How to Turn the Tide: Resisting the Global Assault on Gender Rights

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Opinion

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MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Mar 27 2025 (IPS) – This year’s session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69), the world’s leading forum for advancing gender equality, confronted unprecedented challenges. With Saudi Arabia in the chair and anti-rights voices growing increasingly influential in the forum, the struggle to hold onto international commitments on gender equality intensified dramatically. On 8 March, International Women’s Day mobilisations also took on added urgency, with demonstrations from Istanbul to Buenos Aires focusing on resisting the multiple manifestations of gender rights regression being felt in communities worldwide.

CIVICUS’s 2025 State of Civil Society Report shows that hard-won women’s and LGBTQI+ rights are at risk, challenged by coordinated anti-rights movements that use gender as a political wedge issue. But it also provides abundant evidence that civil society is rising to the challenge.

Global regression

They call it ‘child protection’ in Russia, ‘family values’ in several Eastern European countries, ‘religious freedom’ in the USA, and ‘African traditions’ across the continent. The terminology shifts, but the objective is the same: halting progress towards gender equality and dismantling rights. Of course, it isn’t about differences in cultural values – it’s an orchestrated political strategy.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban’s system of gender apartheid has reached its brutal endpoint: women are effectively imprisoned in their homes, barred from education, work and public life, their voices literally silenced by prohibitions on singing or talking in public. Iranian authorities have gone to extreme lengths to maintain control over women’s bodies. In Iraq, lawmakers are considering lowering the minimum marriage age to just nine years old.

These extreme examples exist along a spectrum that includes Ghana’s parliament criminalising same-sex relations, Russia expanding ‘propaganda’ laws to prohibit any positive portrayal of LGBTQI+ identities, and Georgia – a country that says it wants to join the European Union – adopting Russian-style legislation restricting LGBTQI+ organisations under the cynical framing of ‘protecting minors’.

In the USA, Trump-appointed justices overturned constitutional abortion protections, triggering restrictions across numerous states. The second Trump administration has now reinstated the global gag rule, restricting international funding for organisations providing reproductive healthcare. The Guttmacher Institute projects this will deny 11.7 million women access to contraception, potentially causing 4.2 million unintended pregnancies and over 8,300 maternal deaths.

A coordinated transnational movement

Across Africa, there’s an intensifying wave of anti-LGBTQI+ legislation, often driven by political opportunism. Mali’s military junta passed a law criminalising homosexuality as part of its broader crackdown on rights. Ghana’s parliament passed a draconian ‘anti-LGBTQI+ bill’, while Uganda’s Constitutional Court upheld the country’s harsh Anti-Homosexuality Act. In Kenya, a Family Protection Bill that would outlaw LGBTQI+ advocacy remains before parliament.

As recently seen at CSW, the ongoing backlash is transnational in nature. Anti-rights forces share tactics, funding and messaging across borders, with conservative foundations from the USA promoting restrictive legislation in Africa and Russian ideologues exporting their playbook to former Soviet states and beyond. US evangelical organisations and conservative think-tanks are a particularly influential source of anti-rights narratives and funding: they’ve funnelled millions of dollars into campaigns against reproductive rights and LGBTQI+ equality worldwide, while providing intellectual frameworks and legal strategies for adaption to local contexts from Poland to Uganda.

Victories against the odds

Against this daunting backdrop, civil society continues achieving remarkable victories through strategic resistance and persistence. In 2024, Thailand became Southeast Asia’s first country to legalise same-sex marriage, while Greece broke new ground as the first majority Orthodox Christian country to do so. France enshrined abortion rights in its constitution, creating a powerful bulwark against future threats.

A regional trend continued in the Caribbean, with civil society litigation successfully overturning colonial-era laws that criminalised homosexuality in Dominica. Colombia and Sierra Leone banned child marriage, while women’s rights groups in The Gambia defeated a bill that would have decriminalised female genital mutilation.

These successes share common elements: they’re the result of sustained, multi-year advocacy campaigns combining legal challenges, community mobilisation, strategic communications and international solidarity.

