A New Wave of Repression on Civic Space: Democracy Support Community Failing to Respond

The number of countries adopting repressive laws curbing civic space has recently surged across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Europe. According to CIVICUS’ 2024 report, civic space is in its worst state since the launch of the Global Monitor in 2018, with over 118 countries placing serious restrictions on civil society.

Going by different labels and in various forms, roughly a third of such measures target foreign aid. Some require civic actors that receive international assistance to label themselves as “foreign agents” or as agents pursuing “foreign interests”. Such laws have also established extensive financial reporting rules and fines in the case of non-compliance. These restrictive provisions have shattered the civil society infrastructure in many countries, including Russia, Nicaragua, and Azerbaijan, and contributed to autocratisation.

This unsettling trend is not a standalone development but part of the broader democratic backsliding repeatedly captured by democracy indices. Countries that propose such restrictive measures predominantly target local independent civil society and activists who seek to hold authoritarian rule at bay. Yet the trend can also be seen as a sign of autocrats increasingly countering Western backing for liberal democratic values globally.

The international democracy support community has failed to respond fully to these mounting attacks. Few donors’ mandates allow them to operate in hostile environments under restrictive laws. Most donors have not adapted their programming for repressive operational contexts, such as to support non-traditional recipients of democracy aid, including individual activists or civic movements, despite their crucial role in resisting the resurgence of authoritarianism.

Indeed, faced with the new restrictive laws, many donors have become more hesitant in their funding strategies and aid programming. Some modest attempts have been made to enhance coordination among international donors, employing diplomatic measures and offering emergency funds to aid civic actors. Yet they fall short of meeting the challenge of repressive laws. Despite almost a decade’s experience of dealing with civic oppression from autocrats, the democracy support community is struggling to respond to this new wave of repressive laws.

A new wave of repression on civic space

Assaults on civic space are not new, and repressive pressure has taken diverse forms. Authorities often formalise their strategies of delegitimisation, demonisation, surveillance, and verbal and physical assaults on pro-democracy actors through repressive laws. In some countries they use more covert forms such as tax rules, anti-money laundering regulations, or provisions dealing with registration of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), while other governments overtly attack international aid providers, launch registries for foreign funding, and oblige civil society to operate under stigmatising “foreign agent” labelling.

Most recently, such repressive measures were introduced in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Zimbabwe, Paraguay, and Kazakhstan and are in the pipeline in Turkey, Republika Srpska, Tunisia, and Slovakia. Promising to end “NGO supremacy”, these laws introduce draconian restrictions on the independent media and civil society. Ahead of 2024 elections, the Venezuelan government pushed through new anti-NGO laws to clamp down on opponents, and Nicaraguan authorities closed hundreds of nongovernmental organisations from 2021. These examples go a step further and seek to criminalise the work of civil society.

Repressive measures to curb civic liberties is not just a common script of the most authoritarian governments. Some leaders in democracies and hybrid regimes such as India, Israel, Hungary, Bangladesh, and Peru have introduced restrictive regulatory frameworks.

Governments implementing these laws often claim that Western states have similar rules regarding registration and transparency. Last year, the European Commission tabled an EU directive on the transparency of interest representation, under which the union would set up a central register for non-governmental organisations, consultants, lobby groups, and media receiving funding from outside the EU. This proposal has sparked revolt among civil society actors who are concerned it will choke off genuine pro-democracy funding, and some member states have opposed the initiative. While such measures certainly leave Europeans open to the charge of double standards, Western laws on funding and registration are generally subject to limits and accountability in a way that the repressive laws elsewhere are not.

Weak and deficient responses

Over the last decades, authoritarian and illiberal governments have become efficient and proactive in adopting each other’s repressive practices. For instance, Russia and Kazakhstan have recently launched a parliamentary-level mechanism to share experience on fighting the influence of foreign agents. Yet there has been insufficient efforts by democracy support donors to fuse their strategies, increase coordination, and advance their capacity to fend off this new wave of attacks against civic space, international democracy assistance, and liberal values at large.

Countries that have adopted repressive laws have often forced democracy support donors to cease their operations, close local offices, and even cancel country-specific democracy support programmes. These steps are deemed necessary to avoid endangering local civil society or the organisations’ staff on the ground. The most repressive regimes such as those in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Nicaragua, Egypt, and Iran have forced civil society activists, journalists, and political dissidents to leave and continue their activities in exile.

Recently, in a striking initiative, pro-democracy activists in exile have launched The World Liberty Congress, the largest global movement of pro-democracy leaders from 60 countries run by authoritarian regimes. At its General Assembly in 2023, its leaders announced “we must be more united than the dictators, we are the change, we are the future and we are rising”. Yet the reality is increasingly sobering, despite some donor support to such initiatives there have been no tangible breakthroughs to deliver incremental change and autocrats seem to be fiercer in the battle over civic space.

