The closing of civic space is not just about people’s right to organize or protest in individual countries. This year’s Gobal Risks Report, published last week by the World Economic Forum ahead of its annual Davos meeting, looks in detail at the risks posed by threats to governments clamping down on fundamental civic freedoms. The report points out that, “a new era of restricted freedoms and increased governmental control could undermine social, political and economic stability and increase the risk of geopolitical and social conflict.”

Indeed, the recently launched CIVICUS Monitor shows that more than 3.2 billion people live in countries in which “civic space” is either closed or repressed. It also shows that conditions very few countries—16 out of 134 countries with verified data—are genuinely open. This means that scope for citizen action is constrained and getting worse in much of the world, including some countries where one might least expect it. The spillover effect to other countries also cannot be understated.

Scope for citizen action is constrained and getting worse in much of the world, including some countries where one might least expect it. Glaringly absent from the WEF report, however, are any examples of countries where these trends are evident, so here are five examples from five different parts of the world of countries that demonstrate just how much citizen action is under threat in 2017.
 

Burundi

Already one of the worst places in the world for civic freedoms, 2017 didn’t begin well for human rights activists in Burundi after the government shut down Burundi’s oldest human rights organisation, Ligue Iteka. Journalists and media organisations have also been targeted. The situation in Burundi is so bad that the government is silencing the very people and institutions that could monitor rights abuses and undemocratic developments. Far from signifying a lull in human rights violations, the lack of information flowing from the country reflects the silencing of critical expression and the prevailing climate of fear, and this also explains why no significant public demonstrations have taken place in recent months.
 

Honduras

One deeply worrying dimension of Honduras’ high crime rates is the impact this is having on citizen action. Journalists, environmental activists, and gay rights campaigners have been among those most vulnerable to violence. This is made worse by the fact that government efforts to investigate and prosecute violence against members of these groups have made little progress. The murder of world-renowned environmentalist Berta Caceras in March 2016 was a tragedy in itself but made worse by the fact that this attack was far from isolated, and that peaceful protests have been met by police brutality and with suspected surveillance of media outlets.
 

Flickr/Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (All rights reserved)

A memorial to Berta Cáceres, a murdered Honduran environmentalist and human rights activist.

Philippines

President Rodrigo Duterte successfully courted controversy in 2016 but his flamboyant political style had very real consequences for the Filipino people. Thousands of citizens were killed in extrajudicial killings openly encouraged by Duterte as part of a so-called war on drugs. Activists and NGOs fear that the war is merely a thinly veiled excuse to permanently silence dissent against Duterte and his government. Mirroring many other similar political contexts, the assault on civilians comes hand in hand with direct attacks on the media, with President Duterte even endorsing the killing of "corrupt" journalists.
 

Turkey 

The Arab Spring may seem like ancient history for citizens in Turkey trying to assert their rights to peacefully assemble and express themselves. The people of Turkey saw their democratic rights shrink at an alarming pace in 2016. On a single day in November the Turkish government suspended 370 NGOs, due to their alleged links with the opposition groups, including the Gulen movement, the Kurdish PKK and left wing organisations. The fragile political and security situation in Turkey is not a sufficient justification for limiting citizens’ rights to peacefully assemble and express themselves. Yet, the Turkish government, under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is employing similar tactics to many other governments by using security threats as a cover to tighten its own grip on power. Turkey is also one of many countries where gay rights activists have been targeted for speaking out: a pride parade planned in Istanbul in June 2016 was banned and then disrupted by authorities.
 

United States

The strength of the United States’ Constitution means that US citizens have some of the best protected democratic rights and freedoms in the world. And yet, recent events suggest that even the constitution—the vision of the US founding fathers—may be under threat. President-elect Donald Trump has shown little respect for the First Amendment to the constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression. In November, he controversially tweeted that those who burn the American flag should be sent to jail, even though the Supreme Court deemed this act legal since 1969 on First Amendment grounds. Trump has also repeatedly attacked the freedom of the press, including through litigation and at his most recent press conference this month, where he refused to speak to CNN and called the media outlet “fake news”. The harsh policing of #BlackLivesMatter and Standing Rock protests have called into question Americans’ right to peaceful assembly. Maina Kiai, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on these issues, noted serious concerns about how citizen action is being curtailed in the US. Ominously, he concluded that, “people have good reason to be angry and frustrated at the moment. And it is at times like these when robust promotion of assembly and association rights are needed most.”

There perhaps lies the most concerning aspect of the global trends on civic space: measures to limit the scope for citizens to organise and mobilise come just as people the world over are frustrated with established political institutions and actors. If we do not create the spaces and opportunities for people to vent these frustrations and articulate their aspirations in constructive ways, we could see social conflict intensify across the world. This problem is about far more than a few country examples. When this unrest spills across borders, especially when it stems from big powers like the United States, it creates a very real risk for further geopolitical instability—a risk we can no longer afford to ignore.

Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah is Secretary General of CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance with members in more than 175 countries.

