Coordinate targeted advocacy
Civil society groups often struggle to make their voices heard in international forums dominated by state and corporate interests. CIVICUS works to change this by creating pathways for grassroots organisations to directly influence the policies that affect their communities.
This year we provided comprehensive support to 41 partners to participate in UN and regional human rights mechanisms, including general support to 21 partners and targeted capacity development to 20 participants through online training sessions. We supported activists from Angola, Malaysia, Nicaragua and Venezuela by organising advocacy meetings with state delegations, UN experts and other civil society organisations in Geneva.
We submitted joint Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review reports for eight countries: Angola, El Salvador, Fiji, Iran, Lao PDR, Malawi, Maldives and Mongolia. We also provided support to our regional research partner, the Gulf Center for Human Rights, for a submission on Kuwait. All our submissions focused on civic space restrictions and provided evidence-based recommendations for improvement.
As well as feeding into submissions to human rights bodies, CIVICUS Monitor data was referenced in over 15 international policy documents and donor reports. Its effectiveness was confirmed by the fact that government officials publicly reacted to CIVICUS Monitor ratings in several countries, including Brazil, India and South Korea. Another proof of impact came in Venezuela, where a pro-government media outlet profiled CIVICUS as an organisation conspiring against the country. This came after we endorsed a civil society statement calling for information about the detention of Eduardo Torres, a human rights lawyer with leading Venezuelan human rights organisation PROVEA.
CIVICUS contributed to several achievements across three Human Rights Council sessions Key successes included the adoption of a resolution on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of peaceful protests aligned with General Comment 37 of the UN Human Rights Committee, a resolution on freedom of opinion and expression that addressed the concerning use of strategic lawsuits against public participation to silence activism and a resolution on human rights and international solidarity. Additionally, we contributed key language to a resolution on human rights defenders and emerging technologies that called on states to refrain from biometric mass surveillance, internet shutdowns and spyware use, addressed connectivity issues and mandated regional workshops to assess digital risks to human rights defenders.
We contributed to the renewal of three crucial country mandates on Burundi, Russia and Venezuela, as well as to the extension of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights. We also organised an event to build support around a proposal for a new UN Special Rapporteur on Democracy.
Our event on transnational repression in the Americas, the first on the topic organised by civil society, contributed to the publication of a UN brief on transnational repression. Our statement on Belarus set the ground for a country visit by the by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
We continued our collaboration with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to develop a toolkit for protecting civil society at risk, set to launch in 2025, and engaged directly with the new Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association through an in-person consultation that helped shape the mandate’s thematic and country priorities.
Beyond multilateral forums, we facilitated direct engagement at national and bilateral levels. For example, we partnered with the Embassy of The Netherlands in Benin and Nigeria to host Defender & Diplomat Dialogues and organised other events where diplomatic representatives interacted with local civil society groups and human rights defenders to discuss the protection of human rights and civic space. Despite unprecedented strain on international institutions, we remain convinced that strategic, evidence-based advocacy can deliver meaningful results.
Campaign victory: Stand As My Witness releases
Our longstanding Stand As My Witness campaign saw the release of three arbitrarily imprisoned human rights defenders: Andrew Chapiuk from Belarus, Floriane Irangabiye from Burundi and Kamira Nait Sid from Algeria.
Andrew Chapiuk was a volunteer with Viasna Human Rights Center, one of Belarus’s leading human rights organisations. He was arrested on 2 October 2020 and charged with ‘participating in mass riots’ and ‘involvement in a criminal organisation’ in retaliation for his peaceful human rights activities. He was punished for helping political prisoners and conducting human rights work that the authorities deemed threatening. He was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison and was released on 18 April 2025 after serving his full sentence, and subsequently forced into exile.
Floriane Irangabiye was a journalist with Radio Igicaniro, an online media outlet critical of the Burundian government. She was arrested on 30 August 2022 and convicted of ‘undermining the integrity of the national territory’ based on comments she made during a radio show criticising the government’s human rights record. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison but received a presidential pardon on 14 August 2024 and was released two days later, having spent two years behind bars.
Kamira Nait Sid is the co-president of the World Amazigh Congress, an international civil society organisation that defends the rights of Amazigh (Berber) people. She was abducted from her home on 24 August 2021 and charged with ‘belonging to a terrorist organisation’ and other terrorism-related crimes. Her alleged crime was association with the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylie, classified as a terrorist group by Algerian authorities – an accusation she denied. She spent over three years in prison before being released on 1 September 2024.
WHAT WE LEARNED
Advocacy highlights
