Courage is Contagious. Refugee Action protest 27 July 2013 Melbourne, Australia. FLickr/John Englart. Some rights reserved.
It’s no secret that democracy is facing a global stress test. Divisive politicians are creating a chasm between the majoritarian impulses of electoral democracy and the inclusive strands of constitutional democracy. The former emphasises a simplistic ‘winner takes all’ mentality to advance partisan political agendas while the latter accommodates dissent and minority voices through checks and balances. Notably, civil society activists and organisations speaking truth to power and seeking inclusion in decision making are facing severe hurdles as civic space appears to be backsliding in several democratic countries.
Described as ‘a set of universally-accepted rules, which allow people to organise, participate and communicate with each other freely and without hindrance, and in doing so, influence the political and social structures around them,’ an open civic space is a key ingredient of a successful and rights respecting democracy. Sadly, there’s a gaping hole between principle and practice. Amnesty International’s annual report offers a bleak picture of people’s basic freedoms in jeopardy while Human Rights Watch laments that the dangerous rise in populism is spurring a global attack on human rights values in its 2017 World Report. The CIVICUS Monitor , an online participatory research platform concludes that in less than 26 of the over 195 countries covered is there open and free civic space.
