, and as most districts elect more than two representatives, options are limited to selecting all proposed candidates, some, one or none. But all a candidate needs to do is obtain over half of valid votes cast, so ratification is the only possible result. That’s exactly what happened on 26 March.

At the minimum, democracy could be defined as a system where it’s possible to get rid of governments without bloodshed – where those in power could lose an election. In all of Cuba’s post-revolution history, no candidate has ever been defeated.

A different kind of campaign

Unsurprisingly, since there is no real competition, there are typically no election campaigns in Cuba. Instead, there’s a lot of political and social pressure to participate, while abstention is accordingly promoted by the political opposition and democracy activists.

Eager to avoid the abstention rate seen in the November municipal elections, the government spared no effort. Against its own legal prohibitions of election campaigns, it ran a relentless propaganda assault.

Eyewitness accounts abounded of a voting day characterised by apathy, with no evidence of lines forming at voting places. A number of irregularities were reported, including coercion and harassment, with people who hadn’t voted receiving summons or being picked up from their homes. The official statement published the following day – that lack of independent observation made impossible to verify – reported a 76 per cent turnout that the government presented as a ‘revolutionary victory’. It might have helped that the electoral rolls had been purged, with over half a million fewer voters than in the previous parliamentary election held in 2018.

But a closer look suggests that abstention is becoming a regular feature of Cuban election rituals – this was the lowest turnout ever in a legislative election – and beyond this, other forms of dissent in the polls are growing, including spoilt ballots.

What elections are for

In Cuba, elections are neither the means to select governments nor a channel for citizens to communicate their views. Rather, they serve a legitimising purpose, both domestically and internationally, for an authoritarian regime that seeks to present itself as a superior form of democracy. They also serve to co-opt and mobilise supporters and demoralise opposition.

Ritual elections just one of many tools the regime employs to maintain power. Determined to prevent a repetition of mobilisations like those of 11 July 2021, the government has criminalised protesters and activists and curtailed the expression of dissent online and offline.

But all this, and the efforts to present a lacklustre election as a glittering victory, only reveal the cracks running through an old system of totalitarian power in decay. In Cuba, the fiction of a unanimous general will is a thing of the past.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Mar 31 2023 (IPS)

The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), an organisation whose motto is ‘For democracy. For everyone’, just held its global assembly in a country with a mock parliament and not the slightest semblance of democracy.

For Bahrain’s authoritarian leaders, the hosting of the IPU assembly was yet another reputation-laundering opportunity: a week before, they’d hosted Formula One’s opening race.

The day after the race, Ebrahim Al-Mannai, a lawyer and human rights activist, tweeted that the Bahraini parliament should be reformed if it was to be showcased at the assembly. His reward was to be immediately arrested for tweets and posts deemed an ‘abuse of social media platforms’.

That same week, the Bahraini authorities revoked the entry visas for two Human Rights Watch staff to attend the assembly.

Rather than opening up to host the event, Bahrain further shut down.

A mock parliament and no democracy

Bahrain is member of the IPU, which defines itself as ‘the global organization of national parliaments’, because, on paper at least, it has a parliament. But its parliament is neither representative nor powerful. Bahrain is an absolute monarchy.

The king has power over all branches of government. He appoints and dismisses the prime minister and cabinet members, who are responsible to him, not to parliament. The two prime ministers the country has had so far – the first served for over 50 years – have been prominent members of the royal family, and many cabinet ministers have been too.

The king appoints all members of the upper house of parliament, along with all judges. Parliament’s lower chamber is elected – but everything possible is done to keep out those who might try to hold the government to account.

Political parties aren’t allowed; ‘political societies’, loose groups with some of the functions of political parties, are recognised. To be able to operate, they must register and seek authorisation, which can be denied or revoked.

In recent years the government has shut down most opposition political societies, arresting and imprisoning their most popular leaders. All members of dissolved groups and former prisoners are banned from competing in elections. And just in case new potential opposition candidates somehow emerge, voting districts are carefully gerrymandered so the opposition can’t get a majority.

In November 2022 Bahrain once again went through the motions of an election. A large number of eligible voters were excluded from the electoral roll as punishment for abstaining in previous elections – a tactic used to ensure any boycott attempts wouldn’t affect turnout. Exactly as it was meant to, the election produced a legislative body with no ability to counterbalance monarchical power.

No space for dissent

In 2018, the king issued a decree known as the ‘political isolation law’. It banned members of dissolved opposition parties standing for election. It also gave the government control of the appointment of civil society organisations’ board members, limiting their ability to operate, and has been used to harass and persecute activists, including by stripping them and their families of citizenship rights.

In 2017, Bahrain’s last independent newspaper, Al-Wasat, was shut down. No independent media are now allowed to operate. The government owns all national broadcast media outlets, while the main private newspapers are owned by government loyalists.

Vaguely worded press laws that impose harsh penalties, including long prison sentences, for insulting the king, defaming Islam or threatening national security encourage self-censorship. Many people, including journalists, bloggers and others active on social media, have been detained, imprisoned and convicted.

This has turned Bahrain into a prison state. It’s estimated that almost 15,000 people have been arrested for their political views over the past decade, at least 1,400 of whom are currently in jail. Most have been convicted on the basis of confessions obtained under torture. Appallingly, 51 people have been sentenced to death.

An advocacy opportunity

Given the IPU’s evident lack of interest in the human rights records of host states, civil society focused its advocacy on parliamentary delegations from democratic states.

Ahead of the assembly, two dozen civil society groups published a joint statement addressed at parliamentarians who would be attending, urging them to publicly raise concerns over Bahrain’s lack of political freedoms, including violations of the rights of parliamentarians, and to ensure their presence wouldn’t be used to legitimise the authoritarian regime.

Civil society’s calls for the freedom of political prisoners were loudly echoed by parliamentary delegations from countries including Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands, among several others.