Take Thailand’s marriage equality victory. Success came partly through the campaign’s intersection with the youth-led democracy movement, which connected LGBTQI+ rights to broader aspirations for a fairer society. In Kenya, despite harsh anti-LGBTQI+ rhetoric from political leaders, strategic litigation by civil society secured a court ruling preventing incitement to violence against LGBTQI+ people.

Even in the most repressive contexts, activists find ways to resist. Afghan women, denied basic rights to education and movement, have developed underground schools and created subtle forms of civil disobedience that maintain pressure without risking their lives. Along with their Iranian sisters, they continue to campaign for gender apartheid to be recognised as a crime under international law.

The path forward: intersectionality and solidarity

Progress in realising rights is neither linear nor inevitable. Each advance triggers opposition, so every victory needs defence. To solidify and last, legal changes must be accompanied by social transformation – which is why civil society complements policy advocacy with public education, community organising and cultural engagement.

Advocacy is most effective when it embraces intersectionality, recognising how gender, sexuality, class, race, disability and migration status create overlapping forms of exclusion that need integrated responses. Feminist movements are increasingly centring the experiences of Black women, Indigenous women, women with disabilities and trans women.

Even where progress can feel elusive, civil society is playing a crucial role in keeping hope alive. Organisations defending women’s and LGBTQI+ rights are maintaining spaces where people are allowed to be their true selves, providing support services that nobody else will provide, documenting violations that would otherwise go unrecorded, keeping up the pressure on the authorities and building solidarity networks that sustain activists through difficult times.

International support for these efforts has never been more important. The USAID funding freeze highlights a troubling trend of shrinking resources for gender rights defenders at precisely the moment they’re needed most. This makes diversifying funding sources an urgent priority, with feminist philanthropists, progressive foundations and governments committed to gender equality needing to step up. More innovative funding mechanisms are required to rapidly respond to emergencies while sustaining the long-term work of movement building. Individuals have power: anyone can contribute directly to frontline organisations, amplify their voices on social media, challenge regressive narratives in their communities and demand that elected representatives prioritise gender equality domestically and in foreign policy. In the global struggle for fundamental rights, no one should be a spectator. The time for solidarity is now.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org.

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A Test of Humanity: Migrants’ Rights in a World Turning Inward

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Opinion

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MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Mar 25 2025 (IPS) – The United Nations Refugee Agency faces devastating cuts that may eliminate 5,000 to 6,000 jobs, with potentially catastrophic consequences for millions of people fleeing war, repression, hunger and climate disasters. This 75-year-old institution, established to help Europeans displaced by the Second World War, now confronts an unprecedented financial crisis, primarily due to the US foreign aid freeze – and the timing couldn’t be worse.

As CIVICUS’s 14th annual State of Civil Society Report documents, a series of connected crisis – including conflicts, economic hardship and climate change – have created a perfect storm that threatens migrants and refugees, who face increasingly hostile policies and dangerous journeys from governments turning their backs on principles of international solidarity and human rights.

At least 8,938 people died on migration routes worldwide in 2024, making it the deadliest year on record, with many of the deaths in the Mediterranean and along routes across the Americas, including the Caribbean Sea, the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama and the extensive border between Mexico and the USA. Just last week, six people died and another 40 are missing after their boat capsized in the Mediterranean.

Such tragedies have come time again over the last year. In March 2024, 60 people, including a Senegalese mother and her baby, died from dehydration after their dinghy was left adrift in the Mediterranean. In June, US border agents found seven dead migrants in the Arizona and New Mexico deserts. In September, seven people were found clinging to the sides of a boat that capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa, after watching 21 other people, many of them family members, drown around them.

These tragedies weren’t accidents or policy failures. They were the predictable results of morally indefensible political choices.

The reality behind the rhetoric

The facts contradict populist narratives about migration overwhelming wealthy countries. At least 71 per cent of the world’s refugees remain in the global south, with countries such as Bangladesh, Colombia, Ethiopia and Uganda hosting far more displaced people than most European countries. Yet global north governments keep hardening borders and outsourcing migration management to prevent arrivals. The second Trump administration has declared a ‘national emergency’ at the US southern border, enabling military deployment and promising mass deportations while explicitly framing migrants as invaders – a rhetoric that history shows can easily lead to deadly consequences.

