By Lysa John (CIVICUS), Chris Worman (TechSoup) and Benjamin Bellegy (WINGS) It seems ironic that only a few months ago, we were celebrating 2019 as the ‘Year of People Power’ and a mass global uprising against autocratic regimes across the world seemed achievable.

By Aarti Narsee, civic space research officer at CIVICUS Censorship, smear campaigns and harassment.

By Mandeep Tiwana, Chief Programmes Officer at CIVICUS Today, the COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting our lives and livelihoods in wholly unanticipated ways, testing the resilience of our social, economic and political structures.

Secretary General’s Update  Dear CIVICUS members and allies, The past few weeks have been unlike anything we have known or could have imagined.

In February, CIVICUS hosted an animated webinar called ‘Participatory grantmaking in action’ in partnership with UHAI EASHRI, Africa’s first indigenous activist fund supporting sexual and gender minorities and sex worker human rights, and Candid, an organisation that has extensively researched and promoted participatory grantmaking.

Defending civil society, democratic rights, and our fundamental freedoms can be challenging, let alone having to do it while under “lockdown” practicing social distancing in the midst of a global health crisis spreading rapidly across the world.

Did you know that only 4% of the total Official Development Assistance (ODA) supports programmes that integrate gender equality and women’s empowerment as the main objective? And only 3% of that fraction goes to women’s rights organisations.

By David Kode,  advocacy and campaigns lead for CIVICUS Once again, the state of democracy on the continent will be tested as millions of Africans go to the polls this year to decide who will lead them for the next few years.

By Josef Benedict, civic space researcher at CIVICUS One tactic that CIVICUS has seen increasingly being used by the government to target activists and NGOs is to label them as “terrorists” or “communist fronts”, particularly those who have been critical of Duterte’s deadly “war on drugs” that has killed thousands.

By David Kode, Advocacy and Campaigns Lead  President Ramaphosa and the AU have a crucial role in aiding the continuation of Guinea's democracy.

Secretary General’s Update Dear CIVICUS members and allies, January was replete with the signals that the coming months will require significantly increased levels of ambition and action if we, civil society, are to remain relevant to the issues of our times.

By Anna Kolotovkina, a civil society resourcing intern at CIVICUS, social volunteer and activist.

By Lysa John Berna, Secretary-General of CIVICUS and Mandeep Singh Tiwana Chief Programmes Officer at CIVICUS A respected woman social activist and political leader beaten and kicked in the stomach at a police station for recording a public protest.

Diversity and Inclusion has become a hot topic within civil society in recent years.

By Susan Wilding, Head of Geneva Office at CIVICUS In all regions of the world, spontaneous people’s movements are demanding better governance, rule of law and justice.

By: Youth Co-Design Team The challenges of grassroots activism Citizens are organising and mobilising in new and creative ways.

By Andrew Firmin, editor-in-chief of CIVICUS Our efforts as civil society will work best when paired with mass mobilisations that demonstrate popular support for rights and defiance in the face of those who seek to deny rights, including by counter-protesting when anti-rights forces seek to claim public space and dominate public discourse.

CIVICUS invited its member, the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI) to facilitate a proposal writing and resource mobilisation workshop for staff in 2019.

By Josef Benedict, civic space research officer at CIVICUS The assault on fundamental freedoms and civil society is escalating across the globe.

Dear CIVICUS members and allies, We are ending the year as we began – with awe for how civil society and citizens have been unstoppable despite widespread and often brutal backlash by governments, and with a stronger resolve to do more - much more - to reinforce struggles for human rights and social justice across countries and communities.

By Yessenia Soto, Community Engagement Officer on Civil Society Resourcing at CIVICUS In 2019, CIVICUS set out to find ways to better support and resource citizen action in the 21st century.

From the 30th October to the 8th November 2019 members gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa from all over the world for the CIVICUS Annual General meeting.

From 2 to 15 December, more than 20,000 people from almost 200 countries attended COP25, the UN climate change conference.

By Mohammad Hasan, Yes Theatre Palestine CIVICUS’ process to mid-term review its strategic plan (2017-2022) is almost finished.

This article is part of the #StoriesOfResilience series, coordinated by CIVICUS to feature groups and activists on their journey to promote better resourcing practices for civil society and to mobilise meaningful resources to sustain their work.

By Paul Mulindwa, advocacy and campaigns officer at CIVICUS Four years after Burundi’s crisis began, 300,000 people have fled the country for safety.

By Josef Benedict, civic space research officer at CIVICUS This November in Geneva, the United Nations examined Fiji’s human rights record for the third time.

