anti-rights groups

• POLAND: ‘We invented new forms of protest because we had to’

  CIVICUS speaks to Klementyna Suchanow, an activist, author and researcher based in Warsaw, Poland, about the recentannouncement by the Polish governmentthat it will begin the process to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention on Violence against Women. Klementyna is one of the founders of thePolish Women’s Strikeand the International Women’s Strike. The Polish Women’s Strike is a grassroots feminist movement founded in 2016 to defend women’s rights against the government's plan to ban and criminalise abortion. Under the COVID-19 pandemic, the movement has remained united and active via a Facebook group and continues to mobilise for women’s rights in Poland.

  

  What has the situation of gender rights in Poland been over the past few years?

  We are under a conservative government and while I would never say it was paradise five years ago, the situation for women’s and LGBTQI+ rights has recently worsened. Every day you witness more verbal and physical attacks against marginalised groups. Divisions have been created along political lines and the main targets of aggression have been immigrants and LGBTQI+ people. During the campaign for 2019’s European Parliament election and this year’s presidential election the main focus has been on hate against LGBTQI+ people. The wave of hatred is very intense and dealing with it is a challenge. 

  The situation of women and women’s rights movements is slightly different. Our new strand of popular feminism is very inclusive and pragmatic. This is why so many young people have joined us in recent months. We see younger generations become more politicised and aware. So the women’s movement is in a very strong position. It is the only movement that has succeeded in forcing the government to take a step back from its idea to ban abortion in 2016, and then later around other issues. It looks like our anger scares them, but they still keep doing things to worsen our situation.

  In sum, women are experiencing setbacks in our legal situation but our power keeps growing. I am not sure if this is the case with the LGBTQI+ community, because they are a minority group and are more exposed. The situation of LGBTQI+ people is definitely getting worse on all fronts.

  Have there been further regressions on gender rights during the COVID-19 pandemic?

  Taking advantage of the pandemic, the government and other groups have made several attempts to roll back women’s sexual and reproductive rights. In May 2020, the Polish parliament proposed a bill that would remove the legal obligation for medical facilities to refer patients to other facilities if they refuse to provide abortion care based on their staff’s personal beliefs. Under current Polish law, a legal abortion can only be performed if the mother’s life is at risk, the pregnancy is a result of rape, or the foetus has a serious deformity. About 98 per cent of abortions fall under the latter category, but a bill was proposed in May to eliminate this clause. In June, new provisions in the Criminal Code imposed harsh prison sentences on those who support women by providing them with abortion care.

  The amendments to abortion laws during the pandemic came about through a civic project submitted by a fundamentalist organisation. We organised protests, which was a slightly crazy thing to do, because how do you protest during a pandemic when you are not allowed to gather? That is why we got creative: we invented new forms of protest because we had to. We staged ‘queueing protests’, standing two metres apart in a queue outside a shop close to the parliament building, to comply with lockdown regulations, while holding signs and umbrellas. This happened in several cities, not just in the capital, Warsaw. As we were not allowed to walk freely, we also organised ‘car protests’. We interrupted traffic and blocked Warsaw’s main square for about an hour.

  These protests were quite effective. The amendments did not proceed and are now ‘frozen’. They were sent to a parliamentary commission, but the commission is not working on them. They have been neither rejected nor approved. But this also means that they might come back suddenly at any point in the future, and we will have to deal with them again.

  From the very beginning this government has been clear that it does not support women’s rights and does not care about violence against women. Since the government came into power, funding to centres that help women has been cut and these centres have had to resort to crowdfunding or are surviving on private donations, because they have no access to state funding anymore. However, some progress has also taken place, as with a recently passed law, which was proposed by a leftist party, that empowers police officers to issue an order to forbid perpetrators of violence from entering the household of the victim for 14 days. This has helped immediately separate victims from perpetrators.

  On the other hand, over the past several months we have seen announcements from the authorities that they are thinking about pulling Poland out of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, known as the Istanbul Convention. In the beginning we didn’t take it too seriously. But it is always like this: first they test the waters to see how far they can go, and if they don’t find too much resistance they start pushing forward. During the presidential campaign and election, the topic was not raised, but only a week afterwards it became an issue. Many serious developments, such as arrests of activists, took place right after the election.

  Now the situation is becoming serious. Announcements have been made by several ministers and the president has approved the idea to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention. There is also a lot of propaganda on state media to convince people that this Convention is about so-called ‘gender ideology’. However, surveys show that over 60 per cent of the population is against leaving the Convention compared to only 15 per cent who support the idea. Half of those who oppose leaving the Convention voted for the ruling party. It is weird that they are pushing this so far because it’s against the views of their own voters.

  As someone who was at the forefront of the2016 women’s strike in Poland, how do you feel about the current situation?

  We are so used to hearing bad news that we weren’t surprised with this latest announcement. The situation in Poland is such and so many bad things happen every day that you become immune to bad news.

  During the pandemic everything has been highly political. Instead of focusing on taking care of people’s health, everything became politicised. The presidential election was supposed to be held in May, and there was a lot of discussion about whether it should be held; it was finally postponed to late June. The ruling party knew that it was losing popularity because the health system is not efficient enough and the minister of health himself made huge money by supplying masks and medical equipment. This is why the ruling party pushed to have the election as soon as possible, before it lost too many votes. And instead of taking care of our safety and lives, the ruling party focused on its own political agendas. The attempts to ban abortion were very upsetting and disappointing because you expect more responsibility from your government at such a critical time.

  I knew people were tired of mobilising, so I was surprised to see so many come out to defend the Istanbul Convention, which became a national topic of discussion in the media and everywhere. A lot of positive energy has been created around this and is giving us the strength to try and stop it.

  We have been protesting for five years now. Protest has its own dynamics: you have to feel the moment and decide how to react; sometimes you give it a try and it doesn’t work out. It’s always an experiment. But right now, we feel that there is real energy and a momentum we need to ride on. There is a lot of interest from foreign media, and this topic has become the focus of attention. This is slightly strange because every time we tried to do something on violence against women in the past, it was very hard to get people to mobilise on the streets. There is something about violence that makes it difficult to translate feelings into street action. While many people experience it or know somebody who has been a victim, they don’t like to react to it. Many times in the past we failed when organising things on the topic of violence, but this time people took it up. We might now have a chance to defend the right to a life free from violence and make this a problem for the government.

  Do gender rights activists in Poland currently experience any restrictions on their right to organise, speak up and mobilise?

  I am a writer and artist, and as a result of my activism I am cut off from state grants. There are no state institutions that want to work with me right now because if my name shows up on their list, it becomes a problem for them. You could also be arrested or be taken to court by a right-wing legal foundation such as Ordo Iuris. Of course, there is also hate speech: the government uses your name and your image for propaganda on state media, and you can also be attacked by trolls on social media. Police can hurt you, as happened to me at one protest in 2018. This situation came about gradually, but at this point there is a wide range of forms of repression that you can experience. For the time being, however, I haven’t heard of feminist activists facing physical attacks from civilians.

  I am one of the activists who started taking direct action against the government, so there are a lot of things that I am being accused of. Ordo Iuris does not like me because I wrote a book exposing the international fundamentalist network that it is part of. I am on the list of their enemies, but so far, I have not been sued by them. They say they are working on their list of accusations against me, because there are so many. During our latest protest, members of Ordo Iuris approached a police officer and tried to convince him that I should be requested to show my identification. But the police in Warsaw know us, they know our faces, they knew that I had not done anything illegal during the protest and refused their request.

  In which ways can civil society hold accountable an increasingly authoritarian government such as Poland’s, and what support from international civil society does it need to do so?

  Regarding the Istanbul Convention, we are trying to convince the international community that European funds should be allocated bearing in mind the actual human rights compliance records of each member of the European Union (EU). A new instrument introduced in the EU established that funding should be linked to adherence to democratic principles and practices. We are trying to convince the Council of Europe, the source of the Istanbul Convention, to introduce similar measures towards the governments that are relinquishing their people’s rights. It’s all about linking funding to human rights compliance. Money is the only language governments will understand. Six Polish cities are currently not receiving European funds following their declaration of so-called ‘LGBTI-free zones’, which is considered an act against human rights. We would like to raise this question, together with Turkish women, who are facing a similar battle against their government’s initiative to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention. You cannot be destroying human rights, like Hungary and Russia are doing, and still be treated by the Council of Europe like anyone else, as a partner in the conversation. So, this is a new approach that we are trying to make people understand.

  We want international civil society organisations to lobby local politicians so they become aware that the issues of human rights and funding need to be considered together. The Council of Europe also needs to understand this so we can set a precedent and in the future women here and in other countries will be protected. If we have an authoritarian government that does whatever it wants, even if citizens don’t agree, we need to have some protections from abroad. All we find in Poland is repression, so we need somebody from outside to be on our side and not leave us alone.

  Civic space in Poland israted as ‘narrowed’ bytheCIVICUS Monitor.
  Get in touch with the Polish Women’s Strike through itsFacebook page and follow@strajkkobiet and@KSuchanow on Twitter.

• REFUGEE RIGHTS: ‘My status doesn't represent me’

  As part of our 2019thematic report, we are interviewing civil society activists and leaders about their human rights work, their experiences of backlash from anti-rights groups and their strategies to strengthen progressive narratives and civil society responses. CIVICUS speaks to Abdul Aziz Muhammat, a Sudanese refugee who became an advocate for refugee rights while experiencing long-term detention at the Australian government detention centre on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. In January 2019 he was awarded theMartin Ennals award for his tireless work on behalf of his fellow detainees.

  How did you become a refugee, and why did you end up detained on Manus Island?

  I am from the Darfur region of Sudan. In 2013, as today, Sudan was undergoing civil conflict, famine and drought, so I fled to Indonesia, where I boarded a boat bound for Australia. When I finally made it, I was sent, along with many others, to an offshore detention centre on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. This is a notorious holding space used by Australia to detain those seeking refuge. Australia’s policy of detaining and processing refugees on Manus Island has resulted in the systematic violation of the rights of several hundreds of people. I was forced to stay there for four years. I was granted refugee status in 2015 but stayed on Manus Island until 2019 when I was granted asylum in Switzerland.

  What were the main challenges you faced while detained on Manus Island?

  The detention centre was deliberately designed to make our lives there as bad as hell, designed to take our humanity away and replace it with cruelty and inhumane treatment, and designed to push us as hard as possible, mentally and physically. For instance, you wouldn’t receive proper medical treatment if you were sick, physically or mentally, but rather people would point fingers at you or tell you to go back to where you come from. I personally went through a lot of physical and mental challenges.

  It is extremely difficult to summarise the situation, because it really is beyond human understanding. I am afraid people without a personal experience of detention in a place like that wouldn’t ever understand how detention destroys the lives of vulnerable people, both physically and mentally.

  The situation was so bad that nobody who would be able to bear witness – human rights researchers, social workers, civil society organisations – was allowed to enter the island. So I tried to expose the cruelty and inhumanity faced by refugees on Manus island. Over time, I sent a journalist over 3,500 WhatsApp messages documenting the conditions of the detention camp. These were later turned into a podcast, The Messenger, that was published by the Guardian in 2017.

  I started doing advocacy back in 2013. As soon as the authorities realised, the harassment started, and never stopped. It began with physical abuse, then torture, and when I got sick either physically or mentally, I didn't always get treatment. Even when I did, all there was was a doctor whose job description seems to have been to be as bad as they could. Between 2013 and 2015 I was in a desperate need of medical treatment, physically and mentally. Within a month I lost six kilos and I nearly died, but I managed to pick myself up again. I realised that I could not rely on these people to help me or treat me, so I decided to look after myself and treat myself.

  I started to read about psychology and psychiatry and how they deal with anxiety, stress and post-traumatic stress. Reading and researching helped me to cope and to learn how to look after myself as well as to look after friends in similar situations. I became a sort of therapist or counsellor to them, helped them out of their mental crises by detecting their negativity and replacing it with positivity – in other words, by trying to raise hope. I know it's not good to give people false hope, but I just tried to be there for them, to talk to them and try to remain positive, and tell them that we would get out of there sooner or later but in the meantime we just needed to stay positive.

  What were the main restrictions on people’s ability to organise or speak up while detained on Manus Island?

