Civil Society

United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai, explains in this interview with Christine Meissler why he will never give up fighting for democracy and human rights.

Civil society organisations can be a vanguard of progress for the LGBTI community. Despite the growing number of laws and policies impeding LGBTI advocacy, activists and organisations successfully challenge these trends.

Barbara Unmüßig correlates the Olympics with Brazil’s institutional, political and economic crisis. Did the organizers learn a lesson from the World Cup in 2014?

Around the world, autocratic regimes, and some that consider themselves democratic, are restricting the work of civil society groups that hold them to account.

At the beginning of May, large demonstrations against the policy of the government have taken place in Warsaw, Poznan and Wroclaw. The initiator of these and other former demonstrations in the last months is the movement KOD (Komitet Obrony Demokracji), the Committee for the Defense of Democracy. Veronika Felder and Michael Álvarez Kalverkamp spoke with Aleksandra Śniegocka-Goździk und Jarosław Marciniak, two KOD members, about the movement and the current situation in Poland.

State repression against non-governmental organizations is increasing globally. In this interview, Barbara Unmüßig calls for a reconceptualisation of solidarity with civil society and puts the issue of shrinking and closing spaces at the very top of the political agenda.

The repression of NGOs and other civil society groups increases worldwide, which leads to a decline of democratic freedom. This issue should be added to the agenda of national parliaments and multilateral organizations.

For the foreseeable future, the political culture in Bosnia and Herzegovina will remain authoritarian. Large sections of the society striving still to ethno-national mapping and security.

People want democracy. The surveys show anywhere in the world. But what is the right way to help people on the way to a better life in a liberal democracy? With years of active work in promoting democracy we support mainly dedicated people in the existing or emerging civil societies.