The director of the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy described the event as ‘a PR disaster for the Bahraini regime’, a failure of its image-laundering plan.

The response of the Bahraini authorities was however far from encouraging. They reminded foreign parliamentarians they shouldn’t interfere in Bahrain’s domestic affairs and continued to deny evidence of imprisonment and torture.

Sustained international pressure is needed to urge the Bahraini regime to free its thousands of political prisoners and allow spaces for dissent. That, rather than high-level image-laundering events, is what will fix the country’s well-deserved bad reputation.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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The State of Civil Society report from CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance which was officially launched on March 30, 2023, exposes the gross violations of civic space. Credit CIVICUS

By Andrew Firmin and Inés M. Pousadela
LONDON / MONTEVIDEO, Mar 29 2023 (IPS)

Brave protests against women’s second-class status in Iran; the mass defence of economic rights in the face of a unilateral presidential decision in France; huge mobilisations to resist government plans to weaken the courts in Israel: all these have shown the willingness of people to take public action to stand up for human rights.

The world has seen a great wave of protests in 2022 and 2023, many of them sparked by soaring costs of living. But these and other actions are being met with a ferocious backlash. Meanwhile multiple conflicts and crises are intensifying threats to human rights.

Vast-scale human rights abuses are being committed in Ukraine, women’s rights are being trampled on in Afghanistan and LGBTQI+ people’s rights are under assault in Uganda, along with several other countries. Military rule is again being normalised in multiple countries, including Mali, Myanmar and Sudan, and democracy undermined by autocratic leaders in El Salvador, India and Tunisia, among others. Even supposedly democratic states such as Australia and the UK are undermining the vital right to protest.

But in the face of this onslaught civil society continues to strive to make a crucial difference to people’s lives. It’s the force behind a wave of breakthroughs on g abortion rights in Latin America, most recently in Colombia, and on LGBTQI+ rights in countries as diverse as Barbados, Mexico and Switzerland. Union organising has gained further momentum in big-brand companies such as Amazon and Starbucks. Progress on financing for the loss and damage caused by climate change came as a result of extensive civil society advocacy.

The latest State of Civil Society Report from CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance, presents a global picture of these trends. We’ve engaged with civil society activists and experts from around the world to understand how civil society is responding to conflict and crisis, mobilising for economic justice, defending democracy, advancing women’s and LGBTQI+ rights, calling for climate action and urging global governance reform. These are our key findings.

Civil society is playing a key role in responding to conflicts and humanitarian crises – and facing retaliation

Civil society is vital in conflict and crisis settings, where it provides essential services, helps and advocates for victims, monitors human rights and collects evidence of violations to hold those responsible to account. But for doing this, civil society is coming under attack.

Catastrophic global governance failures highlight the urgency of reform

Too often in the face of the conflicts and crises that have marked the world over the past year, platitudes are all international institutions have had to offer. Multilateral institutions have been left exposed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s time to take civil society’s proposals to make the United Nations more democratic seriously.

People are mobilising in great numbers in response to economic shock – and exposing deeper problems in the process

As it drove a surge in fuel and food prices, Russia’s war on Ukraine became a key driver of a global cost of living crisis. This triggered protests in at least 133 countries where people demanded economic justice. Civil society is putting forward progressive economic ideas, including on taxation, connecting with other struggles for rights, including for climate, gender, racial and social justice.

The right to protest is under attack – even in longstanding democracies

Many states, unwilling or unable to concede the deeper demands of protests, have responded with violence. The right to protest is under attack all over the world, particularly when people mobilise for economic justice, democracy, human rights and environmental rights. Civil society groups are striving to defend the right to protest.

Democracy is being eroded in multiple ways – including from within by democratically elected leaders

Economic strife and insecurity are providing fertile ground for the emergence of authoritarian leaders and the rise of far-right extremism, as well for the rejection of incumbency. In volatile conditions, civil society is working to resist regression and make the case for inclusive, pluralist and participatory democracy.

Disinformation is skewing public discourse, undermining democracy and fuelling hate

Disinformation is being mobilised, particularly in the context of conflicts, crises and elections, to sow polarisation, normalise extremism and attack rights. Powerful authoritarian states and far-right groups provide major sources, and social media companies are doing nothing to challenge a problem that’s ultimately good for their business model. Civil society needs to forge a joined-up, multifaceted global effort to counter disinformation.

Movements for women’s and LGBTQI+ rights are making gains against the odds

In the face of difficult odds, civil society continues to drive progress on women’s and LGBTQI+ rights. But its breakthroughs are making civil society the target of a ferocious backlash. Civil society is working to resist attempts to reverse gains and build public support to ensure that legal changes are consolidated by shifts in attitudes.

Civil society is the major force behind the push for climate action

Civil society continues to be the force sounding the alarm on the triple threat of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss. Civil society is urging action using every tactic available, from street protest and direct action to litigation and advocacy in national and global arenas. But the power of the fossil fuel lobby remains undimmed and restrictions on climate protests are burgeoning. Civil society is striving to find new ways to communicate the urgent need for action.

Civil society is reinventing itself to adapt to a changing world

In the context of pressures on civic space and huge global challenges, civil society is growing, diversifying and widening its repertoire of tactics. Much of civil society’s radical energy is coming from small, informal groups, often formed and led by women, young people and Indigenous people. There is a need to support and nurture these.

We believe the events of the past year show that civil society – and the space for civil society to act – are needed more than ever. If they really want to tackle the many great problems of the world today, states and the international community need to take some important first steps: they need to protect the space for civil society and commit to working with us rather than against us.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief. Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist. Both are co-directors and writers of CIVICUS Lens and co-authors of the State of Civil Society Report.