Europe continues its own troubling trajectory. Italy is attempting to transfer asylum seekers to Albanian detention centres, while the Netherlands has proposed sending rejected asylum seekers to Uganda, blatantly disregarding the state’s human rights violations, particularly against LGBTQI+ people. The European Union is expanding controversial deals with authoritarian governments in Egypt and Tunisia, effectively paying them to prevent migrants reaching European shores.

Anti-migrant rhetoric has become a common and effective electoral strategy. Far-right parties have made significant gains in elections in many countries by campaigning against immigration. Demonising narratives played a key role in Donald Trump’s re-election. The mobilisation of xenophobic sentiment extends beyond Europe and the USA, from anti-Haitian rhetoric in the Dominican Republic to anti-Bangladeshi campaigning in India.

Civil society under siege

Civil society organisations providing humanitarian assistance are increasingly being criminalised for their work. Italy has made it illegal for search-and-rescue organisations to conduct more than one rescue per trip, imposes heavy fines for noncompliance and deliberately directs rescue vessels to distant ports. These measures have achieved their intended goal of reducing the number of active rescue ships and contributed to the over 2,400 migrant drownings recorded in the Mediterranean in 2024 alone. Tunisia’s president has labelled people advocating for African migrants’ rights as traitors and mercenaries, leading to criminal charges and imprisonment.

Despite mounting obstacles, civil society maintains its commitment to protecting the human rights of migrants and refugees. Civil society groups maintain lifesaving operations in displacement settings from the Darién Gap to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. Legal aid providers navigate increasingly complex asylum systems to help people access protection. Community organisations facilitate integration through language instruction, job placements and social connections. Advocacy groups document abuses and push for accountability when state authorities violate migrants’ human rights.

But they’re now operating with drastically diminishing resources in increasingly hostile environments. Critical protection mechanisms are being dismantled at a time of unprecedented need. The implications should alarm anyone concerned with human dignity. If borders keep hardening and safe pathways disappear, more people will attempt dangerous journeys with deadly consequences. The criminalisation of solidarity risks eliminating critical lifelines for the most vulnerable, and dehumanising rhetoric is normalising discrimination and institutionalising indifference and cruelty.

A different approach is possible

Rather than reactive, fear-based policies, civil society can push for comprehensive approaches that uphold human dignity while addressing the complex drivers of migration. This means confronting the root causes of displacement through conflict prevention, climate action and sustainable development. It also means creating more legal pathways for migration, ending the criminalisation of humanitarian assistance and investing in integration support.

There’s a need to challenge the fundamental assumption that migration is an existential threat rather than a manageable reality than requires humane governance, and an asset to receiving societies. Historically, societies that have integrated newcomers have greatly benefited from their contributions – economically, culturally and socially.

In a world of unprecedented and growing global displacement, the question isn’t whether migration will continue – it will – but whether it will be managed with cruelty or compassion. As CIVICUS’s State of Civil Society Report makes clear, the treatment of migrants and refugees serves as a litmus test: the way societies respond will prove or disprove their commitment to the idea of a shared humanity – the principle that all humans deserve dignity, regardless of where they were born or the documents they carry.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org.

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Civil Society: The Last Line of Defence in a World of Cascading Crises

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Opinion

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MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay / LONDON, Mar 20 2025 (IPS) – In a world of overlapping crises, from brutal conflicts and democratic regression to climate breakdown and astronomic levels of economic inequality, one vital force stands as a shield and solution: civil society. This is the sobering but ultimately hopeful message of CIVICUS’s 14th annual State of Civil Society Report, which provides a wide-ranging civil society perspective on the state of the world as it stands in early 2025.

The report paints an unflinching portrait of today’s reality: one where civilians are being slaughtered in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and elsewhere, with perpetrators increasingly confident they’ll face no consequences. A global realignment appears underway, with the Trump administration dismantling longstanding international alliances and seemingly determined to reward acts of aggression. Any semblance of a rules-based international order is crumbling as transactional diplomacy and the dangerous principle that might makes right become normalised.