Courtesy: Open Democracy
 

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President Jacob Zuma speaks to South Africa's parliament in Cape Town. Image credit: Flickr/GovernmentZA

The news that three African states—Burundi, South Africa and now The Gambia—will quit the International Criminal Court marks a setback in the long struggle against impunity for grave crimes. Although the politics are specific to each country, the common thread underlying each of the three departures is cynical self-interest. 

A number of Burundi’s current leaders no doubt fear that the Court, currently conducting a preliminary inquiry, may charge them with crimes against humanity for political violence which has taken the lives of hundreds of civilians and forced hundreds of thousands to flee. Indeed, Burundi’s notice of ICC withdrawal immediately followed its suspension of the activities of the UN human rights office to protest a UN report implicating the country's security forces in massive rights violations.

The Gambia’s president, Yahya Jammeh, who came to power 22 years ago in a military coup and once infamously threatened human rights defenders with death, has been spouting further incendiary rhetoric in the run-up to elections this December. His Minister of Information’s characterization of the ICC as “an International Caucasian Court for the persecution and humiliation of people of color, especially Africans”, seems designed to employ anti-ICC rhetoric to hide the facts of the regime’s ugly record.

South Africa, whose own history embodies the triumph of democracy and the rule of law over racial apartheid, has no reason to fear ICC prosecution. However, President Jacob Zuma has been fighting for his political life since elections this August dealt an embarrassing blow to his governing African National Congress. Exiting the Court now positions South Africa to reclaim continental leadership on a decisive question, and aims (perhaps unsuccessfully, as legal challenges are underway) to remove the threat of imminent condemnation by its own Constitutional Court for the government’s refusal to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, an ICC fugitive, during a visit last year.

Worrying as this string of losses is, other departures may be in the works. At the inauguration for his fifth term in office this past May, Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni called the Court “a bunch of useless people.” Kenya actively fought the ICC’s prosecution of its president and deputy president on charges of orchestrating mass electoral violence by intimidating witnesses and leading a global diplomatic campaign against the Court. Earlier this year, after rumors emerged that Namibia was pulling out, a minister confirmed that the “ICC is not a priority.”

Do the past week’s events signal the beginning of the end for an institution hailed at its birth as a “gift of hope to future generations”?But where does this leave the ICC?  Do the past week’s events signal the beginning of the end for an institution hailed at its birth by then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian, as a “gift of hope to future generations”?
Not so fast.

The gap the ICC was created to fill—the absence of any alternative way to bring perpetrators of mass atrocities to account—persists. Domestic courts in too many countries in the global North and South remain unable and/or unwilling to prosecute and try such politically sensitive cases. Notwithstanding discussions underway in Africa, there is currently no regional court anywhere capable of addressing individual responsibility for grave crimes.

Moreover, the ICC is not going away. Even if another dozen or so states pull out, that would leave around 110 members from all over the world, a substantial global quorum. The ICC still has vigorous supporters, including in Africa. Just this week, South Africa’s neighbor Botswana reaffirmed its commitment to the court, as have diplomats from Sierra Leone, who are all too familiar with the brutality that the court seeks to combat.

But advocates for justice should be concerned—and there is much to be done.

First, they must expose the falsehoods that are being widely pedaled. The ICC focus on Africa during its first decade of operations stems primarily, not from racial bias, but from the invitations of African governments, who have self-referred most of the situations on the Court’s docket, and the UN Security Council’s failure to authorize the court to address atrocities in Sri Lanka, Syria, Yemen and other war zones. 

Second, they must acknowledge the truth in some critiques. Power in the world is divided unequally. Double standards unfairly limit where the ICC can tread. However, the solution lies, not in leaving the court, but in calling on others—in Beijing, Moscow, and Washington—to hold themselves and their friends accountable or risk losing further authority to lead.

Third, those who steer the ICC, and their allies in government and civil society, must do a better job of listening to, and addressing, legitimate questions. To take a prominent example, even if one accepts (as all those who ratify the Court’s underlying statute must) that no head of state is exempt from prosecution, there is a genuine discussion to be had, as some have requested, about how to reconcile that principle with the need for states to uphold their respective diplomatic obligations to each other.

Fourth, while legal arguments are important, this contest must be fought where it has begun—on domestic political terrain. Though the ICC is a global institution, its constituencies, like its opponents, are (understandably) moved largely by local concerns. Those of us in countries that have not yet ratified the Rome Statute have a special responsibility to argue for domestic accountability. And the voices of victims must be made to resonate more powerfully in those debates.

Finally, the Court must do everything it can consistent with the evidence and the law to push forward ongoing inquiries outside Africa. The prosecutor is investigating in Georgia, and examining situations in Afghanistan, Palestine, and Ukraine. All are fraught political contexts, which present enormous challenges. A more concerted push there will not silence the critics; it will almost certainly breed new ones. But then again, this Court’s underlying mission—to bring law to bear on the exercise of unrestrained power—was always destined to engender fierce opposition from those who have reasons to fear justice.

(This article was first published on OpenDemocracy.net.)
James Goldston is the Director of the Open Society Justice Initiative.
 

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