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By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Feb 22 2023 (IPS)

On 9 February, Nicaragua’s dictator, Daniel Ortega, unexpectedly ordered the release of 222 political prisoners, including several former presidential candidates, opposition party leaders, journalists, priests, diplomats, businesspeople and former government supporters branded as enemies for expressing mild public criticism.

Also released were several members and leaders of civil society organisations (CSOs) and social movements, including student activists and environmental, peasant and Indigenous rights defenders. Some had been arrested on trumped-up charges for taking part in mass protests in 2018 and stuck in prison for more than four years.

But the Ortega regime didn’t simply let them go – it put them on a charter flight to the USA and before their plane had even landed permanently stripped them of their Nicaraguan nationality and their civil and political rights. The government made clear it wasn’t recognising their innocence; it was only commuting their sentences.

The rise of a police state

Ever since being re-elected in a blatantly fraudulent election in November 2021, Ortega has sought to make up for his lack of democratic legitimacy by establishing a police state. The regime effectively outlawed all civil society and independent media, closing more than 3,000 CSOs and 55 media outlets. It subverted the judicial system to falsely accuse, convict and imprison hundreds of critics and intimidate everyone else into compliance.

Political prisoners have been treated with purposeful cruelty, as though they’re enemy hostages – kept in isolation, either in the dark or under permanent bright lighting, given insufficient food and refused medical care, subjected to constant interrogations, denied legal counsel and allowed only irregular visits by family members, if at all. Psychological torture has been a constant, and many have been also subjected to physical torture.

The release of some prisoners hasn’t signalled any improvement in conditions or move towards democracy, as made clear by the treatment experienced by one political prisoner, Catholic bishop Rolando Álvarez, who refused to board the plane to the USA.

In retaliation for his refusal to leave the country, his trial date was brought forward and held immediately, in the absence of any procedural safeguards. It predictably resulted in a 26-year sentence. Álvarez was immediately sent to prison, where he remains alongside dozens of others.

Stripped of citizenship

The constitutional amendment stripping the 222 released political prisoners of their citizenship states that ‘traitors to the homeland shall lose the status of Nicaraguan nationals’ – even though the constitution establishes that no national can be deprived of their nationality.

It was an illegal act on top of another illegal act. No one can be deported from their own country: what the regime called a deportation was a banishment, something against both domestic law and international human rights standards.

On 15 February, the regime doubled down: it stripped 94 more people of their nationality. Those newly declared stateless included prominent political dissidents, civil society activists, journalists and the writers Gioconda Belli and Sergio Ramírez, both of whom had held government positions in the 1980s. Most of the 94 were already living in exile. They were declared ‘fugitives from justice’.

Mixed reactions

By rendering 326 people stateless, the Nicaraguan dictatorship fuelled instant international solidarity. On 10 February, the Spanish government offered the 222 just-released prisoners Spanish citizenship – an offer many are bound to accept. On 17 February, more than 500 writers around the world rallied around Belli and Ramírez and denounced the closure of civic space in Nicaragua.

In Argentina, the Roundtable on Human Rights, Democracy and Society sent an open letter to President Alberto Fernández to request he offer Argentinian nationality to all Nicaraguans stripped of theirs.

But Argentina, alongside most of Latin America, has looked the other way. Its silence suggests that democratic consensus across the region is more fragile and superficial than might be hoped, with willingness to condemn rights violations depending on the ideological leanings of those who carry them out.

Currently all the region’s big democracies – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico – have governments that define themselves as left-wing. But only one of their presidents, Chile’s Gabriel Boric, has consistently criticised Nicaragua’s authoritarian turn. In response to the latest developments he tweeted a personal message of solidarity with those affected, calling Ortega a dictator. The rest have either issued mild official statements or simply remained silent.

Now what?

The Nicaraguan government insisted that releasing the prisoners was its own decision. The fact it was accompanied by further violations of released prisoners’ rights was meant as a demonstration of power.

But the move looks like it was made in the expectation of receiving something in return. The Nicaraguan government has long demanded that US sanctions be lifted; at a time when one of its closest ideological allies, Russia, is unable to provide any significant support, Nicaragua needs the USA more than ever. But the US government has always said the release of political prisoners must be the first step towards negotiations.

Given this, the unilateral surrender of people it considers dangerous conspirators to the state it proclaims is its worst enemy doesn’t seem much like a show of force. And if it isn’t, then it’s a valuable advocacy opportunity. The international community must push for the restoration of civic space and the return of free, fair and competitive elections. The first step should be to support the hundreds who’ve been expelled from their own country, as the future builders of democracy in Nicaragua.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Feb 16 2023 (IPS)

In late January, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, finished an official visit to Venezuela. He said he’d found a fragmented society in great need of bridging its divides and encouraged the government to take the lead in listening to civil society concerns and responding to victims of rights violations.

But Venezuelan civil society had hoped for more. Two days before his arrival, the National Assembly, Venezuela’s congress, had approved the first reading of a law aimed at further restricting and criminalising civil society work. International civil society urged the High Commissioner to call for the bill to be shelved. Many found the UN’s response disappointing.

Another turn of the screw

The bill imposes further restrictions on civil society organisations (CSOs). If it becomes law, CSOs will have to hand over lists of members, staff, assets and donors. They’ll be obliged to provide detailed data about their activities, funding sources and use of financial resources – the kind of information that has already been used to persecute and criminalise CSOs and activists. Similar legislation has been used in Nicaragua to shut down hundreds of CSOs and arrest opposition leaders, journalists and human rights defenders.

The law will ban CSOs from conducting ‘political activities’, an expression that lacks clear definition. It could easily be interpreted as prohibiting human rights work and scrutiny of the government. There’s every chance the law will be used against human rights organisations that cooperate with international human rights mechanisms. This would endanger civil society’s efforts to document the human rights situation, which produces vital inputs for the UN’s human rights system and the International Criminal Court, which has an ongoing case against Venezuela.