  Restrictions were all over the place. In a prison, the main rule for prisoners is ‘say nothing, do nothing, stay quiet’. You are an animal in a cage – you only move when the cage is opened for you, you only eat or drink when you are given food or water, and you only speak when you are told to. A separate world is created, with its own rules, structures, authorities and boundaries that you are not supposed to cross, and if you do cross them you are subjected to a variety of punishments. Social workers, the case managers, advised their clients in the centre to not speak about their situation if they wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. Otherwise, you would remain in detention for a very, very long time, as your process would be delayed and your name would be put on a blacklist. These were the kinds of verbal threats that we got.

  When you are immersed in a world like that, you always think of alternative options. If you cannot dismantle the system, then you may try to manipulate it so that you are seen as complying with the rules even if you are not taking them seriously. I wanted to test the limits and check what the punishment for breaking rules would be, if it would be applied or not, so I took the risk to become an advocate and started speaking up about the situation. I knew that I was going to be punished but also wanted to be a role model for others follow, so that if we all spoke up together we would be heard and our situation would improve.

  Unfortunately, due to our differences in cultural backgrounds, some of my friends refused to follow. I also blame the system for this, because it is deliberately designed to create passivity through fear. However, we did manage to highlight the core problems and shift public opinion from a negative to a positive perception of refugees. The Australian government proposed a law that would criminalise whistleblowers further, but despite this, many other people felt encouraged to speak up when they saw us, speaking up about our situation while incarcerated.

  What were your demands to the Australian government?

  We were not in a position to present our demands to the government directly. We were just people who had fled their homelands and were looking for a safe place to call home, and that would give us the opportunity to make a contribution to society. When we came to Australia we were just like every other asylum seeker. We did not want to get in any confrontation with the government or even talk about them and their policies. But when they sent us to Manus Island, they forced us to speak up and organise. As a result, we managed to learn resilience and the ability to think out of the box and to act despite our lack of resources.

  We had one very clear message to the Australian government. We basically asked, ‘If you don't want us in your country, why do you rescue us from the sea in the first place? If you don’t want us, please stop taking us to Manus Island; there are other countries that are willing to take us’. We made it very clear to the Australian government that we did not want to come to Australia after what we had been through, and we wanted them to hand us over to the United Nations’ Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which is designed specifically to deal with the problems of refugees.

  How did the Australian government respond to your demands?

  The Australian government was getting heat from all sides. The international community pointed fingers at Australia and Australian civil society pointed fingers at their government claiming this was cruel and inhumane treatment and accusing them of being fascists. In response, the Australian government claimed this was not actually happening in Australia but in Papua New Guinea – according to them, this was happening on Papuan territory and the Australians were only providing them with the logistics. Truth is, though, that Australia still acts like a coloniser and the Papuan government complies with whatever they say regarding the detention centre.

  As Australia claimed they were not responsible, we ended up facing the authorities of Papua New Guinea, who had no idea how to deal with us. They said they knew nothing of the situation we were denouncing, and that they didn’t even have access to us or the authority to make any decision regarding us – they were waiting for the Australian parliament to decide what to do and where to send us. So we basically kept being sent back and forth and never got any response from either side.

  As our demands were ignored by both governments, we found ourselves fighting not only for our freedom but also for something more basic, our human dignity. We were human beings who had been turned into numbers but fought back to turn ourselves back into human beings, so that then we could start thinking about freedom. That is when we thought, ‘What if we demand our fundamental rights, like proper medical treatment? We are talking about Australia, a Western democracy with top-notch medical services – why can't we just access equal medical services as Australian citizens?’. Still, the government kept ignoring us.

  We then realised that if we were not able to get to the Australian authorities, we might still be able to use social media to challenge the government’s arguments. And so we did.

  Did you get any support from civil society in Papua New Guinea, Australia or other countries?

  To be honest, civil society in Papua New Guinea had no idea what they were dealing with, of what was going on. Civil society groups there are dealing with other crises – healthcare, insecurity, unemployment – that from their perspective are much worse. They just don’t have the time or resources to look into Manus Island.

  As for Australian civil society, there has been a significant change over the past few years. Today, with the help of Australian civil society, we are managing to get our message around Australia. When we started talking about Manus Island in 2013, one organisation, Refugee Action Coalition in Sydney, got in touch with us and connected us with many other civil society organisations. At the beginning, the position of civil society wasn't very clear or unified. Many thought their argument was weak because this was happening outside Australian territory. But we worked hard to shift their views, and now Australian civil society has a stronger, vocal position, and every time they get into an argument with the government they win it. We are very thankful to every individual and organisation in Australian civil society who contributed to spread the word about Manus Island.

  Alongside Australian civil society, we succeeded in having the Medevac Bill passed in February 2019. This law gave us refugees not quite full access to our fundamental rights, but it gave us something rather than nothing. The newly-elected Conservative government is now desperately trying to repeal the Medevac Bill, but thank God we have managed to buy some time until November.

  Are you aware of groups in Australia that oppose refugee rights?

  I cannot say there are civil society groups organised to oppose refugee rights, but there are indeed politicians in parliament and in government who do. They claim that Australia has one of the best asylum processes and that the people on Manus are not refugees. They tell people: ‘these people are coming to take your job, to steal your welfare, they are criminals’. These are the politicians. There are just a minority of Australian society, but they are always there. There are always people who oppose your rights, and they do it by putting forward arguments that may not even be connected to what you're fighting for.

  Do you think that people outside Manus recognised the work that you were doing?

  Although I did a lot for my friends inside Manus and for many people elsewhere, while I was on Manus I never felt that my voice was being heard or my work recognised, up until February of this year, when I was given the Martin Ennals award. I am very thankful to everyone who stood beside me and shared my story and demands. I don’t have an academic background and I started from the grassroots, where I faced many challenges, but never thought that I should stop. I just want to keep doing the work that I’m doing. I’m not doing it for credit, but because this is who I am, and it’s what makes me feel good about myself. I want to represent the voice of refugees, because our voice is either completely missing or misrepresented by some organisations.

  Over time, I witnessed some organisations working day and night on behalf of refugees, while others are fighting for their own interest or to further their own political agenda. Sometimes people contact you and ask you a comment, or to participate in an event, they use you for their fundraising and you never hear from them again, until they run out of funds and they come back to you. So it is important to tell apart those who are advocating or speaking on behalf of the missing voices of refugees or migrants because that is what they believe in, and those who are trying to get some gain out of it. It is important to identify those who do it out of their humanity or because they feel that something needs to be done.

  Sometimes other people take credit for the work I do, fail to see me as my own advocate, or think I am going to put their work in jeopardy, and for that reason they keep undermining me. But they won’t stop me – I’m here to make unheard voices heard. All the while I’m dealing with a huge amount of trauma, as I spent six years incarcerated in a detention centre, in a parallel world with its own rules and restrictions, where people are kept under control and their humanity is taken away.

  What difference did the Martin Ennals award make to you and your struggle?

  Winning the Martin Ennals award gave me purpose, and a lot more. I never in my life thought that one day I would be coming to Europe, and particularly to Geneva. It was not even part of my dream, and it happened because of the Martin Ennals award. Above all, this award meant recognition, not just of the work I’ve done, which I wasn’t doing to be recognised anyway, but most importantly of the situation of refugees and asylum seekers in Manus Island, in Nauru, in Australia and around the world. It meant that despite what we've been through, or maybe because of it, we get to represent our own voice, to speak for ourselves and make the world know what is happening.

  The award finally shone a light on the crisis on Manus Island. Not long ago, the Australian government came to Europe to talk about their successful migration policy. They didn’t speak about the atrocities they have committed and the suffering they have caused to kids, men and women who have been mentally and physically destroyed. But as a result of this award people are beginning to understand what happened. It was a crime against humanity. I’m not a lawyer or a legal expert, but you don’t have to be one to see that locking up thousands of people for years and torturing them mentally and physically is well beyond the law, and any government that does that is acting above the law.

  What are the next steps for you?

  I want to continue amplifying the voices of migrants and refugees and to make people understand that we are equal human beings, you and me, that there is no difference between us. I want to advocate for refugees and migrants globally, not just in one place, because as we can currently see in Europe, some countries are acting beyond all limits, turning into evil. Italy and Hungary, for instance, have even passed laws to criminalise people who are saving the lives of others. So what I want to do next is help empower these embattled human rights defenders.

  I also want to make people stop judging people based on their status. If you look at my status, my migratory status, I am a refugee. But my status doesn't represent me. I am Aziz, and I want people to treat me as Aziz – Aziz who has the ability and capacity to stand up and speak and participate and share his story, Aziz who also can be part of the community he is in, not Aziz the refugee you feel sorry for. 'Refugee’ and ‘migrant' have almost become offensive words, and it is our duty to change that, to prove to the world that they are not, and to remind people of history. It's not long ago when the world turned upside down in the First and Second World Wars, when many people became refugees and were not treated the way that we’re treating people right now. The fact that you were not there at the time is no excuse for ignorance. The history is there; if you can read, you can learn what happened. I will use the Martin Ennals award to share my story and other stories of struggle and resilience on Manus Island. I will use my personal testimony to give people the facts.

  What support do refugees and refugee advocates need from the international community and international civil society?

  We want the international community to understand fully that we are human and include us in the conversation and in decision-making. By talking about us, or representing us, be it from a legal or an academic perspective, you are not helping the victims, those actually experiencing torture and trauma. What we want is for the trauma and the torture to stop, and for that to happen, we need people who have been through the experience to come and testify, to be heard by the international community.

  We want civil society to also include the voices of refugees and migrants in roundtable discussions, where they could convey the message that people do not choose to be refugees, but they are forced to. If I can take part in the discussion, I will say what is in my mind, I will tell what I have been through, and I will be a strong voice on behalf of people who remain in places that are out of sight, out of mind – where no one knows of their existence. I will be their voice. It will encourage them to stay strong, resist power and fight hard, even inside a detention centre, if they know a refugee is sitting at the table and speaking on their behalf.

  Including refugees at the table provides legitimacy to civil society. When civil society speaks up, governments always undermine them by pointing out, 'You were not there, how do you know?'. In order not to be pushed into the corner that way, they need to bring in refugees or migrants that speak for themselves and who can say ‘yes, I was there, and I know how horrible that place is’.

  To stay true to its mission, civil society needs to question its own motivations and scrutinise everything from that perspective, even human rights institutions and refugee agencies and staff. Many people view international institutions and civil society organisations as a source of employment rather than a platform to serve others, to help people that are in need of help. There is so much to be done in order to improve human rights and democracy around the world. We need everyone’s contributions, the only way we can do it is together.

  Get in touch with Aziz onFacebook and follow him onTwitter

• SIERRA LEONE: ‘We are dealing with a relentless campaign by anti-rights groups’

  CIVICUS speaks about the struggle for sexual and reproductive health rights in Sierra Leone with Nicky Spencer-Coker, head of advocacy and movement building of Purposeful Sierra Leone.

  Purposeful is a feminist hub for girls’ activism, rooted in Africa and working all around the world. The organisation has played an active role in promoting the Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health Bill in Sierra Leone.

  What is the Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health Bill?

  The Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health Bill is currently being drafted following the president’s announcement that his government unanimously backs an initiative to promote risk-free motherhood, made during the 10th Africa Conference on Sexual Health and Rights held in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in early July. But the message that came out on the media was that Sierra Leone had legalised abortion, which was actually not the case.

  Following its announcement, the government has hired national and international consultants to take part in the process. Further, a working group that includes activists, practitioners and government officials is working alongside the Ministry of Health.

  The expectation is that the bill will have reached parliament by the time the new parliament opens in October. Sierra Leone will have elections next year and we do not want this to carry over into the election period because we could face problems with members of parliament wanting to protect their seats by not engaging with an initiative that could be viewed as controversial, as it should include access to sexual and reproductive health services. We hope the bill will be submitted to parliament by October and it will pass this year.

  In 2015 parliament passed the Safe Abortion Act, which was supposed to allow women and girls access to safe abortions. But the former president blocked the bill, possibly due to both lack of political will and pressure from anti-rights and religious groups.

