Introduction

Civil society is being tested like never before by a series of multiple and accelerating crises. Amid growing global conflicts and repression, the climate emergency and democratic regression, our efforts face mounting obstacles to do the essential work of helping people, making their voices heard and holding the powerful accountable. In this challenging state of the world, civil society continues to hold the line and make a difference. People-powered mobilisations and targeted actions have led to significant victories for gender equality, human rights, and climate justice.  Civil society and citizen action, both locally and globally, remain a vital source of hope for defending and advancing civic space. 

This external context forms the background for this third annual plan of CIVICUS’s 2022 – 2027 Strategic Plan implementation. Being the mid-point of our strategic period, CIVICUS will undertake a mid-term strategy review to evaluate how the alliance is progressing towards our one overarching goal to strengthen civil society and civic action for expanded civic and democratic space. The review will measure the success and quality of what and how we do against our five strategic objectives. Additionally, we will seek to better understand how we are influencing and supporting our key stakeholders to achieve change, particularly those affected by the combined impact of civic space restrictions and structural forms of discrimination.  

In line with our learning and accountability commitments, proxy indicators for each Strategic Objective (SO) have been chosen based on what we can consistently report on year on year throughout our strategic period. Previous years actuals can be found here. Additional indicators will be included based on annual focus and data availability.  

CIVICUS’s five strategic objectives work together and reinforce each other to achieve our singular goal. If you would like more detail on our work mentioned below, please see our annual report.