As we commemorate 20 years of Mandela's release, we should be grateful on behalf of South Africans and human beings across the world. Thank you Madiba for devoting your life to what CIVICUS and its partners strongly believe in: Every Human Has Rights. Your spirited struggle has created a lasting legacy for the entire world.   more »

A fact-finding cum solidarity mission to Nicaragua undertaken by CIVICUS with the support of its members, the Coordinadora Civil (CC) and the Red Nicaraguense por la Democracia y el Desarrollo Local (RNDDL), has found evidence of pressure being applied by the authorities on independent civil society groups. Nevertheless, talks with officials have been positive raising hopes for better government-civil society relations.   more »

CIVICUS is supporting the pan-Africa initiative 'Africa for Haiti'. For information and donations please visit www.africanmonitor.org or www.trustafrica.org   more »

CIVICUS is seeking to recruit a Resource Mobilisation Manager to focus on the development of new funding opportunities for the organisation, as well as support the management and expansion of the established donor base.   more »

CIVICUS in collaboration with the Inter Press Service (IPS) is developing a database to facilitate the relationship between civil society and the media. This database will contain the names and contact details for civil society organisations as well as their fields of expertise and the regions in which they work. The database will allow the media to quickly and easily find sources for their stories within civil society on a variety of themes. If you would like to be part of this database, please complete the form at http://www.civicus.org/cs_gateway/   more »

CIVICUS condemns the introduction of the Anti Homosexuality Bill 2009 in the Uganda Parliament on 14 October 2009. The Bill contains derogatory references to members of the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender (LGBT) community as well as sexual rights activists -- whom it accuses of “seeking to impose their values of sexual promiscuity on the people of Uganda.”   more »

With less than two months to go until 2010, there are still many issues and events that require our attention before the end of the year. International Volunteer Day, UN Climate Change Conference, International Human Rights Day....   more »

With less than two months to go until 2010, there are still many issues and events that require our attention before the end of the year. International Volunteer Day. UN Climate Change Conference. International Human Rights Day...   more »

With the global crises spiraling out of control, it is no longer for us (individuals, organisations and governments) to choose whether to volunteer and encourage volunteerism. It has become mandatory! The only way out is to bolster the spirit of volunteerism that exists in every culture and every region.   more »

The CIVICUS Affinity Group of National Associations is deeply dismayed by the arrest of the Zimbabwe National Association of NGOs (NANGO) Board Chair, Dadirai Chikwengo and Cephas Zinhumwe on 26 October. NANGO is a member of AGNA   more »

Photo album of Joint Programme Meeting held in Johannesburg (photos by Pat Hanley, Chair Social & Civic Policy Institute, a CIVICUS partner, from New Zealand). http://picasaweb.google.com/Lawler.hanley/Joburg?feat=content_notification#   more »

Photos of the 'tcktcktck with CIVICUS: 'Global Climate Wake Up Call' event at CIVICUS House, Johannesburg, on 21 September (1 pm) are now on our website. Visit www.civicus.org or the direct link: http://www.civicus.org/civicus-news/1160   more »

Thank you Members and partners for your fabulous contributions to the Special Issue of e-CIVICUS on World Democracy Day. To read, please click here http://civicus.org/pg/world-democracy-day

CIVICUS joins the 'Global Climate Wake Up Call' on 21 September by participating in an unique campaign. At 1pm (South Africa time), CIVICUS and its Members and partners would set off alarms on their mobile phones and become a part of the global campaign by tcktcktck. This initiative is strongly supported by Hillside Digital, a CIVICUS member, who would film the event.   more »

The latest issue of the Civil Society Watch Monthly Bulletin - August 2009 is now on our website.... http://www.civicus.org/csw_files/CSWMB_AugustNo44.htm   more »

A CSI training workshop was held in Minsk, Belarus on September 3-5, 2009.The training was well attended by government, academics, international NGOs and Belarusian civil society representatives, as well as our CSI partners in Russia.   more »

Anabel Cruz, Chair of CIVICUS' Board feels....No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick.   more »

CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation expresses deep concern about the repression of independent civil society groups in Turkmenistan. With blanket bans on information and extreme levels of opaque governance, Turkmenistan is one of the most oppressive countries in the world.   more »

The CIVICUS 2008 Annual Report attempts to capture the highlights of 2008   more »

CIVICUS seeks to appoint a Director of Operations to support the Secretary General in organisational transformation processes and infrastructure   more »

CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation expresses deep concern about the subversion of democracy in the Kyrgyz Republic   more »

28 January 2009- Despite severe criticism from donors, civil society and foreign governments, on 6 January 2009, the Ethiopian Parliament passed a controversial law restricting the activities and funding for civil society organisations (CSOs).   more »

"We need food! Too much! Food, clothing, drugs. We need doctors also. And qualified teachers. My parents died. Passed away by this disease called HIV/AIDS. So I do not know what to eat at Christmas. So that's all I wanted to say." The words of Zibusiso, an 11-year-old boy who the CIVICUS mission to Zimbabwe met in late December, spoke with greater clarity than the grim statistics trickling out of the country. Wherever the mission travelled, it encountered a society in utter breakdown.   more »

By Ingrid Srinath, CIVICUS Secretary General Release Date: 15 January 2009 = e-CIVICUS 421 "An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind," declared Mahatma Gandhi. Israel has, over the past three excruciating weeks in Gaza, used the ancient Biblical and Hammurabic dictum as a fig-leaf to justify its inhumane, collective punishment of defenceless Palestinians. The world has simply watched in horror as about 1000 men, women, children and even relief workers have been ruthlessly killed, subjected to state terror and deprived of the most basic humanitarian relief -- in apparent retaliation for the actions of Hamas militants.   more »

If you read the CIVICUS mission, vision and values you will not find any specific mention of volunteerism. Yet, volunteerism is fundamental to our efforts and that of our members, partners and broader constituents to strengthen citizen participation and to promote a more just and equitable world.   more »

From here in Doha, at the Civil Society Forum preparing for the Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development, I’ve spent the past few hours watching in horror as my hometown, Mumbai, comes under attack yet again. The chilling scenes from Mumbai serve as another reminder of the many crises, large and small, that are at risk of falling off the radar as the world’s leaders focus on the global financial crisis. As policy-makers focus on banks and stock markets, the average people around the world continue to grapple with threats to lives, livelihoods, freedom and democracy. Do our world leaders really care about what matters most to the global citizens? To read this week's column, click here.   more »

By Ingrid Srinath Release Date: 21 November 2008 = e-CIVICUS 416 In Indian mythology, the Samudramanthan, or churning of the ocean, produced both the deadly poison that could exterminate the world and the nectar of immortality. It is now clear to all, except a few die-hard market fundamentalists, that the crisis confronting us is neither limited to financial markets nor to particular countries. While diagnoses of causes and prescriptions of remedies still vary, it is apparent that we are about to witness a global ripple effect of unprecedented scale and severity.    more »

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND (November 20, 2008) - International Bridges to Justice awarded eight JusticeMakers Fellowships for 2008 today. Recipients were notified by phone that they will each receive $5,000 to implement a project to protect the rights of ordinary persons accused of a crime within their communities. The fellows of this seed fund include members from eight countries and three continents. The projects were selected for their innovation, relevance and potential to make important contributions to their country’s respective legal systems.    more »

Recent public pronouncements from Downing Street, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United Nations (UN) have all urged that the current financial crisis be seen not as an excuse for turning inward, reneging on commitments on aid, trade, poverty reduction and climate justice, nor that action is restricted to papering over the cracks in regulatory frameworks. Instead, these august bodies have unanimously advocated that the global community seize the opportunity to reinvent the global economic order and redress the imbalances that are, in no small measure, at the root of the current turmoil.    more »

By Ingrid Srinath, CIVICUS Secretary General. Issued Date: e-CIVICUS 398, 16 July 2008 - When I was a teenager, in Mumbai, India, my parents hired a new maid. She was exactly the same age as I was, but unlike me, had never been to school. While I probably attributed my academic ‘success’ to my own hard work, and my parents probably believed they’d paid for it through theirs, the stark reality was that my education had been paid for by our new maid and her brothers and sisters all over India. Hundreds of millions whose life choices were limited virtually from birth by a deeply entrenched system of privilege that, for instance, granted me access to a subsidised education all the way up to the post-graduate level, while excluding her from even basic literacy.   more »