  It is worrying that the same issues that led the former president to not sign the Safe Abortion Act continue to be raised by certain segments of society in the context of the Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health Bill. We hope this time around it will be different because our president has signalled that he and his cabinet are willing to challenge abortion stigma in the context of health services for girls and women.

  In addition, our government has signed international instruments such as the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, which requires states to provide people with access to adequate and affordable health services. This puts pressure on the government to respect and promote the right of women to health, including sexual and reproductive health. We remain hopeful that these commitments will be fulfilled.

  How has civil society in general, and your organisation in particular, advocated for abortion rights?

  Women’s rights groups and activists for sexual and reproductive health rights have been fighting for the abolition of colonial-era abortion laws for years, with the movement growing stronger in 2014 and 2015 when the Safe Abortion Act was being advanced. Most of these organisations and activists collaborate under the umbrella of the People’s Alliance for Reproductive Health Advocacy, a coalition that advocates for sexual and reproductive rights through engagement, dialogue and partnership with key stakeholders.

  As well as being part of the coalition, Purposeful also operates as an independent organisation that carries out our own advocacy work in communities. We are an African-led feminist hub for girls’ activism, and we want to make sure Sierra Leonean girls inherit a world where they can live safely and have choices. High on our agenda are sexual and reproductive rights, but we work on a wide platform including the provision of comprehensive sexual education, accurate information on reproductive health choices and life skills.

  A strategy that has proven particularly successful for the Coalition has been to engage directly with various groups of stakeholders. We have tried to stay in constant dialogue with organisations and people who vehemently oppose women’s sexual and reproductive rights. Telling human stories that show how women and young girls are affected by the lack of access to reproductive health services has helped bring awareness of the severity of the issues we face.

  Over the years, the Coalition has been fortunate to work with medical professionals and the Ministry of Health to shift the narrative on the safe termination of pregnancy and safe motherhood in Sierra Leone, a country with a very high rate of teenage pregnancy and maternal mortality. A significant number of these deaths are caused by lack of access to safe abortion and reproductive health choices.

  Have you faced anti-rights backlash?

  In 2015, when the Safe Abortion Act was being discussed, there were several confrontations between anti-rights groups and civil society activists, and I was nearly assaulted when attending a parliamentary session. For the drafting of the current bill we are not seeing the same level of aggression, but we are dealing with a relentless campaign by some anti-rights and religious groups that are going on radio and television to denounce a bill that does not even yet exist.

  We don’t find the backlash surprising and we know that the position of certain groups won’t ever change. But it’s the government’s responsibility to look to the greater good and ensure the health and wellbeing of women and girls.

  Besides, we have seen a positive response from the public. I think this is the result of civil society’s focus on sharing information and creating awareness. We also appreciate international attention, as it will provide incentives for the government to stay true to its words.

  What are the next steps, and what kind of international support would Sierra Leonean civil society need?

  There is a joint drive by the Ministries of Education and Health to ensure the success of the initiative that is pushing the government to provide comprehensive sexual education in schools. Our country has extremely high rates of teenage pregnancy, which we hope to reduce through education. While legalising abortion is important, many other issues regarding accessible and affordable health services for women and girls must also be addressed, and healthcare professionals must be adequately trained to provide those services.

  We need international civil society to keep these issues on the agenda. In Africa we have noticed that when you stop insisting on something, governments automatically think the issue is off the table and there’s no need for them to do anything about it. It’s our job to continue to remind our government that it has signed certain instruments that make it imperative for it to recognise the reproductive rights of women and girls. We also need to have a cross-border conversation with other African countries that have more progressive reproductive health rights legislation.

  Civic space in Sierra Leone is rated ‘obstructed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
  Get in touch with Purposeful through itswebsite orFacebook andInstagram pages, and follow@Purposeful_org on Twitter.

• SPAIN: ‘The main challenge is to consolidate legally recognised rights and prevent backsliding’

  CIVICUS speaks with Carmen Miquel Acosta, gender lawyer at Amnesty International Spain, about the recently passed Organic Law on the Guarantee of Sexual Freedom, known as the ‘Only Yes is Yes Law’, and the role of civil society in advancing women’s rights.

  What was civil society’s role in the process leading to the approval of the ‘Only Yes is Yes Law’?

  The ‘Only Yes is Yes Law’ is a clear example of the joint work done by the women’s movement, and particularly the feminist movement, present in all spheres, including civil society and government, to respond to a situation.

  One of its triggers was the ‘La manada’ (‘The herd’) case, a case of gang rape that happened in Pamplona in 2016. The judicial response to that case was a perfect example of patriarchal justice, or rather injustice. It exhibited the way in which stereotypes operate and the principle of not believing the victim.

  In 2018 the court decided that what had happened had not been rape but just ‘sexual abuse’, and sentenced the five members of the ‘herd’ to nine years in prison for that crime. Outrage at the verdict triggered huge protests and the women’s movement grew in numbers. Many young women who were getting acquainted with feminism mobilised for the first time.

  It was also at that time that Amnesty published a report highlighting the lack of specific public policies on sexual violence, the lack of data and the absence of a legal framework to address this violation of fundamental human rights. We have called for a law to address the issue ever since.

  Participation in the legislative process was massive and civil society provided a great deal of input, as a result of which the draft was improved.

  The process took quite a long time, not only because it enabled participation, but also because in Spain the process of developing organic laws that deal with fundamental rights requires mandatory reports from the General Council of the Judiciary and the Council of State. All these reports informed the draft law and allowed for a more rigorous treatment of the issue.

  What were feminist organisations’ main issues of concern during the development of the law?

  The first issue was the lack of a diagnosis. This was an issue that concerned Amnesty because we see a tendency to deal with problems without a prior diagnosis and to skip an evaluation of the effectiveness of the public policies adopted.

  With this law the government sought, among other things, to implement the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, known as the Istanbul Convention, which requires Spain to adopt public policies of prevention. This requires a diagnosis and systematic data.

  Another important issue was that of the judiciary. Spain received a judgment from the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women for a case of stereotyping by a female judge. In this process, a central discussion was how to deal with the use of stereotypes by the judiciary, what training should be given to judges and to what extent it should be compulsory, without being seen as interference in the independence of the judiciary.

  Another issue that was also of concern to us, but which was not included in the law, was that of the use of sexual violence as torture. In Spain sexual violence has been used this way in places of detention, especially against foreigners. The law does not go so far as to establish a crime of torture, which is not subject to a statute of limitations and entails a different type of investigation as it is a crime under international law.

  Another issue that in our opinion was not adequately addressed is that of foreign women in an irregular migratory situation. Although the Istanbul Convention establishes that it is not necessary to file a complaint in order to access gender-based violence services, in cases where women file a complaint, if for whatever reason no conviction ensues, their expulsion files can be reopened.

  Finally, there were some issues, such as sex work, that generated debates within feminist circles that remain unresolved. Amnesty’s position is that sex workers have human rights and the criminalisation of sex work not only does not help them, but exposes them to stigmatisation. Unfortunately, sex workers’ collectives were not consulted in the process.

  What difficulties will the implementation of the law face?

  This is a very ambitious law, the implementation of which requires a lot of resources. It will have to be implemented across the whole territory of Spain, which includes 17 autonomous communities, each with its own jurisdiction on social services and justice, among other areas involved in the implementation of the law. All this raises the question of how the text of the law will be translated into effective reality.

  What are the next challenges for women’s rights?

  The main challenge is to consolidate legally recognised rights and prevent backsliding. At the moment a reform of abortion legislation is on the table to remove barriers to access this right, and it is going to be a controversial issue in the parliamentary debate.

  Opinion is very polarised and there is a prevailing narrative that demonises the other, something that is very apparent in the use of the ‘gender ideology’ label. Freedom of expression enriches democracy and must be protected, especially when things are said that we do not like. But attacks on human rights defenders and hate speech, both of which are on the increase, are an entirely different thing.

  In relation to women’s rights we are seeing setbacks in nearby countries such as Hungary and Poland. Rights gains that we had come to take for granted are not being consolidated or are experiencing setbacks. Hence the importance of increasing human rights awareness and citizen participation. In the midst of this ideological battle, the democratisation of the language of rights is now more urgent than ever.

  ---

  Civic space in Spain is rated ‘narrowed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.

  Get in touch with Amnesty International Spain through itswebsite orFacebook page, and follow@amnistiaespana on Twitter.

• SPAIN: ‘We demand legal and safe channels for migration; attempts to stop it will only cause more suffering’

  CIVICUS speaks with Solidary Wheels about the deadly consequences of European governments’ anti-migrant policies, in light of the deaths of migrants at an attempted crossing of the Spain-Morocco border on 24 June.

• SWEDEN: ‘Swedish civil society needs to defend democracy at the grassroots level on a daily basis’

  As part of our 2018 report on the theme of reimagining democracy, we are interviewing civil society activists and leaders about their work to promote democratic practices and principles, the challenges they encounter and the victories they score. Following Sweden’s September election, CIVICUS speaks to Anna-Carin Hall, press officer at Kvinna till Kvinna (Woman to Woman), a Swedish civil society foundation that seeks to strengthenthe role of women in conflict regions by collaborating with women’s organisations and supporting their work to promote women’s rights and peace. Its advocacy focuses on six thematic areas: safe meeting places, the empowerment of women’s rights defenders, increasing women’s power, women’s participation in peace processes, power over one’s body and security for all.

  Sweden’s September election saw support fall for the established centre-left and centre-right parties and rise for the far-right Sweden Democrats. What factors lie behind this result, and what broader trends do you think it points to?

  First, I must emphasise that my answers reflect my own personal opinions rather than those of the organisation I work for. Kvinna till Kvinna is a politically and ideologically independent organisation and has only taken one single standpoint regarding the elections – against what we see as the Sweden Democrats’ anti-feminist policy.

  That said, the drop in support for social democratic parties, for example, is an ongoing trend all over Europe, and not just in Sweden, so one answer could be that this global trend towards a more traditional, nationalist and authoritarian climate finally got hold of Sweden, too.

  Part of the explanation is, as always, fear of globalisation, as traditional jobs move out of Sweden as a result of cost-efficiency thinking, and a large influx of migrants over a short time span, particularly in 2015, create a heavy pressure on the Swedish welfare system, including education and health services, as well as housing shortages.

  Before the election there was also public discussion about the gap between urban and rural areas in Sweden, and around health services shutting down in remote areas. Support for the Sweden Democrats is more common in regions with low education, low income and high unemployment.

  Nevertheless, the Swedish economy is still very strong, and Swedes are in no way suffering economically because of heavy immigration. But large migration centres set up in the countryside have altered the makeup of the population very quickly, causing tension in these places. Additionally, long-term studies in Sweden have shown that for many decades public opinion has been less pro-immigrant than the policies of the dominant parties, and the Sweden Democrats are now being able to capitalise on this.

  Apart from the economy, insecurity issues have also been used to stir anti-immigrant sentiment. A rising level of spectacular shootings among criminal gangs in some immigrant-dominated suburbs has attracted the attention of both Swedish and international media – one of those events was even mentioned by US President Donald Trump, who incorrectly implied that it had been a terrorist attack – and alt-right websites have used these politically a lot.

  Longer term, do you expect support for far-right causes to continue rise, or do you think it has peaked?

  There are different views on this. Some analysts say that the Sweden Democrats have become popular because the other parties in parliament have tried to shut them out. As a result, the Sweden Democrats and their supporters have been able to play the role of victims and claim that the political elite does not care for the views of the common people. Some therefore argue that the Sweden Democrats should be included in the government, and refer to the case of Finland, where Sannfinnlandarna, a nationalist party, reached the government and showed themselves unfit to govern, as a result of which support for them rapidly dropped. This is suggested as one potentially easy way to get the Sweden Democrats off the agenda.

  Several analysts have predicted that the Sweden Democrats will rise a bit more in the next election and will then start to lose popularity. The explanation for this would be that the right turn in the Western world will eventually fade out - but this is really just an assumption, with not much in terms of facts to support it.

  Are these trends indicative of rising currents of xenophobia and racism? If so, how have the more mainstream political parties responded to these and how have they impacted on rights-oriented civil society?