Climate change continues to accelerate. 2024 was the hottest year on record, yet fossil fuel companies keep banking record profits, even as they scale back renewable energy plans in favour of further extraction. The world’s economies are reaching new levels of dysfunction, marked by soaring inequality and worsening precarity, while billionaires accumulate unprecedented wealth. Tech and media tycoons are no longer content just to influence policy; increasingly they want to control politics, raising the risk of state capture by oligarchs. Democracy is under siege, with right-wing populism, nationalism and autocratic rule surging. Democratic dissent is being crushed.

These compounding crises create a perfect storm that threatens the foundations of human rights and democratic freedoms. But in this precarious moment, precisely when civil society is needed most, it faces an accelerating funding crisis. Major donor agencies have cut back support and aligned funding with narrow national interests, while many states have passed laws to restrict international funding for civil society. The malicious and reckless USAID funding freeze has come as a particularly heavy blow, placing many civil society groups at existential risk.

At times like these it’s worth thinking about what the world would look like without civil society. Human rights violations would flourish unchecked. Democracy would erode even faster, leaving people with no meaningful agency to shape decisions affecting their lives. Climate change would accelerate past every tipping point. Women would lose bodily autonomy. LGBTQI+ people would be forced back into the closet. Excluded minorities would routinely face violence with no recourse. Whole communities would live in fear.

As events during 2024 and early 2025 have shown, even under extraordinary pressure, civil society continues to prove its immense value. In conflict zones, grassroots groups are filling critical gaps in humanitarian response, documenting violations and advocating for civilian protection. In numerous countries, civil society has successfully mobilised to prevent democratic backsliding, ensure fair elections and challenge authoritarian power grabs.

Through strategic litigation, civil society has established groundbreaking legal precedents forcing governments to take more ambitious climate action. Struggles for gender equality and LGBTQI+ rights keep being won through persistent advocacy, despite intensifying backlash. Across diverse contexts, civil society has employed a wide range of ever-evolving and creative tactics – from mass mobilisation to legal action – and proved it can and will hold the line even as civic space restrictions intensify and funding is slashed.

The message is clear: civil society represents a vital source of resistance, resilience and hope. Without it, many more people would be living much worse lives.

But if civil society is to keep doing this vital work, it may need to reinvent itself. The funding crisis demands innovation, because even before the USAID catastrophe, the donor-reliant model had reached its limits. It has long been criticised for reproducing economic and political power imbalances while constraining civil society’s ability to confront entrenched power. More diverse and sustainable resourcing models are urgently needed, from community-based funding approaches to ethical enterprise activities that generate unrestricted income.

To thrive in this changing and volatile context, civil society will have to embrace a movement mindset characterised by distributed leadership, nimble decision-making and the ability to mobilise broad constituencies rapidly. Some of the most successful civil society actions in recent years have shown these qualities, from youth-led climate movements to horizontally organised feminist campaigns that connect people across class, race and geographic barriers.

Civil society must prioritise authentic community connections, particularly with those most excluded from power. This means going beyond traditional consultations to develop genuine relationships with communities, including those outside urban centres or disadvantaged by digital divides. The strength of the relationships civil society can nurture should be one key measure of success.

Equally crucial is the development of compelling narratives, and infrastructure to help share them, that speak to people’s legitimate anxieties while offering inclusive, rights-based alternatives to the widely spread and seductive but dangerous appeals of populism and authoritarianism. These narratives must connect universal values to local contexts and concerns.

In this current cascade of global crises, civil society can no longer hope for a return to business as usual. A more movement-oriented, community-driven and financially independent civil society will be better equipped to withstand threats and more effectively realise its collective mission of building a more just, equal, democratic and sustainable world.

The 2025 State of Civil Society Report offers both a warning and a call to action for all concerned about the shape of today’s world. Civil society represents humanity’s best hope for navigating the treacherous waters ahead. In these dark times, civil society remains a beacon of light. It must continue to shine.