The law-making process has been shrouded in secrecy: the draft bill wasn’t made publicly available and wasn’t discussed at the National Assembly before being approved. The initiative was immediately denounced as a tool to control, restrict and potentially shut down CSOs and criminally prosecute their leaders and staff. If implemented, it could mean the end of civil society as we know it in Venezuela.

The UN and Venezuela

The previous High Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, visited Venezuela in September 2019. She was criticised for taking a cautious approach. Moreover, most of the commitments in the agreement the government signed with her were never fulfilled.

Following that visit, the UN Human Rights Council established the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (FFMV), tasked with investigating alleged human rights violations. In September 2022, the FFMV issued a report detailing the involvement of Venezuela’s intelligence agencies in repressing dissent, including by committing human rights violations such as torture and sexual violence.

But intimidation only grew as Türk’s visit approached, with some protest leaders put under surveillance, followed and detained.

Venezuelan CSOs called for a more energetic approach, but Türk followed his predecessor’s footsteps. His visit was characterised by secrecy and brevity, particularly in terms of the time dedicated to engaging with civil society.

Bachelet’s agreement with the government had included the presence of a two-person UN team to monitor the human rights situation and provide assistance and advice. This has now been extended for two years, but the details haven’t been made public.

Civil society activists have continued to work closely with the UN field office and wouldn’t want to risk its presence in the country, so to some extent they understand Türk’s caution in dealing with the Venezuelan government. But they also view his visit as a missed opportunity.

Türk’s statement to the media at the end of his visit was very much focused on the political and economic crises and healing divisions in society, with human rights ‘challenges’ occupying third place on his list of major concerns.

Alerta Venezuela, a Colombia-based human rights group, recognised the references Türk made to ‘new issues’ – such as the need for Venezuela to sign the Escazú Agreement on environmental rights and decriminalise abortion – alongside ongoing human rights violations such as extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests and torture. But it criticised crucial omissions and the UN’s apparent willingness to take government data at face value.

On the anti-NGO bill, the High Commissioner said he’d asked the government to take into account his comments but didn’t provide any information about their content, so it isn’t clear whether he advocated for amendments to a law that can only remain deeply flawed or for it to be shelved – which is what civil society wanted him to do.

The Venezuelan government has all along paid only lip service to cooperation with the UN and hasn’t kept its promises. Repression is only going to intensify in the run-up to the presidential election scheduled for 2024. Any strategy that involves trusting the government and hoping it will change its position seems doomed to failure.

High-level human rights advocacy needed

More energetic criticism came from the independent and less politically constrained FFMV, which expressed ‘deep concerns’ about the potential implications of the draft NGO law for civic and democratic space.

That is the stance civil society would like the High Commissioner for Human Rights to have taken. They want the office holder to be a human rights champion standing independent of states and unafraid of causing a stir.

Türk is only five months into his four-year term. Civil society will keep doing its best to engage, in the hope that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights can become the human rights advocate the world – and Venezuela – need.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Feb 2 2023 (IPS)

On 25 January, roughly six weeks after being sworn in following her predecessor’s removal, Peruvian president Dina Boluarte finally recognised that elections were the only way out of political crisis. Elections were rescheduled for April 2024, much earlier than the end of the presidential term she’s been tasked with completing, but not soon enough for thousands who’ve taken to the streets demanding her immediate resignation.

Boluarte’s call for a ‘national truce’ has been met with further protests. Their repression has led to major bloodshed: the Ombudsman’s office has reported close to 60 dead – mostly civilians killed by security forces – and 1,500 injured.

What happened and what it means

It’s unusually easy to impeach Peru’s presidents: a legislative majority can vote to remove them on vaguely defined grounds.

Pedro Castillo, elected president in July 2021, had already survived two removal attempts and faced a third. On 7 December he made a pre-emptive strike: he dissolved Congress and announced a restructuring of the judiciary, as former president Alberto Fujimori had done decades earlier in the ‘self-coup’ that started several years of authoritarian rule.

Castillo announced the establishment of an exceptional emergency government where he would rule by decree and promised to hold congressional elections soon. The new Congress, he said, would have the power to draft a new constitution.

But unlike Fujimori, Castillo enjoyed meagre support, and within hours Congress voted to remove him from office. He was arrested and remains in pretrial detention on rebellion charges. Vice-president Boluarte was immediately sworn in.

In the whirlwind that followed there was much talk that a coup, or a coup attempt, had taken place – but opinions differed radically as to who was the victim and who was the perpetrator.

The prevailing view was that Castillo’s dissolution of Congress was an attempt at a presidential coup. But others saw Castillo’s removal as a coup. Debate has been deeply polarised on ideological grounds, making clear that in Peru and Latin America, a principled rather than partisan defence of democracy is still lacking.

Permanent crisis

Recent events are part of a bigger political crisis that has seen six presidents in six years. In 2021, a polarising presidential campaign was followed by an extremely fragmented vote. The runoff election yielded an unexpected winner: a leftist outsider of humble origins, Castillo, defeated the right-wing heiress of the Fujimori dynasty by under one percentage point. Keiko Fujimori initially rejected the results and baselessly claimed fraud. Castillo’s presidency was born fragile. It was an unstable government, with a high rotation of ministers and fluctuating congressional support.

Although Castillo had promised to break the cycle of corruption, his government, himself and close associates soon became the target of corruption allegations coming not just from the opposition but also from state watchdog institutions. Castillo’s response was to attack the prosecutor and ask the Organization of American States (OAS) to apply its Democratic Charter to preserve Peruvian democracy supposedly under attack. The OAS sent a mission that ended with a call for dialogue. Only two weeks later, Castillo embarked on his short-lived coup adventure.

Protests and repression

According to Peru’s Constitution, Boluarte should complete Castillo’s term. But observers generally agree there’s no way she can stay in office until 2024, never mind 2026, given the rejection she faces from protesters and political parties in Congress.