  There is a discussion in Swedish media right now regarding whether support for the Sweden Democrats is driven mainly by xenophobia and racism. Some opinion-makers claim this is the case, but there are surveys pointing towards the fact that Swedes think that the problem is failed integration, rather than immigration itself. Swedish society hasn´t been able to provide immigrant groups with proper education in Swedish, guidance about the Swedish community, decent jobs and so on.

  The change in the political climate manifests itself in, for example, more outspoken discussion of the costs of immigration and its impact on the Swedish welfare system. We can also see a more vivid discussion around cultural or traditional behaviour, such as honour crimes, with some claiming that for too long Sweden has not taken a strong stand against this and avoided several conflictive issues around immigration and integration that were considered culturally sensitive.

  The normalisation of the Sweden Democrats, a party that originated in the Neo-Nazi movement of the 1970s and 1980s, has also led to a louder alt-right Neo-Nazi movement in Sweden, which though still low in numbers, gets a lot of media attention. Several alt-right media outlets are spreading fake news about crime rates among immigrants. Alt-right groups are also making threats, spreading hatred and running smear campaigns in social media. This climate may very well lead to self-censorship among pro-immigration, feminist and LGBTQI groups.

  Mainstream parties have responded to all of this by moving towards a more moderate immigration policy and placing higher demands on immigrants – for instance, by introducing new requirements that they must meet in order to receive social aid and subsidies. Rights-oriented civil society groups are still trying to raise their voices in favour of a generous immigration policy based on humanitarian values, but they aren’t getting much attention these days.

  How is civil society working to combat xenophobia, racism and right-wing populism in Sweden, and what else could it do to build support for human rights and social justice?

  Open racism and xenophobia are in no way tolerated by the vast majority of Swedes, and several local rallies have been staged against racism and the Neo-Nazi movement both before and after the elections. Rights-oriented civil society has prepared for a long time to counter these trends, but stills needs the support of large groups of everyday people to have an impact on official discourse and the public conversation.

  Swedes take great pride in their open society and will likely defend the free press, the freedom of speech and gender equality, among other values. Threats and hatred against immigrants, journalists, feminists and LGBTQI activists get much attention in the media and several political actions have been organised to prevent them from happening. So, if a right-wing government forms with silent or open parliamentary support from the Sweden Democrats, we will likely see a lot of strong reactions from the political and cultural establishment as well as from civil society.

  In the long run, Swedish civil society needs to work to defend democracy at the grassroots level on a daily basis, and maybe it also needs to go to the barricades to build opinion and change what could turn out to be a dangerous course of history.

  Civic space in Sweden is rated as ‘open’ by the CIVICUS Monitor.

  Get in touch with Kvinna till Kvinna through its website and Facebook page or follow@Kvinna_t_Kvinna on Twitter.

• SWITZERLAND: ‘It was about time for everybody to have the same rights, with no discrimination’

  CIVICUS speaks with Reto Wyss,International Affairs Officer of Pink Cross, about the recentreferendum on same-sex marriage in Switzerland and the challenges ahead.

  Pink Cross is Switzerland’s national umbrella organisation of gay and bisexual men, and for 28 years it has advocated for their rights in the country’s four language regions. It stands against discrimination, prejudice and violence based on sexual orientation, gender identity and HIV status, and strives for acceptance and equal rights for all queer people on both a national and international level. It conducts its work through an active media presence, advocacy, campaigning and efforts to strengthen the LGBTQI+ community.

  What was the process leading to the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Switzerland, and what roles did Pink Cross play?

  The same-sex marriage bill was submitted to parliament in 2013 and it went back and forth several times between the two legislative chambers until it was finally passed in December 2020. Pink Cross did intensive and quite traditional advocacy, lobbying and public campaigning all along the process.

  We talked a lot with politicians of the conservative-liberal Free Democratic Party of Switzerland as well as the Christian Democratic People’s Party of Switzerland. We ordered a legal opinion that clearly stated that, contrary to what opponents of the law said, there was no need to change the Swiss Constitution to open marriage to all people. If that had been the case, the legalisation of same-sex marriage would have required a positive popular vote in the majority of the Swiss cantons, which would have made things a lot more complicated.

  To enshrine same-sex marriage, all that was needed was a law like the one parliament had passed, amending the Civil Code to extend marriage to all couples beyond those of a man and a woman.

  No referendum was necessary: the one held on 26 September was an optional referendum launched by opponents of the law, who intended to show that parliament’s decision was not welcome by the Swiss people and overturn it. To have this referendum called, they campaigned actively to gather the 50,000 signatures required. LGBTQI+ organisations would have been largely pleased with letting the decision made by parliament stand, rather than asking everybody whether they agreed with granting us the same rights as everyone else.

  The civil society campaign was officially launched on 27 June, with events in 23 towns and villages across Switzerland. Over the following 100 days, the queer community mobilised around the country with dozens of actions to demand the right to equality. The campaign was supported by several LGBTQI+ organisations, including Pink Cross, the Swiss Organisation of Lesbians-LOS, Network-Gay Leadership, WyberNet-Gay Professional Women, Rainbow Families and Fédération Romande des Associations LGBTIQ+.

  We wanted to gain as much visibility as possible, so we campaigned with thousands of rainbow flags hanging out of balconies throughout the country and posted many great videos online. This was a very broad grassroots campaign with many activists taking part in it, both online and in person. Our main message was that the same rights must be recognised for everybody, with no discrimination, and that in Switzerland it was about time.

  Who campaigned for and against same-sex marriage in the run-up to the vote? How did groups opposed to same-sex marriage mobilise?

  Leftist and liberal parties and organisations campaigned in favour of the law, while the right-wing populist Swiss People’s Party – although not all of its elected representatives – campaigned against it, along with a whole bunch of conservative and clerical organisations, including the rather small Evangelical People’s Party. The Catholic Church was against the law, although not all of its representatives or institutions had the same position. The Protestant Church backed the law, although not unanimously.

  Mobilisation against the law took place mainly in the countryside and – obviously – online. Their arguments were mostly about the alleged well-being of children, and focused on the fact that the law allowed same-sex married couples access to adoption and conception through sperm donation.

  What will be the immediate effects of the new law?

  On 26 September, by 64 per cent of the vote, the Swiss people expressed their agreement with the law granting equal marriage for all. The law will come into force on 1 July 2022 and will have very important and immediate practical effects, because the legal status of marriage has several important differences from the registered partnership (RP) regime already available to same-sex couples.

  The recognition of marriage to all couples will eliminate the inequalities in legal treatment that still exist regarding facilitated naturalisation, joint adoption, joint property, access to medically assisted reproduction and legal recognition of parent-child relationships in cases of medically assisted reproduction.

  If they want to be recognised as legally married, same-sex couples currently in RPs will have to apply for the conversion of their RP into legal marriage at the registry office by means of a so-called ‘simplified declaration’, which won’t carry excessive costs, although the exact procedure is yet to be determined and may vary from one canton to the next.

  Those who were married abroad but whose marriage was recognised in Switzerland as an RP will have their RP automatically and retroactively converted into marriage. 

  What other challenges do LGBTQI+ people in Switzerland face, and what else needs to change to advance LGBTQI+ rights?

  A lot remains to be done in terms of preventing, registering and convicting hate crimes adequately. Pink Cross is currently advancing this issue in all cantons, because this is within their jurisdiction. Likewise, we are preparing a first ‘precedent’ to get a ruling on the ‘anti-LGBT agitation’ paragraph that was introduced into criminal law last year.

  Finally, institutional anchorage of LGBTQI+ advocacy definitely still needs to be strengthened on a national level, specifically within the federal administration, either through a specific commission or by extending the mandate of the Federal Office for Gender Equality. So we are also working to move ahead on this.

  Civic space in Switzerland is rated ‘open’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
  Get in touch with Pink Cross through itswebsite or itsFacebook andInstagram pages, and follow@pinkcross_ch on Twitter. 

• SWITZERLAND: ‘The victory of marriage equality will boost our efforts towards the next steps’

  CIVICUS speaks with Jessica Zuber, co-leader of Operation Libero’s marriage for all campaign, about the recentreferendum on same-sex marriage in Switzerland. Operation Libero is a non-partisan civil society movement founded to campaign against populist initiatives. Its work focuses on preserving and developing liberal democracy, fostering strong relations between Switzerland and Europe, promoting a liberal citizenship law, supporting a democracy-strengthening digital transformation and encouraging more transparent, accountable and inclusive politics.

  What role did Operation Libero play in the process leading to the recent legalisation of same-sex marriage?

  Since its foundation, Operation Libero has fought for equal legal treatment. We accompanied the parliamentary process and lobbied so that the law was passed, which happened in December 2020, after almost seven years. A couple of days before the opponents of the law handed in their referendum request, we pushed our ongoing petition, which went viral and received over 60,000 online signatures within a single weekend. To us, that was a very strong signal on the state of public opinion.

  We launched our campaign six weeks before the vote. It focused on the motto ‘same love, same rights’. Our campaign complemented that of the ‘official’ committee led by the LGBTQI+ community, showing real same-sex couples on their posters. To set ourselves apart and appeal to a more conservative target, we showed same-sex couples alongside heterosexual couples.

  For the launch of our campaign, we staged a marriage and the pictures of this ceremony provided the visuals for media coverage during the campaign. Some of our main concepts were that fundamental rights must apply to all people, and that no one loses when love wins. It was a feel-good campaign, as we intentionally refrained from being too controversial – for instance, by highlighting that homophobia is still a phenomenon very present in Swiss society.

  During the campaign, around 150,000 of our flyers were handed out, 13,000 coasters ordered and 10,000 stickers distributed. Our main financial income to pay for this was the sale of our special socks, of which we sold almost 10,000 pairs. We organised boot camps to prepare voters for debates and launched a poster campaign in train stations and public buses. The joint flyer distribution event with members of the right-wing populist party – who, against the official party line, supported marriage for all – attracted media attention and succeeded in showing how broad support for the law was.

  Last but not least, a week before the vote we held an event where 400 people lined up on either side to applaud newlywed couples – same-sex and different-sex – as they ran through. This was a very inspiring event, the biggest of its kind in Switzerland.

  We are very happy that we won the referendum with 64 per cent of voters supporting the law. September 26th marks a big step for Switzerland: after far too long a wait, access to marriage finally applies to all couples, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. This eliminates key legal inequalities for same-sex couples, for example in facilitated naturalisation, the receipt of widows’ pensions, adoption and reproductive medicine.

  Why was a referendum called after parliament had already legalised same-sex marriage?

  Opponents of the law launched the referendum to try to overturn it. Their arguments were centred on the traditional view of marriage as a ‘natural’ union between a man and a woman and its centrality in society. They said that ‘introducing universal marriage is a social and political rupture that nullifies the historic definition of marriage, understood as a lasting union between a man and a woman’. They were particularly upset by the fact that the law enables access to sperm donation for female couples, as they believe this forfeits the best interests of the child. They also feared that these changes would lead to the legalisation of surrogacy.

  On a more technical level, they argued that universal marriage could not be introduced through a simple legislative amendment, but required a change to the constitution.

  Who were on the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ sides in the referendum?

  After parliament passed the law, a cross-party committee – mainly comprising representatives of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party and the Federal Democratic Union, an ultra-conservative Christian party – launched a petition for a referendum. They successfully gathered more than 50,000 signatures necessary to push their proposal through and get a national vote. The right to veto a parliamentary decision is part of the Swiss system of direct democracy.

  During the campaign, these groups put out campaign posters and online ads and participated in public media discussions. Their main argument was that children’s well-being was in danger, so they put the focus of the public debate on adoption and reproductive rights.

  Fortunately, civil marriage for same-sex couples enjoys widespread political support, as seen on 26 September. With the exception of the Swiss People’s Party, all the governing parties supported the bill, as did the Greens and Liberal Greens, who are not in the government.

  There was even some openness from religious groups. In November 2019 the Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches spoke out in favour of same-sex civil marriage; however, the Conference of Swiss Bishops and the Swiss Evangelical Network remain opposed to it.

  The aggressiveness with which the law granting marriage for all was fought and the fact that about a third of voters rejected it, partly for homophobic reasons, shows that homophobia is still widespread and still far too widely accepted.

  We also faced the challenge that as the polls projected a relatively clear victory from the outset, it made it harder for us to mobilise people. Our fear was that people might take victory for granted and not go out to vote. But we were able to reach people with the message that a victory by a wider margin was an even stronger sign for equality in Switzerland.