Inés M. Pousadela is Senior Research Specialist and Andrew Firmin is Editor-in-Chief at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation. They are co-directors and writers for CIVICUS Lens and co-authors of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org.

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Funding Disruptions Are a Systemic Failure – Philanthropy Must Do What’s Right and Support Local Leadership

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Opinion

SORIA, Spain, Mar 17 2025 (IPS) – The slashing of US aid funding by Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and cuts or planned cuts in international support by several European states, threaten to cut off the oxygen supply to a civil society already in a critical condition. At CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance, activists and grassroots groups have shared with us time and again that shifting and volatile donor priorities are one of the top funding challenges they face, alongside limited resources for strategy and restricted funding.

Tais Siqueira

Local civil society in the global south is most affected by these challenges. Funding disruptions are no temporary matter. They reflect systemic failures and deep power and funding inequalities between the global north and global south. They undermine trust, shift power away from the communities most affected by global challenges and force local organisations into a reactive survival mode rather than enabling them to drive strategic action.

This is a critical moment for philanthropy to step up and put locally led development principles into practice. This means channelling more resources directly to local civil society, advocating for the meaningful participation of a diverse local civil society in policy spaces at all levels, ensuring their financial, legal and security resilience, and reimagining the role of philanthropy as being not just a funder, but an investor, catalyser and collaborator. As a starting point, philanthropic funders should do the following.

1. Commit to immediate, flexible, and sustained financial support

Local civil society is on the frontlines of addressing some of the world’s most pressing issues. Yet it’s often the first to feel the impact of funding disruptions. Philanthropy must act quickly to provide immediate, flexible and emergency grants to help local organisations survive funding gaps, including by increasing flexibility in existing grants to allow for operational reallocation to cover urgent needs, such as security-related expenses, salaries and insurance.

Unrestricted funding is also critical. Local groups need autonomy to allocate resources where they’re most needed, including for financial, legal and digital protection. Philanthropic funders should prioritise high-quality support – funding that is flexible, predictable and for core work – to support local civil society’s agency and autonomy and avoid orientation around donor priorities. Philanthropy must recognise that trust in local leadership is both the right and strategic thing to do.

2. Strengthen local civil society’s governance through collaboration and promote trust and support

Local leadership isn’t just about financial support; it’s about co-creating the systems and structures that enable local groups to thrive. Philanthropy can play a pivotal role in supporting local groups to strengthen their governance, risk management and compliance systems by fostering collaboration and innovation rather than imposing external standards. Support should be tailored, context specific and co-designed.

One key step is providing direct support to local groups to develop systems that prioritise accountability while trusting them to manage resources. This requires funders to move away from overly prescriptive conditions and toward models of support that acknowledge the leadership and agency of local civil society.

Philanthropy must also recognise that compelling narratives and ambitious policies are needed to stimulate trust and support local civil society. Progressive philanthropic funders can encourage others to follow suit.

3. Invest in infrastructure enabling diverse local civil society groups to collectively organise, share resources and strengthen resilience

In an increasingly interconnected world, the ability of local civil society groups to connect, collaborate and share resources is more important than ever. Investments in infrastructure can enable civil society to bravely defend and promote civic freedoms. Investment will facilitate collective influencing and knowledge-sharing networks, ensuring organisations are better prepared for further funding instability.

Philanthropic funders can earmark funds for emergency response, including for legal defence, audits and unforeseen security threats. Security in the digital sphere is also a critical need, and support can be provided for digital communications infrastructure, encrypted platforms and security audits.

Support for protection of civic space and promotion of civil society participation in decision-making will help enable strategic resistance against rollbacks of hard-won rights and gender, racial and social justice gains.

It’s also crucial to recognise that progressive local civil society groups and leaders are key enablers of locally led development and strengthen civil society’s support infrastructure. Investments in these infrastructures ensure that local groups have the necessary space, resources, agency and autonomy to shape and implement solutions that best fit their contexts.