A wave of protests demanding her resignation rose as soon as she was sworn in, led mostly by students, Indigenous groups and unions. Many also demanded Castillo’s freedom and government action to address poverty and inequality. Some demands went further, including a call for a constituent assembly – the promise Castillo made before being removed from office – to produce more balanced representation, particularly for Indigenous people. For many of Peru’s poorest people, Castillo represented hope for change. With him gone, they feel forgotten.

Four days into the job, Boluarte declared a regional state of emergency, later extended to the whole country. Protests only increased, and security forces responded with extreme violence, often shooting to kill. No wonder so many Peruvians feel this isn’t a democracy anymore.

The state of Peruvian democracy

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index rates Peru as a ‘flawed democracy’. A closer look at the index’s components suggests what’s wrong with Peruvian democracy: it gets its lowest score in the political culture dimension. In line with this, the Americas Barometer shows Peru has one of the lowest levels of support for democracy in Latin America and is the country where opposition to coups is weakest.

Peru’s democracy scores low on critical indicators such as checks and balances, corruption and political participation. This points to the heart of the problem: it’s a dysfunctional system where those elected to govern fail to do so and public policies are inconsistent and ineffective.

According to every survey, just a tiny minority of Peruvians are satisfied with their country’s democracy. The fact that no full-fledged alternative has yet emerged seems to be the only thing currently keeping democracy alive. Democratic renewal is urgently needed, or an authoritarian substitute could well take hold.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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By Inés M. Pousadela
May 11 2022 (IPS-Partners)

In an election season, India’s ruling party has again resorted to the right-wing populist playbook, stirring up divisions for political gain. This time it is the turn of Muslim women, caught in the crossfire of a backlash against both the rights of religious minorities and women’s rights. The controversy over the wearing of the hijab in schools is just the latest chapter in the saga starring Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist party in their quest to consolidate power. Their attempts will continue, as will civil society resistance and struggles for rights.

One day in late December 2021, Muslim students at an all-female college in the small town of Kundapur, in India’s southern state of Karnataka, were offered an impossible choice: either ditch their hijab, a headscarf they wear as a symbol of their faith, or renounce their right to education. But they refused to comply, and instead protested.

As protests spread and brought counterprotests by Hindu students, a piece of cloth soon became the centre of a storm, where struggles for the rights of women and religious minorities intersect. With both under attack by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing populist government, Muslim women must have seemed the perfect target.

The hijab row

Out of the blue, the authorities of a state-run school in Karnataka ruled that the hijab was in contravention of uniform rules and denied those wearing it entry into classrooms. Other government-run schools followed suit. The state government, in the hands of Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), backed the ban and extended it to the whole state through a directive stating that ‘clothes which disturb equality, integrity, and public law and order should not be worn’.

Karnataka is often described as the ‘hotbed’ of the Hindutva ideology supported by many right-wing Hindu groups. Thirteen per cent of its population is Muslim, and although nominally secular, the state has increasingly turned religious mandates into law – the very definition of religious fundamentalism. Among other things, the sale and slaughter of cows have been banned in the state because cows are sacred for Hindus, and an anti-conversion bill has made it more difficult for people to convert to Islam or Christianity and for interfaith couples to marry.

On 31 December, six Muslim girls who were denied entry to their classrooms because they wore the hijab protested outside their school, marking the start of wider protests. The students also filed a writ in the Karnataka High Court and brought their complaint to the National Human Rights Commission.

While the ban was imposed only in Karnataka, rights groups feared it would pave the way for tighter nationwide restrictions. To resist this, protests spread throughout India, and by early February they had reached the capital, New Delhi, and were even echoing abroad, as Turkish rights groups held a demonstration outside the Indian consulate in Istanbul.

As protests spread, counterprotests followed: many right-wing Hindu students, mostly male, marched in saffron shawls, a colour considered a Hindu symbol. A civil society report has described in detail the tactics of Hindutva supremacists to push ‘saffronisation’ into schools and fuel communal violence.

In Karnataka the script was followed to the letter: as Hindutva activists turned up to disrupt protests against the hijab ban, heated arguments and physical harassment ensued. Some cities witnessed incidents of stone-throwing and arson. On 10 February, on the grounds of treating ‘both sides’ equally, the Karnataka high court issued an interim order banning anyone from wearing any covering or religious symbol within classrooms. Muslim students challenged the order in the Supreme Court.

On 15 February the Karnataka government ordered a three-day closure of all high schools and colleges. The next day, city authorities in the state’s capital, Bengaluru, banned protests outside schools for two weeks. On 21 February, the murder of a member of the right-wing Hindu group Bajrang Dal added fuel to the fire: the 23-year-old man, identified as Harsha, was killed while campaigning against the hijab. Schools were closed again.

On 15 March, the Karnataka high court upheld the ban on the basis of the argument that wearing the hijab was not an essential Islamic principle. With one stroke of the pen it swept away any pretence of secularism, under which no court should be able to decide what is essential to any religion.

Later in March, in another district of Karnataka, teachers were suspended for allowing Muslim students to attend exams wearing the hijab. A few days later, the state government excluded teachers wearing the hijab from exam duty, effectively expanding the ban to teachers.

Schools have been turned into yet another political arena. The backdrop and apparent driving force was a series of state-level elections, including in India’s biggest state, Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP was looking for a strong showing ahead of upcoming national-level elections. Religious divides are being intensified and instrumentalised for political gain.

Voices from the frontline: Aiman Khan and Agni Das

Aiman Khan and Agni Das are members of the Quill Foundation, an Indian civil society organisation (CSO) engaged in research and advocacy, focused on the human rights issues faced by underprivileged people.

There have been protests on two fronts. The girls who have been directly affected by this restriction are protesting outside their college gates and holding demonstrations in other public spaces. But they are facing intimidation and threats by Hindutva vigilante groups while also being warned that they will be criminally charged for protesting.