  What other challenges do LGBTQI+ people face in Switzerland, and what else needs to be changed to advance equal rights?

  LGBTQI+ groups will continue to fight, notably against hate crimes. Marriage for all does not deliver absolute equality for female couples who receive a sperm donation from a friend or choose a sperm bank abroad, in which cases only the biological mother will be recognised. These debates will still occur, and the LGBTQI+ community will continue to fight for equality.

  The clear ‘yes’ to marriage for all is a strong signal that the majority of our society is much more progressive and open towards diverse life choices than our legal system, strongly based on a conservative family model, might suggest. Indeed, marriage for all is just a small step towards adapting the political and legal conditions to the social realities we live in. The ‘yes’ to marriage equality will boost our efforts towards the next steps.

  We demand that all consensual forms of relationships and family models – whether same-sex or opposite-sex, married or not – become equally recognised. Marriage, with its long history as a central instrument of patriarchal power, must no longer be considered the standard model. It must not be privileged, either legally or financially, over other forms of cohabitation. In the coming months and years, Operation Libero will campaign for individual taxation, regulated cohabitation, simplified parenthood and a modern sexual criminal law.

  Civic space in Switzerland is rated ‘open’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
  Get in touch with Operation Libero through itswebsite or itsFacebook, Tik Tok, andInstagram pages, and follow@operationlibero and@jessicazuber on Twitter.

• TUNISIA: ‘The official response has failed to consider the gendered aspects of the pandemic’

  In the run-up to the 25th anniversary of theBeijing Platform for Action, due in September 2020, CIVICUS is interviewing civil society activists, leaders and experts about the progress achieved and the challenges ahead. Focused on eliminating violence against women, ensuring access to family planning and reproductive healthcare, removing barriers to women’s participation in decision-making and providing decent jobs and equal pay for equal work, the Beijing Platform for Action was adopted at the United Nations’ (UN)Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. After 25 years, significant but unequal progress has occurred, not least as the result of incessant civil society efforts, but no country has yet achieved gender equality.

  CIVICUS and the Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND) speak to Ramy Khouili, director of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women (Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates, ATFD). Founded in 1989 by the autonomous feminist movement in response to state feminism, ATFD promotes gender equality in all areas, from the political sphere to socio-economic rights, including women’s sexual, bodily and reproductive rights, and fights against all forms of discrimination and violence against women.

  

  What is the situation of women’s rights in Tunisia? How much has been achieved so far?

  About a month after independence in 1956, the Code of Personal Status was enacted. Up until now, it is still seen as the most progressive and revolutionary personal status code in the region because it abolished polygamy, instituted civil marriage and abolished repudiation and many forms of degradation of women. Ever since then, we had a very peculiar situation, as state feminism prevailed in the public sphere. We lived under a dictatorship for almost 50 years, but Tunisia was always praised as a good example when it came to women’s rights in the region. That praise took women hostage, denying them the right to real equality. So an autonomous feminist movement was founded and it made it its mission to denounce that the situation was not as good as the regime presented, which caused it a lot of trouble.

  Following the 2011 revolution there was a comeback of Islamist and conservative groups, and women’s rights were thus threatened. Between 2011 and 2014, during the process to draft a new constitution, the Islamist majority tried to impose a new concept of ‘complementarity’, instead of equality, between women and men. It took a lot of efforts from civil society organisations (CSOs) and street mobilisations to challenge this. As a result, Article 21 of the Tunisian Constitution now clearly states that women and men are equal before the law and prohibits any form of discrimination.

  It took a social movement to come up with a Constitution that is widely hailed as the most progressive in the region. A last-minute addition, Article 46, recognises the role of the state in fighting violence against women, establishes that the state has a responsibility to promote and protect the rights of women and prohibits any regression in women’s rights.

  Since then we have achieved many further legal changes. An anti-human trafficking law was passed in 2016 and an anti-violence law was approved in 2017, which was the first of its kind in the region and was mostly written by civil society activists and feminist organisations. In terms of political representation, the law on political parties enacted in 2011 established that all electoral lists must have gender parity. 

  What challenges remain?

  On the ground, the situation is different from the law, as inequalities are still very present. Many discriminations persist in practice. Statistics are alarming. Half of all women have been victims of some form of violence. Socio-economic crises have worse impacts on women than on men. Among women, the unemployment rate is almost double the rate for men. Women’s access to land is limited: only four per cent of women own land, although they make up almost 90 per cent of the agricultural labour force. 

  For a long time, Tunisia was known as the good example when it came to family planning and reproductive health, as family planning and reproductive health programmes were established in the 1950s and 1960s, and women were granted abortion rights in the early 1970s, even before many European countries. But since the revolution, we have noticed that state authorities have taken a step back when it comes to social services, especially in the areas of education, health and sexual and reproductive health. Access to contraceptives and abortion is becoming more limited, and unmet needs in terms of sexual and reproductive rights are increasing, which is alarming.

  In 2019 we submitted, along with other Tunisian CSOs, a shadow report tracking progress towards the goals of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and laying out the challenges ahead. Our report presented a very different view from the Tunisian government’s. One of our biggest concerns is that Tunisia is a Muslim-majority country and that when the Beijing Platform for Action and Action Plan were adopted, the state of Tunisia submitted a declaration – common to other Muslim-majority countries – saying that it would not commit to any measures that might contradict the values of Islam. Article 1 of the new Constitution states that Tunisia is a Muslim country. That declaration is still in place. Although the state of Tunisia has lifted most of its reservations on the Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, it didn’t lift its reservations on the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. So challenges remain both in law and practice.

  How has the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated those challenges, and what is civil society doing to address them?

  At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic the ATFD issued a warning to the Tunisian authorities stating our concerns about the period of lockdown, when many women would have to stay at home with their aggressors. We were right, as the number of instances of gender-based violence kept rising under lockdown. The Ministry of Women Affairs said that the amount of calls received through the emergency phone line set up by the government had multiplied fivefold. In our counselling centres we also witnessed a peak, as the number of women who were victims of violence and sought our help increased. The situation got more difficult as people started getting more aggressive. But at the same time, it became much more difficult to go to a police station or seek health services, so access to services decreased. Women have felt isolated and compelled to continue living with their aggressors during lockdown.

  Most of the courts were also closed during lockdown and we had to lobby with the high council of the judicial system and the Minister of Justice to include cases of violence against women amongst the emergency cases they were tackling during lockdown. Fortunately, they accepted. 

  Access to sexual and reproductive health services was also affected because women could not get out and seek these services for fear of the virus. We had to collaborate with the Minister of Health and Women Affairs to find solutions for this situation and we are now trying to find a way to ensure the continuity of reproductive health services.

  In addition, the socio-economic rights of women have been further impacted upon. Due to the economic crisis that came with the pandemic, many women lost their jobs, or are not getting paid. Many women in Tunisia work in the informal sector so they could not continue their work and were left without any income. This is affecting their ability to take care of themselves and their families. We have been working with a group of women domestic workers on a study about the situation of domestic workers in Tunisia. The situation is really alarming because domestic workers cannot work during lockdown and have no other source of income. Although the informal sector represents a large part of the economy, the relief measures adopted by the government only apply to the formal sector. In addition, government aid was given to families, but according to Tunisian law it is men who are the head of the family, so money goes mostly to men. In cases of conflict, violence or separation, women won’t have access to government aid.

  We have done a lot of advocacy with the authorities because the official response has failed to consider the gendered aspects of the pandemic. We have worked with most ministries. We met with most ministerial departments to raise awareness. We sent policy papers and open letters. We continued to deliver services in our counselling centres, which are still operating. We also adapted these services to be delivered by phone. We launched a campaign on violence against women during the pandemic, which was followed by thousands of people and was a big success. As a result, the Middle East and North Africa region department of Facebook got in touch with us and now we are working in partnership with them to increase audiences for future campaigns. We will also establish communication channels with Facebook to report violence and hatred on social media.

  What restrictions on the freedoms to organise, speak up and protest have you faced during the pandemic, and what are you doing to overcome them?

  We haven’t faced restrictions from the government, although our presence in the public space has been affected because it is not possible to hold demonstrations. Demonstrations are something that we are used to doing, because it works to occupy the public space and say, ‘we are here and we are asking for this and that’. This is something we now cannot do, but we are moving to a new phase of the lockdown and it might soon start to get a little easier, so we are thinking of new ways to protest while respecting social distancing. We are reflecting on how to adapt our mobilisation tactics. We are focusing on social media as well as traditional media to communicate our messages and talk about the problems we face, to reach out to the highest possible number of people. We are also attempting to diversify our ways of communication to reach out to different categories of target groups.

  We are also establishing a coalition with the journalists’ trade union, the Tunisian League of Human Rights and other organisations to work on the human rights impacts of response to the pandemic.

  Many donors and partners have been very flexible because it was obvious that we could not continue acting as if nothing had changed. We had to adapt many of our activities, postpone others and relocate budget towards social aid. Most of our partners were very understanding and we have had good discussions with them to readjust our plans to the situation created by the pandemic. However, we also had issues with donors who decreased salaries for this period.

  Besides tackling the urgent issues, we are also in a process of reflection internally and with our partners and allies. We want to see some positive change as a result of the pandemic. We want a more just and equal society in which everyone feels included. The pandemic has revealed some underlying issues that the government chose to ignore for a long time, but that now will need to be addressed, such as a failing healthcare system.

  What support does Tunisian civil society need from the international community?

  The main form of support is to work together. We have to work together because we have the knowledge from the ground, while international organisations have bigger networks and are able to work in a variety of contexts and have access to international mechanisms and the ability to influence the international agenda. For an effective partnership, we must work together to influence both the national and the international levels. The pandemic has shown us that some of the big issues cannot be tackled at the national level, but that we should also work at the international level and in collaboration with regional networks. If the two are put together I think we can achieve greater impact. 

  Civic space in Tunisia is rated as ‘obstructed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
  Get in touch with theTunisian Association of Democratic Womenthrough itsFacebook page and follow@atfd_tunisie on Twitter andfemmes_democrates on Instagram.

   

• TURKEY: ‘Refugees are the perfect scapegoat in times of crisis’

  CIVICUS speaks with Dilan Akbayır, a social worker who works with Syrian refugees, about Turkey’s plan to send refugees back to Syria and the rise of anti-refugee sentiment and racism against Syrians in Turkey.

  Dilan collaborates with several Istanbul-based civil society organisations (CSOs), including the Women’s Health and Planning Foundation.

  What prompted the Turkish government to announce a plan to send a million Syrian refugees back to Syria?

  I think the change in the government’s position on immigration has a lot to do with the 2023 general elections and the context of severe economic crisis that Turkey is going through, with very high inflation and the Turkish lira falling to its lowest level in history. Both the ruling party and the opposition have already started their campaigns, which are also taking place in a context of increased restrictions on personal rights and freedoms, severe inhibition of the freedom of expression, and the use of unlawful evidence in judicial proceedings.

  Turkey is the country with the world’s highest population of migrants and refugees. More than six million Syrians were forcibly displaced after the Syrian revolution broke out in 2011, and most of them flew to neighbouring Turkey. The official number of Syrian refugees in Turkey is over 3.7 million, but the total is estimated to be over five million.

  It is not surprising that migration and the future of refugees have become the main agenda item in Turkish politics. Refugees are the perfect scapegoat in times of crisis. Politicians are using the issue to redirect people’s anger towards refugees instead of blaming the politicians who have not been able to address their concerns. Opinion polls are showing that the only thing that unites Turkish society is anger towards refugees – anti-refugee sentiment is the glue that keeps the new Turkey together. People are driven to believe refuges are responsible for everything that is wrong in the country and given the illusion that everything will be okay if refugees are taken out of the way.

  In the context of an election campaign, any politician who most believably promises they will take care of this issue is likely to win. This is not exceptional to Turkey: we are seeing similar situations throughout Europe, as was recently the case with the French elections. Far-right politics are rising globally thanks to hostility towards refugees, immigrants and other minorities.

  Are there any legal grounds for the new anti-refugee policy?