CIVICUS’s Local Leadership Labs initiative addresses the political, technical and behavioural barriers that hinder governments, donors and other stakeholders from fully embracing and resourcing diverse civil society groups as legitimate participants in development. These labs support radically inclusive spaces, where local civil society groups can drive the development of policies and solutions, together with decision-makers and other key players. This cultivates spaces for collaboration, allowing diverse civil society groups and multi-stakeholder initiatives to share knowledge, reflect and strategise together.

A call to reaffirm commitment to locally led development

Philanthropic funders have unique convening authority, networks and partnerships that can be leveraged to advocate for locally led development. This isn’t just about funding; it’s about using influence to shift narratives and create an enabling environment where local civil society can thrive. Philanthropist must publicly reaffirm their commitment to the Donor Statement on Supporting Locally-Led Development and take real steps to put these principles into action.

The challenges are immense, but so too are the opportunities. By fostering an environment where local civil society has the resources, autonomy and trust to lead, philanthropy can move beyond financial transactions and become a transformative partner.

Tais Siqueira is Coordinator of CIVICUS’s Local Leadership Lab

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Belarus: A Sham Election That Fools No One

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Opinion

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LONDON, Feb 7 2025 (IPS) – Alexander Lukashenko will soon begin his seventh term as president of Belarus. The official result of the 26 January election gave him 86.8 per cent of the vote, following an election held in a climate of fear. Only token opposition candidates were allowed, most of who came out in support of Lukashenko. Anyone who might have offered a credible challenge is in jail or in exile.

No repeat of 2020

In office since 1994 as the so far only president of independent Belarus, Lukashenko is by far Europe’s longest-serving head of state. The 1994 vote that brought the former Soviet official to power was the country’s only legitimate election. Each since has been designed to favour Lukashenko.

He only faced a serious threat in 2020, when an outsider candidate, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, was able to run a campaign that captured the popular imagination. Lukashenko’s response was to arrest opponents, repress protests, restrict the internet, deny access for electoral observers and then blatantly steal the election.

When people took to the street in mass protests against electoral fraud, Belarus seemed on the brink of a democratic revolution. But Lukashenko’s government launched a brutal defence, using security forces to violently attack protesters and arresting over a thousand people. It dissolved opposition political parties and raided and shut down civil society organisations: over a thousand have been forcibly liquidated since 2020.

Lukashenko’s regime has gone after those in exile, kidnapping and allegedly killing Belarusians abroad. Belarus is among the 10 states most engaged in transnational repression. They authorities have also deprived the estimated 300,000 people who’ve fled since 2020 of their ability to vote.

By embracing repression, Lukashenko made a choice to abandon his policy of balancing between the European Union (EU) and Russia. When the EU imposed sanctions in response to the 2020 election fraud, Russia offered a package of loans. In 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale assault on Ukraine, some of its forces entered Ukraine from Belarus.

Shortly after Russia began its full-scale invasion, a constitutional referendum held in Belarus, marked by the same lack of democracy as its elections, formally ended the country’s neutrality and non-nuclear status. In December 2024, the two states signed a security treaty allowing the use of Russian nuclear weapons in the event of aggression against Belarus, and Lukashenko confirmed that the country hosts dozens of Russian nuclear warheads.

Belarus has also been accused of instrumentalising migrants to try to destabilise neighbouring countries. In 2021, it relaxed its visa rules for people from Middle Eastern and North African countries and encouraged flights to Belarus. Thousands were taken to the borders with Lithuania and Poland and left to try to cross them in desperate conditions, freezing and without essentials, subjected to security force violence on both sides. Migrants were unwitting pawns in Lukashenko’s game to strike back at his neighbours. Attempted crossings and human rights violations have continued since.

Renewed crackdown

Just to be on the safe side, Lukashenko launched another crackdown in the months leading up to the election. The intent was clearly to ensure there’d be no repeat of the expression of opposition and protests of 2020.

Starting in July 2024, Lukashenko pardoned around 250 political prisoners, releasing them from jail. His likely aim was to soften international criticism in the run-up to the vote. But these weren’t the high-profile prisoners serving long sentences, such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski, a founder of the Viasna Human Rights Centre, who received a 10-year sentence in 2023, or protest leader Maria Kolesnikova, sentenced to 11 years in 2021. Those pardoned had to publicly acknowledge their guilt and repent.