In bigger cities, protests are also being organised by human rights CSOs and Muslim groups, and particularly by Muslim women.

Following the Karnataka high court ruling, CSOs have played an important role in raising awareness about the implications of the verdict. Several CSOs rejected the court order while also producing analysis to help the public understand its intricate legal language.

Civil society has been able to respond in a tangible and timely manner, offering unconditional solidarity and support to the schoolgirls affected by the order and experiencing trauma resulting from violence, discrimination and harassment in the aftermath of the high court order. Some CSOs have offered mental health counselling and other services.

Other CSOs have offered litigation support, in two forms: first, by representing individual cases of religious discrimination and providing legal support to those who missed out on exams due to the ban; and second, by petitioning on larger issues before courts of law. There have been several petitions before the Supreme Court of India to challenge the Karnataka high court order.

In short, the civil society response has been key because of its capacity to play a full range of roles to drive change, from the micro to the macro level. An effective civil society is essential for advancing human rights in India, and the international community can play a vital role in reinforcing the work of local CSOs to amplify marginalised voices.

This is an edited extract of our conversation with Aiman Khan and Agni Das. Read the full interview here.

The surge of Hindu nationalism

The controversy around the hijab was nothing but an excuse – but an effective one. Straight out of the right-wing populist playbook, this crackdown on the Muslim minority formed part of a wider BJP strategy to consolidate its power. And it was only the most recent link in a long chain of affronts.

Modi’s resounding re-election victory in 2019 gave him the green light to take a decisively autocratic turn and seek to homogenise India as a Hindu state, undermining India’s foundational secular principles and violating the guarantees of religious freedoms enshrined in its constitution.

Although most of the world’s major religions are represented in huge numbers in India, the BJP and its allied paramilitary Hindu nationalist force, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, have popularised a vision of Indian nationhood that excludes Muslims, who make up over 14 per cent of the population: a 172 million minority bigger than the population of most countries in the world.

Minority communities are subjected to vilification because they are framed as ‘the other’. The Muslim minority is a specific target of persecution.

AIMAN KHAN AND AGNI DAS

Soon after his re-election, Modi made a definitive move of aggression against Indian Muslims. On 5 August 2019 he unilaterally revoked the constitutional special status of Jammu and Kashmir state, which is around 70 per cent Muslim. The following day, the BJP-dominated parliament passed a law to divide the state into two union territories to be ruled by central government instead of their own state governments. Widespread protests were violently suppressed and a long communications clampdown was imposed.

The next step came in December 2019, when parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which modified the constitutional clause that prevented undocumented migrants from becoming citizens, granting this right to people coming from specific countries who were highly likely to be members of non-Muslim religious minorities.

This law was used in conjunction with the extension of the National Register of Citizens, which excluded from citizenship millions of people who lacked evidence of having been legally in India since at least 1971, but allowed them to apply for asylum under the CAA – unless they were Muslims.

At both national and state levels, BJP governments adopted countless discriminatory laws and policies targeting religious minorities, and specifically Muslims. This stoked hatred and division with increasingly bloody consequences, as seen in early 2020, when violence erupted between Hindu and Muslim communities in New Delhi, leaving dozens dead. The police mostly stood by as mosques and Muslim-owned businesses were targeted and journalists covering the unrest were attacked.

Voices from the frontline: Syeda Hameed

Syeda Hameed is co-founder and board member of the Muslim Women’s Forum, a civil society organisation working for the empowerment, inclusion and education of Muslim women in India.

The decision to ban Muslim students from wearing the hijab in colleges’ premises came as a surprise. Such a ban is strange to our society. Unlike in France, where it has long been under the spotlight, the hijab had until very recently never been prohibited in India.

Karnataka state is known for its diverse society and pluralistic culture, with the two major religious groups, Hindus and Muslims, historically coexisting, along with a wide spectrum of other religious groups.

However, the roots of the Karnataka hijab controversy are quite deep, and are linked to growing Islamophobia. Those in power have ignited a sectarian fuse all over India in every possible way. Right now, Karnataka state also has a right-wing government, which has created fertile ground for strain in Hindu-Muslim relationships.

To them, the hijab ban is just another tool to remain in power. It is tied to current political events, notably the upcoming election. Right-wing politicians fabricate issues that target Muslims, who are depicted as the ‘disruptive other’, to divert people’s attention from dire economic conditions. The hijab ban did the job well, as it captured media attention. Sensational media coverage only added fuel to the fire.

The hijab ban is a complete violation of women’s rights to express their own identities. It should be my choice alone whether to wear the hijab or not.

The hijab ban is very much part of Muslim marginalisation. Muslims are being driven to a corner and targeted by a right-wing government that demonises them to boost their support and remain in power.

This is an edited extract of our conversation with Syeda. Read the full interview here.

Why women?

This time, the target was not just Muslims, but specifically Muslim women. Indian Muslim women are members not only of a minority religious group that has increasingly come under attack but also of a gender that has perennially been subjugated by men both within and outside their religious group, forced to follow male dictates on what to wear and what not to wear – among many other things.

A source of controversy in some western countries, the hijab had never before been a big deal in India – until politicians saw in it an opportunity to stoke division for political gain. But many Indian Muslim women view the hijab as an integral part of their faith. For others, it is a token of negotiation with conservative families, and the very reason they are allowed to go to school in the first place. Either way, they have made a choice that is no longer being respected.

‘Whether it is a bikini, a ghoonghat, a pair of jeans or a hijab, it is a woman’s right to decide what she wants to wear,’ tweeted Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, general secretary of the Indian National Congress, one of India’s opposition political parties.