By Masana Ndinga-Kanga, Crisis Response Fund lead at CIVICUS and Lundi Mazizi, co-ordinator of the UWC Ex-Workers Movement So much can happen in 900 days.

By Andreas Bummel the Executive Director of Democracy Without Borders, Lysa John Secretary-General of CIVICUS and Bruno Kaufmann is co-president of the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy and board member of Democracy International Next year the United Nations will commemorate its 75th anniversary.

By Ine Van Severen, Civic Space Researcher at CIVICUS 2019 has been a year of protest.

By Clara Bosco, civil society resourcing advisor at CIVICUS These last years have marked the tipping point of a growing disconnect between citizens and public institutions in Latin America.

Secretary General’s Update (Aug-Sep 2019) In the context of increasing attacks on civic space around the world, it seems far more unusual to have an opportunity to celebrate the progress being made through civil society and citizen activism around the world.

By Ziad Abdul Samad, Executive Director of the Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND) The popular protests in Lebanon began after the government announced its intention to impose new taxes on citizens and in an atmosphere of tension and mounting fears of continued economic collapse.

By Marina Cherbonnier, CIVICUS member engagement specialist Each year, CIVICUS Constituents are asked what they think about CIVICUS - a global alliance of over 8000 organisations, movements and individuals.

By Masana Ndinga-Kanga, Crisis Response Fund Lead at CIVICUS & Sohrab Razzaghi is Executive Director of Volunteer Activists Institute  2019 has not been a good year for Iranian human rights activists.

In an interview with @africanews @DaveKode speaks about the recent crackdown on protests and mass arrests of #HRDs, academics and journalists in #Egypt https://t.

Female leaders in 2018 top films were 4 times more likely to be shown in revealing clothing.

In October 2019, in New York, the UN General Assembly will elect 14 new members of the 47-member State Human Rights Council.

By David Kode, advocacy and campaigns lead at CIVICUS Sport is a major unifier among all nations and the plight of Eritrean athletes should be enough to force the international community, particularly states that now host many Eritreans, to exert pressure on President Isaias Afwerki to implement reforms, 26 years after taking power.

By Masana Ndinga-Kanga, Crisis Response Fund Lead at CIVICUS Since Jamal Khashoggi disappeared on October 2, 2018, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the Saudi authorities have continuously changed their narrative of what happened.

By Lysa John, Secretary-General of CIVICUS & Mandeep Tiwana, Chief Programmes Officer at CIVICUS 2019 may well be remembered as the year in which ordinary citizens finally lost patience with incremental changes and called for the bold and urgent actions we need to address the challenges we face.

By Lysa John, Secretary-General of CIVICUS From gun control marches in the United States to impassioned climate change speeches on the global stage of the UN, youth are leading the charge to hold governments accountable and address our biggest challenges.

By Clara Bosco, senior advisor on civil society at CIVICUS In recent years, inspiring funders and grassroots movements have experimented with different funding and organising models to better support smaller, local, spontaneous and less formal groups, and to make themselves more accountable to these.

*Interview with CIVICUS SG, Lysa John.

By Belen Giaquinta and Merle Rutz As a World Alliance, CIVICUS holds, in its essence and identity, the principles of “people power” and democratic values.

By Dominic Perera, CIVICUS Monitor Project Officer at CIVICUS Earlier this month, Bangladesh captured international headlines as an enormous fire ripped through an informal settlement in Dhaka’s Mirpur area.

By Josef Benedict, Civic Space Researcher at CIVICUS Since June 2019, over a million people have taken to the streets of Hong Kong on a weekly basis to demonstrate.

By David Kode, Advocacy and Campaigns Lead at CIVICUS Exactly four months after former President Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan was pushed out of power, and a few weeks after the military rulers and civilians signed a peace deal to thrash out the political transition, ordinary Sudanese continue to pay a heavy price.

Secretary General’s Update (July 2019) July has been an incredibly exciting month and I’m excited to share key headlines from our work in this period! Progressing our efforts on civil society resourcing reforms Since the start of this year, we have had the privilege to hear from activists, organisers, young leaders and progressive funders from around the world on the resourcing challenges faced by civil society – and to understand how bold ideas and creative solutions can help address these barriers.

By Natalia Gomez Peña, Advocacy & Network Engagement Officer, Vuka! Secretariat For the family of indigenous Guatemalan activist Jorge Juc, the announcement last week by US President Donald Trump of an agreement declaring Guatemala a “safe third country” could not be more bitterly ironic.