Academics, donors, journalists and political leaders are paying greater attention to intensifying governmental efforts to crack down on civil society organizations (CSOs) and constrain the space in which they operate. Freedom House, for example, has documented efforts to undermine political and civil liberties in a growing number of countries, causing a worldwide decline in freedom for the last ten years. Yet, in this struggle over the enabling environment for civil society, governments are not the only culprits. Armed non-state actors, criminal networks and violent extremist organizations are responsible for an alarming number of attacks against civil society—human rights defenders, bloggers and journalists, environmentalists, labor unionists and even social service delivery organizations—who advocate for values and policies that these groups reject. However, rather than using laws, regulations, caps on foreign funding, and complicated registration and reporting requirements—the preferred tactics of most governments—these armed actors often deploy brutal force against civil society. As a result, CSOs in many countries are being squeezed between governmental regulation and interference on the one hand and violent suppression by armed groups on the other—with freedom of association, assembly and expression hanging in the balance.
To date, the international community has been primarily focused on governmental efforts to use legislation and other legal restrictions on CSOs to limit their operability. The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, for example, monitors legal barriers affecting the freedom of association in 50 countries and eight multilateral organizations. So why should considerations of closing space be broadened to include violence perpetuated against CSOs by armed actors? First and foremost, governments have an obligation to investigate and ensure accountability for violations under international human rights law and humanitarian law, regardless of the perpetrators’ affiliation. They also have an incentive to protect the space for civil society groups to operate. The pervasive menace of armed groups, criminal elements, and violent extremists not only threatens the safety of civilians but also the stability and security of states.
Tragic examples of this phenomenon abound. In Libya, human rights defenders and other members of civil society have been killed, abducted, tortured and forced underground. They have seen their homes raided and their offices forcibly closed, and they have faced death threats and other forms of intimidation at the hands of a variety of armed actors. The February 2015 killing of Entissar al-Hassaeri, a vocal critic of Libya’s militias and fierce advocate for a strong national army and police force, shocked Libyan civil society, as it was the first time that a well-known female civil society activist was targeted in Tripoli. Unfortunately, as in many other countries confronting lawlessness and impunity, women activists in Libya have borne the brunt of retaliation, harassment and violence by militant groups who want them to withdraw from public life and stop advocating for human rights.