The hijab ban is a complete violation of women’s rights to express their own identities. It should be my choice alone whether to wear the hijab or not.
SYEDA HAMEED

This story was originally published by CIVICUS Lens

Excerpt:

Activist-Nodeep-Kaur-Speaking-at-Farmers-Rally-at-the-Kundli-Manesar-Palwal-Expressway-in-Haryana. Credit: Sania Farooqui

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Mar 16 2022 (IPS)

The 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) was just launched. Due to the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the main annual global forum on gender equality is once again taking place in a hybrid format – both at the UN’s New York headquarters, where government delegations will be meeting, and online, where most civil society activity will take place.

This has disappointed women’s rights movements from all over the world – for the third time in a row. Back in 2020, CSW’s 64th session was due to begin on 9 March, and the spreading pandemic resulted in a dramatic restructure: from a two-week event with around 12,000 confirmed participants to a one-day procedural meeting. The following year, CSW 65 was held in a hybrid format, but mostly virtually.

For more than two years non-stop, the pandemic impacted disproportionately on the rights of women and girls. Gender-based violence raged and femicides increased. The burden of unpaid work on women’s shoulders multiplied, economic hardship differentially affected women, who are heavily employed in the informal sector, and the virus itself disproportionately affected women who are over-represented in frontline jobs.

When women most needed a space where they could advocate for their rights and demand that the pandemic and post-pandemic recovery were tackled through a gendered lens, the main such global space almost completely collapsed.

While much was initially made of the inclusive potential of virtual events, it soon became clear that access challenges faced by women in real life were replicated in the online sphere. This year, many women’s voices may again go unheard, since they lack the same status as the government representatives allowed into the room.

Fortunately, mobilised women’s rights groups have worked extra hard to prevent that from happening. On 8 March, International Women’s Day (IWD), feminists from all over the world took to the streets again, showing that they had not been defeated by the pandemic – if anything, they were emerging stronger. They articulated a clear and coherent agenda for equality.

The right to life free of violence

IWD mobilisations demanded action on gender-based violence (GBV) everywhere around the world, but nowhere were these demands louder than in Latin America, where streets in city after city were taken over by green – the colour of the rising tide for abortion rights that originated in Argentina – and violet – the traditional colour of the feminist movement.

Mass marches, along with feminist strikes against all forms of violence – domestic and sexual violence but also institutional and economic violence – were held in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador and Uruguay, among others.

In Mexico City, the day started with a giant airship streaking across the skies with a sign reading ‘10 feminicides a day, none of them forgotten’, followed by a mass march in the capital and in states across the country.

In Bolivia, ahead of IWD hundreds of women marched for justice and an end to impunity. Convened by the Mujeres Creando collective, they carried photographs of men accused or sentenced for rape, and of judges and prosecutors who freed perpetrators of GBV and femicides.

In Honduras, protesters condemned femicides and urged the approval of the Shelter House Law for victims of GBV. In Panama, women called for greater protection for girls and adolescents from sexual violence, as well as better guarantees of labour rights.

Most IWD protests were held in a celebratory atmosphere: even while they were sharing grievances and expressing anger, women were out there experiencing sisterhood and togetherness, either celebrating victories or giving each other strength to overcome defeat.

This was no invitation to violence, but still there were instances in which repression – unprovoked and unjustified – came. Such was the case in Ecuador, where protesting women were met by police with pepper spray, baton beatings, horses and dogs.

Halfway around the world in South Asia, dozens of IWD events, known as the Aurat March, were held across Pakistan for the fifth year in a row. Recent high-profile femicide cases had intensified calls for stronger legal protections against so-called ‘honour killings’.

As in previous years, protesters experienced intense backlash, including attempts to stop them protesting. The minister of religious affairs called for IWD events to be cancelled, for the Aurat March to be banned and for 8 March to be rebranded as ‘Hijab Day’.

At least one right-wing organisation accused marchers of ‘obscenity’ and threatened to beat them. In Lahore and other cities, counterprotests known as ‘hijab marches’ also mobilised, with women from conservative religious groups calling for the preservation of ‘Islamic values’.

Where Asia meets Europe, the Azerbaijani Feminist Movement gathered in Baku to urge the adoption of the Istanbul Convention – the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence – and demand proper investigations of GBV cases. Instead of investigating reports, the police typically advise victims to return home and reconcile with their husbands.

Women also rallied against GBV in nearby Turkey. Campaigners warned that skyrocketing femicide numbers may be gross underestimates, as femicides are often recorded as suicides or accidents. In the evening, women held their annual feminist night walk in Ankara and Istanbul. Here, as in Quito, riot police used pepper spray against protesters to try to disperse a crowd of several thousand gathered in the city centre.

GBV and femicides were under the spotlight in Africa and Europe as well. In Albania, the Feminist Collective protested outside the Prime Minister’s office in Tirana to demand freedom from violence in all its forms. Simultaneously, a performance was staged in a central square, where dozens of pairs of red shoes were laid down to symbolise the victims of femicide.

In Belgium, close to 5,000 women took to the streets of Brussels to call for equality and an end to GBV and sexual harassment. Rallying cries included ‘Victime, on te croit. Agresseur, on te voit’ (‘Victim, we believe you. Perpetrator, we see you’), a reference to testimonies shared by women who have experienced sexual harassment.

In the UK, campaigners laid flowers outside an immigration detention centre for women, stating that most women held there are survivors of rape and other forms of GBV and victims of trafficking and modern slavery. They vowed to continue protesting until the site is closed down.

In Nairobi, Kenya, hundreds of women marched to the national police headquarters to demand justice for sexual assault in public spaces and call for the regulation of the commuter motorbike sector, after a video showing a woman being sexually assaulted by motorbike riders on a busy road went viral. Protesters held placards with messages such as ‘usinishike’ – ‘don’t touch me’ in Swahili.

Global sorority and abortion rights

Many protests that focused on GBV also demanded sexual and reproductive rights. This was no coincidence, as GBV and the denial of sexual and reproductive rights have a common root: women’s deprivation of the personhood and autonomy to decide over their bodies and lives.