Whereas a decade ago the democracy support community could argue that it was unprepared for such repressive moves from authorities, it can now point to experiences in multiple countries across the world. For instance, repressive legislations were initiated and discussed repeatedly in Kyrgyzstan and Georgia, countries that were most recently hit by assaults on civic space. There have also been efforts to learn from donors such as National Endowment for Democracy (NED), European Endowment for Democracy (EED), and/or Prague Civil Society Center (PCSC), who are fit to operate in repressive contexts. In the new cohort of countries that are proposing repressive measures, civil society is repeatedly suffering from an exodus of democracy support donors. Donors almost seem to be supporting the authoritarian regimes’ aim to deprive local civic actors of support.

After many years of clampdowns, international democracy assistance is not prepared for this new wave of repression and seems to have adopted a defensive approach. Many donors have decided to suspend their funding and await legal opinions on the new operational environment and their programming. This leaves civil society with limited access to funding during its crucial fight against the authoritarian grip. Even if there is a moment of democratic turnaround in the country and civic space regained, building the societal fabric from scratch will be incredibly costly.

At this decisive moment, democracy aid providers seem to be wilting under pressure and failing to offer new types of funds. They have funded little in the way of initiatives to encourage cross-coordination among civil society actors from different countries to learn innovative push-back strategies and operational tactics to find ways to resist authoritarian pressures.

The changing priorities of donors have also left civic actors increasingly vulnerable. Due to the war in Ukraine, many donors decided to re-allocate budgets. The priority focus on Ukrainian civil society is well justified and legitimate, however autocrats in other countries are not holding back in their repression while the war persists. Some of the largest private funders, including Open Society Foundations (OSF), have undergone lengthy restructuring and also shifted priorities and ceased programmes in many countries, leaving civic actors even more vulnerable.

Another problem is that democracy support has lost traction and credibility in recent years. Critics of democracy support have little sympathy for activists having funding cut off. They often charge civil society with becoming overly dependent on international democracy assistance, being detached from the local population, not generating its own resources, and making themselves easily targetable to authoritarian pressures.

In semi-open contexts, civil society indeed could and should have done more to boost its own local resources. However, in highly authoritarian contexts, where activists and human rights defenders operate under existential threat, external support provides a vital lifeline. In these circumstances, civil society organisations cannot realistically generate their own financial resources as their activities are so constrained. Even if there is such a will, impoverished local populations have very little money to give to civil society groups or media.

International democracy assistance is lagging behind the power of autocratisation, failing to update its practices and preferring to retreat under authoritarian pressure. It has refused to give civil society long term core funds that would help give their operations more security and protection and move them out of the current ad hoc precariousness from which they suffer. Despite constant pleas from local actors for donors to move beyond short-term, project-based funding, donors have refused to show needed flexibility on this point.

This is often explained by the growing number of crises that governments and international organisations are dealing with, including the devastating wars in Ukraine and Gaza. In line with a strategic focus on humanitarian assistance, multiple security crises have resulted in an increasing securitisation of foreign policy, with adverse consequences for democracy support.

Such global disorder has further exacerbated existing trade-offs between economic, geopolitical, and security interests when dealing with authoritarian governments who have little patience for Western criticism over democratic principles. Research suggests that authoritarian regimes continue to receive the largest amounts of funding despite democratic erosion. Simultaneously, the expansion of international illiberal attacks on democratic space at home diminished democracies’ legitimacy to act on restrictive measures in other countries.

The sovereignty crux

Repressive legislation on foreign funding opens a broader debate about credibility of international democracy assistance. Regimes are now more assertive in referring to national sovereignty, politically intrusive funding, and the right to monitor foreign interference. It is contested how far the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) go to create a legal foundation to support democracy and human rights globally. Many experts insist that the international right to freedom of association also provides a basis for civil society actors to access external funding. Evidence from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rulings on Hungarian and Russian legislations assaulting civic space conclude that such repressive measures were in violation of rights to respect of private life and protection of data, and freedom of association and human rights respectively.

Yet the sovereignty narrative has become stronger. It is no coincidence that Hungary’s most recent legislative initiative, which gives a government-controlled body broad powers to target civil society and independent media, has been labelled a “defence of sovereignty” bill. Laws adopted in Russia, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan assert they target “foreign agents”, “representatives”, and actors “pursuing foreign interests”. These laws share the same pretence of thwarting foreign actors’ attempts to interfere in domestic affairs.

Similarly, restrictive legislation is almost always sold to local audiences as a means of countering foreign meddling. As such, the proponents of these laws play on nationalist sentiments and claim to preserve their country’s authentic culture and religion. Such narratives often resonate with conservative societies. Sometimes these repressive bills come in joint anti-LGBTQI+ laws as a shield against liberal values imported from the West. This rhetoric is usually amplified by disinformation narratives, including in countries like Georgia, Hungary, and Kyrgyzstan by Russia-backed actors, to convince societies that repressive legislation would benefit them.