  There are no legal grounds for the new anti-refugee policy. The international conventions to which Turkey is a state party, and Turkey’s domestic legislation, all stipulate the prohibition of refoulement. This means that refugees should not be sent back to countries where there is a danger of persecution, war, crisis, ill-treatment or torture. If this is not legal, then why have Turkish authorities and politicians announced a plan to return a million Syrians back to their country?

  There is a lot of confusion about the legal situation of Syrian refugees in Turkey, which has been under discussion for years. When the mass flow of Syrians began there was a legal gap that was later filled by two new laws: the 2013 Law on Foreigners and International Protection and the 2014 Temporary Protection Regulation. As a result, Syrians’ presence in Turkey began to be referred to as ‘temporary’. People started saying that Syrians are just passing by, waiting to move on to a third, more developed country.

  For the past decade, politicians have systematically emphasised the ‘temporary’ status of refugees living in Turkey – but in the meantime, refugees have made a life here, and they want to stay. Moreover, even if they remain under temporary protection, it still holds that certain conditions must be met before they can be sent back to Syria. The United Nations (UN) Refugee Agency has established that the return of asylum seekers must be dignified, safe and voluntary.

  For refugees to be returned, the UN should declare the region a safe zone for return, which has not happened. The UN considers Syria to be unsafe due to the ongoing violence, human rights violations and desperate humanitarian situation: 14.6 million people need humanitarian assistance and more than 12 million are struggling to find enough food. Ninety per cent of the population is below the poverty line and the country is on the verge of famine.

  As reported by Amnesty International, between 2017 and 2021 some Syrians were returned from Jordan and Lebanon, and returnees faced serious human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, kidnapping, torture, sexual assault and extrajudicial killings. Returnees may even be charged with treason or terrorism for having fled. Although armed conflict has decreased, the environment is still not safe.

  Do you think this is part of a broader pattern?

  It is not only in Turkey that migration and refugees have become highly charged political topics; this is happening in many European countries. More developed countries in particular were supposed to side with human rights and take much more responsibility in hosting refugees fleeing wars in Syria and other Middle East countries. But their policies have been mostly exclusionary and discriminatory.

  We just saw the rise of far-right politics hostile toward refugees, immigrants and minorities in the 2022 French election. In Denmark, a country of 5.8 million, only 35,000 of 500,000 refugees are Syrian, but in 2021 the Danish government decided not to renew their residence permits claiming that parts of Syria are safe. It is also planning to start processing asylum petitions in Uganda, in a plan very similar to the British government’s plan to process theirs in Rwanda.

  Following a UN resolution, the international community agreed to share responsibilities for the resettlement of refugees, but numbers tell a different story: the rate of resettlement in European countries is quite low compared to Turkey. This exposes the European Union’s externalisation policy, aimed at preventing irregular migration into Europe by ensuring that refugees stay in Turkey. This is not fair and causes more problems for developing countries such as Turkey, which experience more pronounced economic, social and political crises.

  How has the announcement of the new policy impacted on Syrian refugees living in Turkey?

  A majority of Syrians in Turkey don’t want to return to their country. Even as they are being increasingly scapegoated, over the years they have changed their view on a possible return. In 2017, 60 per cent of Syrian refugees surveyed in Turkey said they wanted to return to their country as soon as the war is over. Currently, 80 per cent say they do not want to go back because they have already established life in Turkey, and they think life will not go back to normal in Syria even if the war ends.

  However, many do not feel so safe in Turkey anymore. The political rhetoric around sending back Syrian refugees goes hand in hand with growing anti-refugee sentiment fuelled by the increased visibility of Syrians in Turkish society. The majority live in big cities such as Ankara and Istanbul, and as the refugee population grows, they start to be seen as a problem or a threat.

  In contrast, when Syrians started to arrive in Turkey in 2012, society welcomed them. At that time, a major factor leading to acceptance was emphasis on their ‘temporary’ status, supported by the authorities’ discourse referring to them as ‘guests’. Eleven years later, growing socio-economic problems that the government has not taken seriously began to reflect on Syrian refugees.

  As exclusionary nationalist discourse spiked, Syrians were placed at the root of domestic problems. According to a recent report by the Center for Migration Studies at Ankara University, 85 per cent of surveyed people in Turkey want Syrians to be returned or isolated, as they view them as potentially causing more problems in the future.

  Moreover, anti-refugee groups are using the media to disseminate xenophobic propaganda. They stir feelings of national and racial superiority and raise concerns regarding cultural integration, presenting attacks on refugees as a way to defend the homeland. They insist the presence of Syrians is having negative effects on public safety and the country’s demography and economic prospects. Syrian refugees are blamed for growing restrictions on women’s freedoms and increasing rates of murder and rape. These issues are easily used to manipulate the public.

  How has Turkish civil society responded?

  In the face of increasing anti-refugee rhetoric, some civil society groups and activists, including women’s rights organisations, artists and academics, have expressed solidarity through public statements and by holding events such as anti-racist panels.

  However, given the wider anti-refugee political climate, many CSOs did not make any statements against anti-refugee discourse. Sadly, some institutions working with refugees stopped their activities in response to increasing hostility. Others decided to continue their work more quietly. Civic space in getting narrower for us.

  Civic space in Turkey is rated ‘repressed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor. 

• UNITED NATIONS: ‘Anti-rights groups come in under the pretence of speaking about human rights’

  As part of our 2019 thematic report, we are interviewing civil society activists and their allies about their experience of facing backlash by anti-rights groups. CIVICUS speaks to two United Nations (UN) officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, about the increasing space that is being taken up by anti-rights groups at the UN Human Rights Council, and the strategies that need to be developed to strengthen progressive narratives and civil society responses.

• UNITED NATIONS: ‘The power of anti-rights groups is growing; difficult times lie ahead’

  CIVICUS speaks with Tamara Adrián, founder and director of DIVERLEX-Diversity and Equality Through Law, about the successful civil society campaign for the renewal of the mandate of the United Nations’ (UN) Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity.

  Tamara Adrián is a lawyer and university professor, and the first trans woman to be elected to a national parliament in Latin America.

  DIVERLEX is a Venezuelan civil society organisation dedicated to research, training, advocacy and strategic litigation on issues of sexual diversity. Due to the complex humanitarian crisis affecting Venezuela, most of its leaders are currently based outside Venezuela, where they continue to work to improve the living conditions of LGBTQI+ people in exile.

  

  Why is the mandate of the UN Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity so important?

  This is an extremely important figure. The weapon of choice of all bigots is to make certain groups and the violation of their rights invisible. This has been a constant in relation to women, Indigenous peoples, racial minorities and religious minorities. As long as the intolerant can say a problem does not exist, their power system remains active and nothing changes. In the universal human rights system, what bigots want to keep invisible is made visible through the work of independent experts and rapporteurs.

  The first Independent Expert, Vitit Muntarbhorn, was in office for a couple of years and produced a report on violence based on sexual orientation or gender identity, which he shared with the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. He kicked off the process of shedding light on the injustices, inequities and violence against LGBTQI+ people globally.

  The three reports submitted by the current Independent Expert, Víctor Madrigal-Borloz, pointed at many countries that are failing in their duty to protect all their citizens. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights highlighted that states have a positive obligation to ensure equal rights to all people.

  We understand there is still a long way to go and that reports – those by the Independent Expert, the High Commissioner and regional bodies such as the Organization of American States – are important to this process.

  So important are they that this work triggered strong backlash from fundamentalist groups that reorganised in the form of ‘non-governmental organisations’. These sought to obtain consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council in order to interfere in their processes.

  How do these groups operate within the UN?

  Anti-rights groups have been changing their strategy. Rather than identify as religious organisations, they have sought to present themselves as defenders of religious freedom and, above all, of the freedom of expression. They have promoted strategies of religious unity, bringing together Catholic fundamentalists and representatives of the Holy See with neo-evangelical fundamentalists and the most regressive Muslim groups.

  They have also refined their arguments. First, they argue that the concept of sexual orientation and gender identity is a western concept and not a universal one, and therefore should not be protected by the UN. Second, they claim that no existing treaty or international instrument provides protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Third, they say that countries with traditional values should be able to maintain discriminatory laws or criminalise same-sex relationships or diverse gender identities.

  These three claims were implicit in the arguments of the countries that opposed the renewal of the Independent Expert's mandate and proposed amendments, alongside a fourth: that no country should protect criminals, and the determination of what is a criminal act is subject to the criminal law of each country and is not subject to verification before the international human rights system.

  Historically, this issue has been resolved on the basis of the recognition that everyone has a right to their own beliefs, but no one can impose their beliefs or deny others their rights on the basis of their faith. Fundamentalists want this situation reversed so that believers can discriminate against and deny rights to other people

  Have anti-rights groups grown in power in recent years?

  The power of anti-rights groups is growing, which is possibly linked to the regression that is taking place in the USA. Indeed, in the vote to renew the mandate we saw two groups of states putting up resistance: countries that have never made progress in recognising rights and where there is a lot of resistance to change, and countries that are moving backwards, such as the USA.

  In the USA, links connecting white supremacism, neo-Pentecostal groups and the more radical segments of the Republican Party have been growing closer for at least a decade. Anti-rights groups have been taking up space in the courts, from the lowest levels to the Supreme Court, as well as in governorships and state legislatures, resulting in more and more anti-trans, anti-sex education and pro-religious freedom rulings, laws and policies. They have been outspoken in their plans to reverse abortion rights, reject the concept of gender and repeal sexual and reproductive education and contraceptive rights, and even women’s rights, equal marriage and protections against racial discrimination.

  The USA has also played a key role in the international funding of the anti-rights movement and the development of neo-Pentecostal churches around the world, particularly in Africa and Latin America. It has also influenced the establishment of a phenomenon that has not been given enough attention: the movement of biology-fixated feminists, who deny the concept of gender with the same arguments used by the most conservative churches.

  This unity of argumentation is highly suspicious, and all the more so when one looks at the funding streams coming from the USA feeding biology-focused feminist groups in places including Brazil, Central America, the Dominican Republic, Spain and the UK. The target of these groups is not LGBTQI+ people generally, but trans people specifically. By upholding the biological and natural character of differences they seek to destroy the whole structure of gender-based protections.

  I honestly think this is a very well-thought-out plan. I understand that they have mimicked the strategy we initially adopted to give visibility to our struggles. However, they have the advantage of being in power. The number of states that have signed a ‘pro-life’ resolution at the UN and declared themselves ‘pro-life’ states shows that their aim is not just to oppose just LGBTQI+ rights but all rights based on the concept of gender.

  How was the campaign for the renewal of the Independent Expert’s mandate organised?

  The organisations that lobbied for the renewal of the mandate have worked together ever since the campaign for the appointment of the first Independent Expert. Every time, the process starts long before the appointment. In this case, we started working about three years ago: practically the year after the mandate was renewed we were already working to create the core group to work for a new renewal.

  With Latin American organisations, a recurrent limitation is lack of knowledge of the English language, which restricts the ability of activists to internationalise their struggles. To overcome this problem, our core group is made up of both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking activists. This was very important because the coalition was mainly made up of Latin American groups.

  It was a very difficult process, and while the vote eventually turned out to be favourable, over several months the outcomes of the sessions did not make us feel confident. We saw growing resistance from countries with fundamentalist positions that were increasingly embracing the idea of rolling back rights.

  What are the next steps following the mandate’s renewal?

  I believe we should not relax. Difficult times lie ahead. Many rights we thought had already been secured are likely to be reversed in the USA, including those linked to racial equality. It is no longer even a question of returning to a 20th century vision, but to a 16th or 17th century one.

  This will have a strong impact at the global level, especially in countries with less developed institutions. Countries with stronger institutions will probably be better able to resist the onslaught to roll back sexual and reproductive rights. 

  As next steps, I would emphasise organising. In many places people tell me, ‘don’t worry, that would never happen here’, but I insist we cannot relax. We must focus on forming coalitions and organising stronger alliances to stop advances by neoconservative groups and challenge them to gain back the spaces of power they have occupied.

  Get in touch with Tamara Adrián through herwebsite or herFacebook page, and follow@TamaraAdrian on Twitter. 