This focus could be seen in El Salvador, which has one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the world. On IWD, around 2,000 women from feminist organisations and university groups marched against femicides and to demand the immediate legalisation of abortion on three grounds: to save the pregnant person’s life, in cases of life-threatening foetal malformation and when pregnancy is the result of sexual violence.

Something similar would have happened in Poland, where in 2020 a near-total ban on abortion was introduced under cover of the pandemic, if it hadn’t been for the emergency caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In less than two weeks, over 1.2 million Ukrainian refugees, mostly women and children, had crossed the border into Poland, and Polish civil society set to work to help in whatever way they could. Everything else took a temporary back seat.

This happened throughout Europe, and beyond: demands for women’s rights shared the stage with calls for solidarity with Ukraine. Blue-and-yellow rallies were held in several European capitals, including Brussels, where a ‘Women stand with Ukraine’ demonstration took place, and Berlin, where hundreds of people, mostly women, gathered outside the Russian Embassy to protest against the invasion. In Turkey, the Ankara Women’s Platform publicly sided with Ukrainian women and children as ‘the first victims of the war’. Further away in Central Asia, an IWD rally in Kyrgyzstan also denounced the invasion.

In Spain, where hundreds of thousands mobilised, protesters advanced demands for equality while also protesting against the war; in wars, they pointed out, women are always treated as bargaining chips. In Barcelona, the mic was passed to two Ukrainian women who acknowledged the courage of the women putting their bodies on the line to stop Russian tanks.

Political representation a key demand

Women’s organisations that have spent years calling for legislative bodies comprising mostly of men to pass laws that benefit women know only too well that fairer political representation is a key that opens many doors.

Political representation was at the centre of IWD mobilisations in Cameroon, where more than 20,000 women came out in Yaoundé to insist on a proper role in decision-making. Protesters demanded gender quotas, saying they would no longer accept being treated as inferior to men. The call was echoed in protests that took place in towns and villages across Cameroon.

Something similar was seen in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where feminist groups organised a rally for equal rights attended by more than 1,000 people. Protesters carried posters reading ‘Women’s opinions matter’, ‘More women in politics’ and ‘Feminism will save Kazakhstan’. They demanded more modern gender policies, measures against GBV and the hiring of more women by government institutions.

In Nigeria, hundreds of women marched to the National Assembly in Abuja to urge lawmakers to take another look at a series of bills aimed at closing the gender gap, which failed to get the required number of votes to be included in a constitutional amendment.

Women’s protests started the day after lawmakers voted on 1 March to reject all women’s rights-related bills. These bills would have established legislative representation quotas for women, provided for affirmative action in political party administration and granted citizenship to foreign-born husbands of Nigerian women.

In Sudan, thousands marched on IWD in Khartoum and elsewhere to denounce the 25 October military takeover. The day was dedicated to ensuring that women’s concerns are not left out of the struggle for freedom, peace and justice: resistance committees must include women in decision-making processes and respect the women’s rights agenda so that democracy, when it is restored, does not leave women behind once more. Predictably, as they approached the presidential palace protesters were met with teargas to force them to disperse.

Social, economic and environmental justice

Social, economic and environmental demands were at the forefront of major mobilisations, including in countries such as Peru and Venezuela, where protesters focused on poverty and food security.

In Brazil, women from an array of popular movements, grassroots organisations, trade unions, feminist collectives and political parties held massive protests against the exclusionary policies of President Jair Bolsonaro. Under the slogan ‘Bolsonaro Never Again’, protesters also blamed Bolsonaro’s negligence for more than 600,000 COVID-19 deaths.

Throughout the world, the effects of the pandemic shone the spotlight on the uneven distribution of care work within families. Among women’s movements in Latin America, this triggered a profound process of reflection on the structural conditions that determine the unequal distribution of care tasks, the way in which the entire social edifice rests on such inequality and the life-defining consequences this has for women.

As a result, feminist CSOs began to insist ever more strongly on the inclusion of state-managed care systems in any pandemic recovery plan. On the streets, this was reflected in a slogan that is now part of the regular repertoire of feminist protests: ‘it’s not love, it’s unpaid work’.

Other protests highlighted gender-specific health issues. In Chad, for instance, the CSO Rehabilitation and Technical Training used IWD to raise awareness of the problem of obstetric fistulas, a serious but all too common ailment that is the result of obstructed labour without timely medical intervention.

Other organisations, such as Zambia’s WingEd Girls, focused on menstrual health and stigma and demanded that more resources be committed to public healthcare systems.

Across Africa and worldwide, activists and organisations seized the opportunity to put forward longstanding demands for social and economic rights, including land rights. Such was the case of the Stand for Her Land campaign, which called for women’s land rights and an end to gender bias in land distribution.

Almost 100 groups in Ethiopia, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda, among others, participated in the campaign. Similarly in Tunisia, CSOs used the day to denounce the deprivation of rural women’s right to inheritance and demanded the review of the law on GBV to include economic violence, since inheritance should be recognised as an economic right.

The clearly gendered impacts of climate change, along with the underrepresentation of women in climate negotiating bodies, also motivated many organisations, including the Extinction Rebellion network, to make climate demands on IWD. A 24-hour vigil and rally for climate justice was held in Edinburgh, UK.

A clear agenda for CSW

The feminist demands made on IWD were remarkably coherent responses, locally, nationally and globally, to the problem diagnoses made by civil society active in the field and deeply connected with the daily realities of women.

Those demands are not dying down once IWD has passed. Feminist movements know they can’t let their guard down even if they are winning, because every victory is followed by a predictable anti-rights backlash.

They will continue to push their agenda forward on the streets, in the courts, in parliaments, in the twists and turns of national, regional and local public administrations – and, of course, whenever possible in global forums.

These are the voices the CSW should heed.

IPS UN Bureau

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