The freed jail spaces were quickly filled, with over a hundred friends and relatives of political prisoners detained. In February 2024, authorities detained at least 12 lawyers who’d defended political prisoners. In December, they arrested seven independent journalists. Belarus has the world’s fourth highest number of jailed journalists.

People have been jailed merely for following Telegram channels deemed ‘extremist’ or making social media comments. Over 1,700 people reportedly faced charges for political activities in 2024. Prison conditions are harsh. People may be forced to do hard labour, kept in solitary confinement, sent to freezing punishment cells, denied access to their families and have medical care withheld.

On election day, Lukashenko’s dictatorial style was on full display. He held a press conference where he promised to ‘deal with’ opposition activists in exile and said they were endangering their families in Belarus, adding that some opponents ‘chose’ to go to prison. He also didn’t rule out the prospect of running for an eighth term in 2030.

Time for change

Lukashenko promises more of the same: continuing autocracy and closed civic space. For generations of Belarusians who’ve known nothing but his rule, and with opposition voices so ruthlessly suppressed, it may be hard to imagine anything else. The possibilities opened up in 2020 have been ruthlessly shut down.

But the wheels of history will keep turning, and the 70-year-old dictator won’t last forever. Some kind of cessation of hostilities in Ukraine may well come this year, forcing Lukashenko to make friends beyond Vladimir Putin. If Russia winds down its booming war economy, the ensuing economic shock in Belarus, which largely depends on Russia, could trigger public anger.

Meanwhile, potentially increased scrutiny could come from the International Criminal Court: in September 2024, the government of Lithuania requested an investigation into crimes against humanity allegedly committed by Belarusian authorities. If this move gains momentum, Lukashenko could find himself in an uncomfortable spotlight. States could also intensify sanctions: Canada and the UK have done so following the election.

If Belarus attempts to reengage with them, democratic states should insist that no thaw in relations is possible without tangible human rights progress . This should start with the release of all political prisoners, guarantees for the safety of exiled activists and a reversal of attacks on civic space.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org.

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Venezuela: The Democratic Transition That Wasn’t

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Opinion

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MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Feb 3 2025 (IPS) – Venezuela stands at a critical juncture as Nicolás Maduro begins a controversial third term as president. His 10 January inauguration, following a post-election period marked by widespread protests against election fraud and heightened repression, represents a significant setback for democratic aspirations in a country devastated by years of economic collapse and political oppression. Maduro’s confirmation at the helm is the latest chapter in a decades-long process that has transformed Venezuela from a beacon of leftist democratic aspirations into a full-blown authoritarian regime, where the last shred of legitimacy – popular election – has now vanished.

The implications of Venezuela’s crisis extend far beyond its borders, triggering the largest refugee exodus in the Americas and creating significant challenges for neighbouring countries. Almost eight million Venezuelans live abroad, with projections suggesting another two or three million might leave in the coming years.

This crisis comes at a moment when, unlike in the past, two key factors potentially leading to a democratic transition are present: unprecedented opposition unity capable of sustaining a protest movement and growing international support, with progressive Latin American governments increasingly distancing themselves from Maduro. However, Maduro’s willingness to use violent repression and his ability to maintain military loyalty suggest a difficult path ahead for democratic restoration.

Election fraud and post-election repression

The 2024 presidential election initially sparked hopes for democratic change. These hopes were crushed when Maduro declared himself the winner despite clear evidence that opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia had secured a significant victory.

The election campaign unfolded against a backdrop of intensifying civic space restrictions and was far from free and fair. The government disqualified popular opposition leader María Corina Machado and blocked her proposed replacement, forcing the opposition to field González Urrutia. Additional irregularities included systematic persecution of opposition leaders, abuse of public resources, media manipulation and voter suppression tactics, particularly targeting the estimated four million Venezuelan voters abroad.

