Published in Nonprofit Quarterly

By Ghada Abdel Tawab, Otto Saki, and Sally Roever

Civic space has long been harnessed by groups to organize, share ideas, and hold power to account. The bedrock of any free society, civic space catalyzed the end of apartheid, the winning of reproductive freedoms for Latin American feminists, and global calls to address climate change. Yet civic space is elastic: it can expand and burst wide open—or it can be forced to snap and shrink.

Presently, state actions in many countries are seeking to reduce civic space and curtail people’s rights. Between March 2020 and October 2022, 155 countries across the Global South placed new restrictions on the right to public assembly. In its latest report, CIVICUS Monitor noted that more than 200 protests were disrupted by authorities in 85 countries. In at least 69 of those countries, excessive force was used to disrupt the right to peaceful assembly.

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