• VIETNAM: ‘The government is using non-state actors against minority religions’

  CIVICUS speaks with Thang Nguyen of Boat People SOS (BPSOS), a civil society organisation based in the USA and Thailand, about the challenges for civil society and religious minorities in Vietnam, and about their work to enable civil society responses.

  Can you tell us about BPSOS and the work it does?

  I’m currently the CEO and President of BPSOS, having joined initially as a volunteer. BPSOS was founded in 1980. We have two major divisions. The first, our domestic programme, is about serving refugees and migrants in the USA, across six locations. Second, we have our international initiatives, run from our regional headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand.

  In Bangkok, we provide a legal clinic to help refugees and asylum seekers with their asylum claims and with protection – not only those coming from Vietnam but also from other countries, including Cambodia, China, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. We have a programme to help Vietnamese human rights defenders at risk, whether they be in prison or in hiding in Vietnam or seeking refuge in Thailand or elsewhere. A major component is to build capacity for civil society in Vietnam at the community level. Finally, we have a religious freedom project, working with local, regional and global partners, to build up a network for advocates for freedom of religion or belief in South East Asia. We hold an annual conference, the Southeast Asia Freedom of Religion or Belief Conference (SEAFORB).

  What are the key current challenges experienced by civil society in Vietnam?

  The regime is still very oppressive. The government has heavy-handed policies against people coming together to form their own associations, which make it hard for organised civil society to develop. The government is now somewhat more tolerant with individuals speaking out, or perhaps it is that the government struggles to control expression on social media to the same extent.

  Another challenge comes with the people themselves. Living in a closed society, they don’t have many opportunities to develop the necessary skills or experience to come together and form associations.

  Further, there’s very little commitment or investment from the international community to develop civil society in Vietnam, compared for example to Cambodia or Myanmar. There are very few organisations from outside Vietnam that work hand in hand with groups in Vietnam to help them develop capacity to implement programmes.

  Because of this, there are very few truly functional independent civil society organisations in Vietnam and the number of these has decreased over the last five years because they cannot sustain themselves in the face of interference from the government. There are only individual human rights defenders, some of them well-known, but not organised civil society.

  In contrast, there are tens of thousands of government-owned ‘non-governmental’ organisations (GONGOs) that are controlled by the Communist Party. They present themselves as the civil society of Vietnam.

  What are the challenges minority groups face in Vietnam, particularly religious minorities?

  Many of the minority groups are indigenous peoples, but the government of Vietnam does not recognise them as such; it only classes them as ethnic minorities. They therefore face a fight for the right to be recognised as indigenous people. They are often separated from their ancestral land.

  For many groups, a religion that is a minority belief in Vietnam is part of their social and cultural makeup. For example, the Cham are Muslim and the Khmer Krom are Theravada Buddhists, which is very different from the Mahayana Buddhism practised by the majority of Vietnamese Buddhists. Then there are the Hmong and the Montagnards: Christianity has spread among the Montagnards for decades, and the government wants to control and stop this. Since the early 1980s, Christianity also started to develop in the Northwest Region among the Hmong population. The government of Vietnam viewed this as an undesirable influence from the west, and therefore it has taken drastic messages to stop its further spreading in the Northwest and Central Highlands regions.

  Most of these groups of people are located remotely and so don’t have access to the internet, and don’t know how to attract resources, even from within Vietnam. Other people in Vietnam aren’t aware of the situation, let alone the international community. Little information is available about these groups.

  The government authorities are directly suppressing independent house churches. In the Central Highlands, thousands of house churches have been closed, set on fire and destroyed. In 2004 the government issued an ordinance on belief and religion, meaning that house churches have to be registered. There are credible reports that the government trained a lot of its own people to become pastors, and they have set up new churches allowed by the government. These are run and controlled by the government.

  A major challenge is the forced renunciation of faith. Christians have been ordered to leave their parish churches and told not to follow any religion, or to join a government-controlled church. People who have resisted joining government-controlled churches have been harassed, persecuted and tortured. Several deaths in police custody have been documented. There are quite a lot of religious prisoners of conscience, many of them Montagnard Christians.

  The repression of the Hmong is even more drastic. In many parts of Northwest Region, Hmong Christians who have refused to renounce their faith have been evicted from their villages by the local authorities. Their villages have been declared as Christian-free zones. Tens of thousands of Hmong have been affected, something that continues to this day. They became itinerant, and it has taken them many years to coalesce into new communities, usually in previously uninhabited areas unknown to local government. Many moved to the Central Highlands. They are completely undocumented and so have become functionally stateless. They live outside society. Married people are not issued with marriage certificates, babies do not get birth certificates, children can’t formally receive education – although some slip into school unofficially – and people can’t get legal employment, set up a business, or open a bank account. They are restricted in their travel: pastors can’t travel into these communities, while they cannot travel to worship elsewhere.

  In many provinces Catholics, even when they are part of the major ethnic groups, have been persecuted by the government. And then there is the Cao Dai religion, a minority religion with about five million reported followers, although the government only recognises around 1.2 million Cao Daiists. Its church structures were disbanded in 1978. In 1997 the government created a new Cao Dai sect, and then 10 years later turned this into a new religion with a similar name and transferred all the property of the Cao Dai religion to it. To the world the government presents this sect as the representative of the Cao Dai religion.

  The government is also using non-state actors against minority religions. In Nghe An Province, the authorities use organised mobs known as Red Flag Associations, which are supported and encouraged by local authorities to attack churches and beat up parishioners. We have had several reports of this.

  What steps are needed to help civil society respond to these rights violations?

  Because of the restriction of organised civil society there’s very little response to the suppression of religious minorities. This lack of organised civil society also makes it difficult to foster partnerships between civil society groups in Vietnam and international human rights organisations. In response, we are trying to build community capacity to develop organisations in Vietnam to protect rights.

  We train a lot of people in Vietnam to know how to report human rights violations. So far we’ve trained about a thousand local rapporteurs and they have generated about 200 different reports that have been submitted to various United Nations (UN) special procedures and UN bodies, and shared with other governments and international human rights organisations to raise awareness of the situation in Vietnam.

  We are helping to form community-based CSOs in each minority community. So far there are about 20 of these, and we aim to have 100 by the end of 2020. We have incubated a number of CSOs specialising in different aspects of human rights, based on the international commitments Vietnam has made as a result of signing various conventions. For example, we have supported the creation and development of Vietnamese Women for Human Rights, the Vietnam Coalition Against Torture and the Vietnam Freedom of Religion or Belief Roundtable. We have worked with Montagnard people to form a CSO specialising in Montagnard minorities. Now we are connecting these specialist CSOs with their peers outside Vietnam. For instance Vietnamese Women for Human Rights is now a member of FORUM-ASIA, a network of human rights organisations throughout Asia and the Pacific. We are cultivating these kinds of partnerships.

  What more support is needed?

  Once CSOs in Vietnam have developed some capacity, there is a need to connect them with civil society outside Vietnam. We are advocating for organisations to offer internship and fellowship schemes to enable staff to develop skills, experience, connections and exposure outside Vietnam.

  We hope to see more projects geared at further developing civil society in Vietnam, through training, coaching and technical assistance as well as advocacy. There has been an almost complete lack of this kind of investment from civil society worldwide. Organisations are issuing statements about Vietnam and that is appreciated, but this is the next step needed. Amnesty International now has a Vietnamese national working on Vietnam, who was with BPSOS before, so this is a positive step and a model to replicate.

  It would be much more effective if international human rights organisations working on Vietnam could coordinate among themselves, and with groups within Vietnam. For instance, a joint advocacy project on the functionally stateless Montagnard Christians, with pressure coming from multiple directions, would help.

  Civic space in Vietnam is rated as ‘closed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.

  Get in touch with BSPOS through itswebsite orFacebook page and follow@BoatPeopleSOS on Twitter.

• WOMEN’S RIGHTS: ‘Anti-rights groups are trying to take away our acquired rights’

  As part of our 2019 thematic report, we are interviewing civil society activists and leaders about their experiences of backlash from anti-rights groups and their strategies to strengthen progressive narratives and civil society responses. CIVICUS speaks toTeresa Fernández Paredes, a lawyer specialising in International Public Law and one of Women's Link’s Managing Attorneys. With offices in Colombia, Kenya and Spain, Women's Link defends and promotes women's rights and seeks to create structural change through strategic litigation.

  What does Women's Link do, and what are its main areas of work?

  Women's Link is an international organisation that uses the law - most of us are lawyers - to promote structural social changes that advance the rights of women and girls, and especially of those in the most vulnerable positions, such as migrant women or women who find the exercise of their rights restricted due to their ethnicity, age or socioeconomic status, among other factors.

  We work from our headquarters in Madrid, Spain and have offices in Bogotá, Colombia and Nairobi, Kenya. We apply a gender and an intersectional analysis to the law in order to expand and improve the rights of women and girls. We work in some areas, such as sexual and reproductive rights, where we collide head-on with anti-rights groups. We also focus on human trafficking, and especially on the trafficking of women for sexual exploitation or domestic servitude and the violations of their rights suffered by women in migration or transitional justice contexts. We also focus on discrimination, as a cross-cutting issue. We use several strategies: in addition to strategic litigation, we conduct judicial training and produce publications, among other things.

  What are currently your main areas of work in Latin America?

  One of our main lines of work in Latin America is access to sexual and reproductive rights, broadly understood. In the context of the ongoing Venezuelan migration crisis, we are working on the link between migration and lack of access to these rights. We examine issues such as the effects of irregular migration status on the enjoyment of these rights, and the situation of border areas as spaces that are not ruled by law.

  Working in Venezuela has been a great challenge, given the country’s current situation. What we do, here and in all cases, is apply international legal standards to the local context. But it is important to bear in mind that generally speaking, law - and not just domestic legislation, but also international human rights law - is very centred on men. Over the years, norms and regulations have been developed around the image of the white man as a universal subject.

  Our approach to the law is to stretch it to accommodate the experiences of women, because within the human rights framework, women's issues are often left aside. In the context of Venezuela, we work a lot with the inter-American human rights system. For example, we recently requested a precautionary measure for a maternity clinic where many mothers and children had died. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued the precautionary measure, but in the current context it would seem difficult to implement it. However, it serves the purpose of drawing attention to the specific situation of women and girls. And all this work also helps encourage understanding why women leave Venezuela: what drives them, as women, to migrate; and what needs they have when they are in transit and when they arrive at their destination.

  In addition to working in Venezuela, several of our projects focus on ensuring that women’s lived experiences and voices are heard in the context of the peace process in Colombia. We do this mainly from our office in Bogotá, and always jointly with community organisations, so as to try to make heard the voices of people at the margins who are not reached by decision-makers.

  Over the past years anti-rights groups have been on the rise, in Latin America and beyond. Have you faced backlash from these groups in the course of your work?

  The context in which we work is strongly marked by the rise of anti-rights groups that say they are mobilising against what they call ‘gender ideology’. But this is not a new phenomenon: anti-rights groups have been busy building connections and expanding since the 1990s. They have a lot of money and there is one thing they do better than groups on the left: they are very effective in creating connections and coalitions among themselves; even when they work on different issues they are able to find common ground. For instance, all of them have coordinated to place the gender ideology theme on the table and raise it everywhere, as a result of which something that was not even a concept ended up as a global issue. They have managed to position this on the agenda, which is more difficult to do for groups located on the left, where there is more discussion around the issues and it is more difficult to coordinate and speak with one voice. That is why we still do not have a unique and conclusive response to the attacks we face in the name of gender ideology.

  Anti-rights groups are trying to take away our acquired rights. And they are doing it by using the same discourse that has been successfully used by human rights groups. They talk about human rights and they position themselves as victims. They even depict feminists as diabolical agents, giving feminism more power than you would think it has. Due to the fact that Women's Link is based in three regions, we can clearly see that the same strategies are being used in different places. These groups are using coordinated strategies, they have lots of money and they enjoy global support. As they use the language of human rights, they have increasing legal representation, and they have begun to occupy spaces in strategic forums, where decisions are made, including the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

  How can progressive civil society act to curb these advances?

  Faced with these attacks it is important to act quickly through the law. We must continue working to strengthen the human rights framework and shield rights against these attacks. We must design not just defensive strategies, but also proactive strategies to expand the human rights framework, or at least to take away some of the spaces in which anti-rights groups move.