Despite these challenges, the opposition demonstrated unprecedented unity and organisation. Through its Plan 600K initiative, it mobilised around 600,000 volunteers to monitor polling stations, collect the tallies produced by voting machines and independently calculate results. Their parallel count revealed that González won around 67 per cent of votes compared to Maduro’s 29 per cent, figures supported by independent exit polls. However, the National Electoral Council stopped publishing results after counting 40 per cent of votes, eventually declaring an implausible Maduro victory without providing any supporting data.

Fraud sparked widespread unrest, with 915 spontaneous protests erupting across Venezuelan cities in the two days following the election. The regime’s response was swift and severe. It labelled protests a ‘fascist outbreak’ and charged many protesters with terrorism and incitement to hatred. Security forces used deadly force, resulting in at least 25 deaths, while pro-government paramilitaries engaged in intimidation and violence.

The crackdown extended beyond protesters to target opposition and civil society leaders. Several prominent figures were forced into hiding or exile, while others faced arbitrary detention. Repression intensified in the lead-up to Maduro’s inauguration, with 75 new political detentions in the first 11 days of January alone.

Inauguration day

Maduro’s inauguration reflected both the regime’s isolation and its increasingly authoritarian character. Only two presidents – from Cuba and Nicaragua – attended the ceremony, while other governments sent lower-level representatives. The swearing-in ceremony took place 90 minutes earlier than scheduled, out of fear that the opposition’s president-elect, in exile in Spain, could somehow materialise its declared intention to enter Venezuela and hold a parallel counter-inauguration.

The government implemented extraordinary security measures to make sure this wouldn’t happen, closing land borders with Brazil and Colombia, shutting down Venezuelan airspace and deploying an unprecedented number of security forces throughout Caracas. The militarisation extended to the closure of opposition-controlled neighbourhoods and the pre-emptive detention of dozens of opposition figures.

Maduro’s inaugural address and subsequent appearances were particularly confrontational. He announced plans for constitutional changes to further consolidate power and declared the beginning of a new phase of governance based on a strong alliance between civilian authorities, military forces, the police and the intelligence apparatus. He openly discussed Venezuela’s readiness to take up arms against intervention alongside Cuba and Nicaragua, framing political opposition as a threat to national sovereignty.

International responses and regional implications

In the Americas, only Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras and Nicaragua recognise Maduro as the legitimately elected president, with only an additional handful worldwide, including China, Iran and Russia, maintaining their support.

The USA responded to Maduro’s inauguration by increasing the reward it offers for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to US$25 million, while also targeting his inner circle with new sanctions. The European Union also imposed new sanctions. The G7’s foreign ministers and the High Representative of the European Union issued a joint statement condemning Maduro’s ‘lack of democratic legitimacy’ and the ongoing repression of civil society and the political opposition.

Most significantly, the positions of Latin American states appear to be slowly shifting, with some left-wing leaders, notably those of Brazil and Colombia, not automatically siding with the Maduro regime for the first time. However, Colombia’s pragmatic approach reveals the complexities faced by Venezuela’s neighbours: while not accepting the official election results at face value, Colombia has stopped short of condemnation and has been careful to maintain its diplomatic relations, citing the need to manage border issues and the refugee situation.

Prospects for democratic change

The path to democratic transition faces significant obstacles, with military support remaining crucial to Maduro’s hold on power. The regime has secured military loyalty through a combination of institutional integration, coercion and economic privilege, with high-ranking military officers reaping generous rewards. The regime has found additional layers of protection in security structures including the National Bolivarian Guard, special police units and pro-government militias, and the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, strongly backed by G2, Cuba’s secret service.

But the authoritarian regime has vulnerabilities. Growing international isolation, combined with continued economic deterioration, may eventually strain the system of patronage that maintains elite loyalty, including among the military. The opposition’s commitment to peaceful resistance, while seemingly ineffective in the short term, continues to earn it moral authority and international support.

While the combination of peaceful resistance, international pressure and potential internal divisions within the regime may eventually create conditions for change, the immediate future suggests a continuing struggle between an entrenched authoritarian system and a resilient democratic movement. The outcome will have profound implications for Venezuela and for all of Latin America.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Senior Research Specialist, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org.

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