Some analysts have argued that any country should have the right to control external interference. However, in practice these repressive measures do not serve the purpose of protecting a country’s sovereignty. Rather, they build or strengthen authoritarian regimes under the pretext of values-based battles and identity-driven protectionist policies. Indeed, the only real beneficiaries of these restrictive legislative frameworks are authoritarian leaders themselves. Popular sovereignty must surely include a population’s right to choose its partners for cooperation in its self-determined goals.

A way ahead

A decade ago repressive laws were already becoming a “new normal” for the international democracy support community, and yet this community has still not fully recalibrated its programming to find more innovative ways of funding activists. Despite some new emergency programmes for threatened activists, the democracy support practitioner community has failed to respond to mounting challenges at the same speed and determination as authoritarian governments do. This requires far higher levels of political commitment, especially for governments to take the decision to adapt donors’ operational mandates to hostile environments.

The repressive surge is likely to expand further. In most places where regimes have introduced repressive laws, they have gradually expanded attacks into a criminalisation of civic activities, expanding the scope of targeted actors from organisations to individual activists, including those actors operating in exile. For instance, Russia offered a dedicated list of “undesirable organisations” receiving foreign funding which has expanded ominously since 2015 and currently includes more than 175 civil society and media organisations.

If international democracy assistance is serious about upholding the universal values of democracy and human rights globally, it needs to reinforce its political pledge. There are several ways its response to mounting challenges attempting to eviscerate civic space can be heightened.

First, democracy support donors should rethink their respective theories of change to fit current political realities. This may entail reconsideration of what counts as democratic aid. They should also make efforts to consider expanding funding mandates, as well as the scope of its operations in a growing number of restrictive environments. There should be more efforts made to learn from donors such as NED, EED, and PCSC with flexible operational mandates set to operate in repressive contexts. It almost feels as if funders leave the hard work to a few flexible donors under increasing pressure, while they continue business as usual.

If a larger number of donors were willing to operate in hostile environments, this would send a message to autocrats globally that repressive laws would not force aid providers to retreat and cease democracy funding. This does not necessarily mean that donors should adopt high profile public positions when protecting the civic space, as in some contexts research suggests this may prove counterproductive.

Second, funders should move beyond long criticised donor-priority driven and project-based assistance. Especially where early warnings suggest that repressive laws might be in the pipeline, funders should allocate greater amounts of core support to help organisations and activists concentrate on more innovative pushback strategies beyond day-to-day survival. Donors should increase the scope of targeted institutional funding for building the business models for civil society and media operation so that at least some share of operational costs are covered by locally generated resources. They should also offer to train civil society in ways of crowdfunding and innovative models of donations where possible.

Third, the democracy aid community should invest more resources into expanding existing measures and devising innovative new ways to support democracy in repressive contexts without raising concerns over sovereignty. It needs urgently to devise unconventional ways of democracy support to help ensure the continued viability of local actors. Such alternative and mixed ways of funding will aid local actors in gradually building much-needed protective sustainability. More donors should make efforts to offer psychological support to activists at the frontline of the continuous authoritarian pressure and invest more in security of both its partners and the staff amid autocrats’ increasing pressure on individual donors and their employees.

Fourth, more efforts should be made to capitalise on the increasing trend of corporate responsibility among businesses. In repressive contexts, businesses may face reservations to engage amid possible consequences, yet there may be less political sensitivities and trade-off compared to governmental donors. Growing initiatives, such as Microsoft’s Defending Democracy Programme and AccountGuard, and Google’s Project Shield and Jigsaw offer civil society actors, NGOs and journalists at higher risk of cyber-attacks in authoritarian contexts security support to better protect against autocrats’ censorship and online harassment. Increasing the number of such initiatives and going beyond the digital sphere would aid the at- risk civic spaces to fight against increasing repression. In particular, private banks should offer special programmes to both donors seeking to deliver democracy assistance securely, and activists who are at the receiving end of aid in repressive contexts.

Lastly, the international community should make greater efforts to invest its resources in real measures. Global pleas such as the Summit of Democracy are necessary and legitimate to heighten the importance of democracy globally. Yet the tangible outcomes of such summits are modest compared to the resources it requires, without doubt these resources would make a difference for many local activists under pressure. Practitioner organisations suggest that smaller formats for coordination tend to be more efficient and lead to more tangible outcomes.

The new wave of restrictive laws means this task of rethinking democracy support is a necessity, not an optional luxury; if it fails to adapt to new authoritarian measures, democracy aid risks dying out altogether.

Author

 

This publication is part of the EU SEE project led by Hivos.

It was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.

Photo credit: Daniel Vazome, Flickr (CC BY 2.0)