  There are still unresolved discussions we need to work on, such as the tension between the freedom of expression and hate speech. Paradoxically, in order to spread their message anti-rights groups are leaning on one of the left’s favourite themes, the freedom of expression.

  However, if we want to create lasting social change we cannot remain in the realm of the law and the courts. What we need are cases that cause people to mobilise, generate public debate and produce real social change. In that sense I see positive developments, like the #MeToo movement and the so-called Green Tide in Argentina. That is, we are seeing two opposing processes: on the one hand, anti-rights groups are growing; on the other, strong mobilisation around these issues is happening from the ground up and with a strong youth component. Such was the case with the Green Tide, which created unprecedented mobilisation while a proposal to legalise abortion was being discussed in the Argentine Congress. No doubt the two processes are very likely connected, and one is a consequence of the other.

  These social movements are good reason for hope. In the face of attempts to cut back on acquired rights, there is a very active movement that says, look, this is an acquired right, you cannot take it away anymore. There is no going back: looking forward, you can only expand the rights framework, but you cannot diminish it.

  In addition to attacks from anti-rights groups, what other challenges do civil society promoting women’s rights face?

  For grassroots organisations, lack of resources can be a great limitation. And in contexts of great urgency, such as those of massive movements of people, we are presented with the challenge of how to coordinate our work with that of grassroots organisations.

  Women's Link is dedicated to identifying structural situations where women's rights are violated and to designing legal strategies to generate structural, transformative change. Meanwhile, grassroots organisations - for example, those in border areas between Colombia and Venezuela - are increasingly taking on, in conditions of urgency, functions that should be performed by the state. In these contexts, most of the response is coming from civil society organisations.

  These grassroots organisations are responding to a very serious situation, and the needs of the women they work with are very urgent, and yet all we can do at Women's Link is support them through strategic litigation, which usually takes a long time.

  Difficulties of working with scarce resources aside, it is vital to build relationships, connect and coordinate, because the potential contribution that Women's Link has to offer would be useless if it weren’t for the work that is being done by grassroots organisations and for the voices and support of women themselves.

   

  Get in touch with Women’s Link through itswebsite andFacebook page, or follow@womenslink on Twitter.

• WOMEN’S RIGHTS: ‘Progressive civil society must claim for itself the defence of life’

  As part of our 2019thematic report, we are interviewing civil society activists, leaders and experts about their experiences of backlash from anti-rights groups and their strategies to strengthen progressive narratives and civil society responses. CIVICUS speaks to María Angélica Peñas Defago, gender specialist, professor and researcher of Argentina’s National Research Council (CONICET) based at the National University of Córdoba, and co-author of the recentGlobal Philanthropy Project report, ‘Religious Conservatism on the Global Stage: Threats and Challenges for LGBTI Rights'.

  Do you think anti-rights groups have increased their activity in recent times?

  We should start by defining what we mean by ‘recent times’, how far back we need to go, and what specific context we are talking about, because for instance in Latin America the situation varies from country to country. In the case of Argentina, we have seen over time – and not only over the past year, when a bill allowing for the voluntary termination of pregnancies was being discussed in Congress – reactions against the progress achieved in claiming rights by women and LGBTQI people. While it is true that, in recent years, anti-rights groups have become more visible and coordinated, largely in response to advances achieved in the area of sexual and reproductive rights, they have been present for decades, always coercing our agendas. In Argentina, they have been actively litigating against any attempt to enact public policy on sexual and reproductive health or even remotely linked to these rights for at least 20 years. In the province of Córdoba, where I live, these efforts have been very successful in the lower courts, although rulings favourable to these groups were eventually overturned in the higher courts.

  With regard to street actions, strong reactions by these groups were already recorded in the past, including demonstrations throughout the country, for instance against equal marriage, which was approved in Argentina in 2010. The same groups marched once again against the legalisation of abortion in 2018. There has also been a renewed backlash against sex education in schools, a longstanding battle. Sex education was implemented through a 2006 law that is still being resisted. During the abortion debate, anti-rights groups pretended to promote sex education as an alternative to abortion, but after the bill on the voluntary termination of pregnancy was voted down by the Senate, they restarted their attacks against sex education.

  A reorganisation of the conservative camp is currently underway, and I think it is as a result of this that these groups have recently gained more visibility. Although new actors have indeed emerged within civil society, the central phenomenon in the current socio-political context is the reassertion that is taking place in the political and the economic spheres. This can be seen, for example, in the alliances reached in Colombia around the 2016 referendum on the peace process, as well as in Brazil, embodied in the 2018 election of President Jair Bolsonaro.

  During the campaign leading to the referendum in Colombia, the forces that rejected the agreement claimed that if ‘yes’ won, so-called 'gender ideology' would be imposed. In Brazil, fake news claiming that the Workers’ Party promoted paedophilia and would try to ‘convert’ children into homosexuals or transsexuals mushroomed during the election campaign.

  In other ways, the phenomenon is also seen in Argentina, where all the main actors opposed to the progressive agenda, and specifically to the sexual and reproductive rights agenda, have tended to converge.

  Do you think that these are purely reactive groups, whose raison d'être is to curb the progress of the progressive agenda?

  As far as I can tell, that is indeed the case. I have monitored congresses of so-called ‘pro-life’ groups and analysed the actions they have undertaken in regional and global spaces, and particularly in the Organization of American States and the United Nations, and it is readily apparent that they are losing ground regarding family formats and the assignment of sexual roles, and they are aware of it. These groups are reacting to what they perceive as a setback. Their reaction is being coordinated not only around the thematic agenda of sexual and reproductive rights, but also around a wider nationalist, neoliberal – and, in some cases, fascist – political and economic agenda.

  The Bolsonaro phenomenon is a good example of a reaction to a pluralistic agenda around sexual morality and sexual and reproductive rights. The advances of this pluralist agenda acted as a binding agent for a broader conservative political agenda. Within the framework of the reaction against progress achieved in sexual and reproductive rights, other actors are taking advantage to impose their own conservative agendas, for example around migration issues. There are some new actors at play, especially those joining from other fields – political, economic, religious – but many of the actors that are gaining greater visibility are the same as always, the difference being that they are now unifying agendas that used to run in parallel and in less coordinated ways.

  What tactics have these groups used to advance their agenda?

  Litigation against sexual and reproductive rights has been an important tool for more than three decades. In Argentina, these groups have litigated, among other things, against the administration of emergency contraception and to stop the implementation of protocols for non-punishable abortions. In Argentina, abortion has been legal since 1921 for cases of rape, unviability of the foetus, or danger to the woman’s life or health; however, these groups have tried to prevent timely and secure access to this right.

  For the part of civil society that works in the area of women's rights, these groups have always been there. But litigation is sometimes a quite silent affair and has possibly remained unnoticed by the wider civil society. Often, it all remained within the realm of the administration of justice and health services. This however did not prevent this strategy from having very strong effects, because judicial decisions regarding sexual and reproductive health tend to produce fears, doubts and paralysis among health providers, which are key agents for guaranteeing actual access to these rights.

  The presence of anti-rights groups is not news for feminist and LGBTQI groups, but it may very well be so for other sectors of civil society, including human rights organisations, which in recent times have seen them acting more intensely through the occupation of street space and the creation of partisan political alliances, the two key arenas for political struggle in contemporary democracies. These groups are trying to appropriate public space, showcasing themselves as the majority, and in this way they are gaining public visibility. In this area, one of their most successful strategies has involved the use of coordinated messages and symbols. The ‘Don’t mess with my children’ campaign, for example, has used the same phrases and slogans, and even the same symbols and colours, not only throughout Latin America, but also well beyond. We have seen it in Eastern Europe, in Italy, in Spain. These groups are intensively using social media so that their strategies and symbols travel, are shared and ultimately reach us repeatedly from various latitudes.

  If anti-rights positions have gained more visibility, it is because the actors that promote them, mostly faith-based, have gained a prominence in the public space that they did not have 20 years ago. Evangelical churches, like the Catholic Church, are plural and heterogeneous. But in much of Latin America, the political processes of resistance to sexual and reproductive rights have been led by very conservative evangelical churches, sometimes in alliance with the higher ranks of the Catholic Church, and in other cases dissenting or even opposing them.

  Unlike litigation, the strategy of occupying public space requires support in large numbers. Do you think these groups are gaining in popularity?

  The socio-political phenomenon fuelled by these groups is significant. It is not simply about campaigns and slogans; they are deeply embedded at the grassroots level. To understand what is happening in the religious arena and in terms of resistance against progress in sexual and reproductive rights, it is necessary to take into account the socio-economic context and the way that these churches are operating at the grassroots, in strong connection with the populations that they mobilise.

  In Argentina, a very politically mobilised society, street mobilisation has been widely used by these groups, so it is nothing new. What is new is the massive character of their mobilisations. These groups were already mobilising 30 years ago, or maybe even earlier, but there was no social media back then. The modes of communication and mobilisation have changed at the same time as the religious field has in the face of advances in sexual and reproductive rights. Evangelical churches have grown throughout the region, and within them, conservative sectors have grown the most.

  I think that to understand the phenomenon it is also key to understand the neoliberal context and its general effects that undermine living conditions. In the socio-political context of neoliberalism, as the state has withdrawn from its basic functions, many religious groups have gone on to perform tasks and provide services that should be provided by the state. In some places, such as in the USA, the Catholic Church has been long in charge of providing services to some groups, such as migrants, that are not tended to by the state. In Latin America, the role of evangelical churches, for instance in the area of aid and treatment for addictions, is really impressive. Evangelical sectors are growing exponentially because they are assisting communities that are being forgotten by the state. Evangelical pastors play central roles in communities, are active in providing social assistance, dealing with addictions and providing health and education services, and are also key in mobilising people – partly because many of them are also members of these communities. They live in the same neighbourhoods and maintain close ties with the members of their congregations.

  In sum, we are not facing a mere battle of narratives. The discourses that we need to stand up to are rooted in the practices of grassroots communities, and often mobilisations are summoned from the pulpit. Calls from the pulpit are important because to many excluded people the church has become indispensable. In countries that have very high poverty rates, for many people the church is the only place of belonging and protection that remains when both the state and the market have excluded them, and therefore do not have access to work, education, or health services. Beyond the fact that religion remains a central element of many people’s identities, these feelings of belonging and community are not minor issues in contexts of extreme precariousness and individualisation brought about by the economic, political, social and cultural neoliberal model.

  What does progressive civil society have to offer in the face of this?

  Progressive civil society has a lot to offer, because it focuses on the struggle for and the creation of liveable, rich, plural ways of life, based on solidarity and mutual support. I don't think there is a single recipe, because this work involves very different movements. There are feminist and LGBTQI movements that work from the standpoint of religious pluralism, disputing the idea of the monopoly of faith, and these are very rich spaces of struggle and belonging. Religions, all of them, comprise plural, democratic and horizontal spaces, which many organisations take advantage of in their struggle for meaning. Other organisations have expertise in crafting messages, and that is where they make their contribution. But this battle is not taking place only, or even mainly, on social media, since not everyone has even access to the internet. The dispute over meaning is fundamental both on social media and offline, as can be seen around the ‘pro-life’ label that many anti-rights groups have appropriated. Women’s and LGBTQI groups working at the grassroots level continually reference this label, by asking the question: how much is my life worth if I do not have access to a job, to the recognition of my identity, to the protection of my health – if the kind of life that is being offered to me is not a decent one? Progressive civil society must claim for itself the defence of life, understood as a dignified, fully human life.

  To offer this response, progressive civil society needs to ally with others who share its values of pluralism, freedom and equality. The pluralist, inclusive, non-essentialist and decolonial feminist agenda is a good basis on which to form alliances with multiple actors that were not attracted by feminism in the past, in order to take part in the struggle for meaning not only in the rhetorical field, but also in concrete reality. Popular feminism represents a return to the realm of the real, as it focuses on the implications of principles on people’s daily lives. If we talk about abortion, for instance, we must focus on the consequences of the legality or illegality of this practice for the daily reality of pregnant women, families and communities. Religion and faith are an important part of people's lives, and the feminist movement, or at least a good part of it, is now working within this reality.

  Get in touch with María Angélica through herFacebook page and check her work onResearchGate.