By Ingrid Srinath, CIVICUS Secretary General. Issued Date: e-CIVICUS 397, 9 July 2008 - This issue of e-CIVICUS goes to press as the G8 meeting winds down in Japan. The inclusion of the O5 countries as guests went some way towards redressing the melanin deficit in the club of the planet’s most powerful, but continued to present a chromosomally-challenged picture. It is no surprise therefore that the outcomes represent not simply lack of progress, but several steps backward on the issues that most affect the majority of civil society.   more »

By Ingrid Srinath, CIVICUS Secretary General. Issued Date: e-CIVICUS 396, 2 July 2008 - The crisis of democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe is a stark, ongoing reminder of the inadequacies of political leadership and civil society in Africa and around the world. While ordinary Zimbabweans fight a life and death struggle for their basic human rights and for their rights to democratic voice, the rest of us - politicians, civil society organisations and the media - seem to be able to do little more than wring our hands in despair and issue appeals for sanity and balance. Despite the clamour of voices seeking decisive action from African governments, especially in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, an ‘election’ that most people agree was an utter sham of democracy has been conducted and a victor declared with utter impunity.   more »

By Ingrid Srinath, CIVICUS Secretary General. Issued Date: e-CIVICUS 395, 27 June 2008 - The 8th CIVICUS World Assembly in Glasgow was, in my view, momentous in more ways than one. Marking the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the World Assembly provided a grim reminder of the growing threats to civil society globally, whilst simultaneously highlighting the opportunity to build partnerships and alliances of unprecedented width and depth.   more »

By Ashraf Patel, Independent Development Policy Analyst. As global leaders meet at the G-8 Sapparo in Japan this week, the spectre of super high food and fuel prices further blots an already gloomy economic outlook. This news is bound to burden Africa’s ‘development agenda’ at the G-8 which is already grappling with stalled trade talks, aid effectiveness, fighting HIV-Aids, meeting MDG ’s and expanding infrastructure development.   more »

By Renate Bloem, CIVICUS UN Representative in Geneva. The recent CIVICUS World Assembly promoted and discussed human rights, particularly reflecting on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It also lent support to a campaign focusing on the realisation of the Declaration - “Every Human Has Rights” led by the influential group, the Council of Elders. These discussions led me to think more about how we can further promote and deepen civil society’s engagement with international human rights processes, such as those at the United Nations.   more »

By Archbishop Njongo Ndungane, President and Founder of African Monitor. The Group of Eight (G8) summit has come and like other previous summits gone. A lot of anticipation preceded this year’ summit against a backdrop of an escalation of the usual problems and new challenges bedeviling the world, particularly the African continent.   more »

By Tanzilya Salimdjanova, CIVICUS Civil Society Watch programme. "Our voice from our region is very weak because we do not unite. At the international level we try to work independently, focusing on our internal country issues, and ignoring the fact that we have a lot in common. We should develop a platform for our voices to be heard at the global level", says Anara Moldosheva, a gender expert from Kyrgyzstan.   more »

By Kumi Naidoo. In ten days time, Zimbabwe will be holding its national harmonised elections, combining the presidential, parliamentary, senate and local elections. The last election in March 2005 was marred by state violence against voters and civil society activists, and severe silencing of the media. Tragically, in the three years since, the situation has continued to worsen for both activists as well as the average Zimbabwean citizen. Food shortages have increased, inflation has skyrocketed and repression of civil society actors has become even more heavy-handed.   more »

14 March, 2008: Ingrid Srinath, currently Chief Executive of Child Rights and You (CRY) in Mumbai, India, will take over from Kumi Naidoo and assume the position of Secretary General-Elect of CIVICUS on 1 May 2008. “The CIVICUS Board believes that Ingrid possesses all the right skills to develop the organisation in the years to come. She brings valuable experience and a fresh perspective to this global family of civil society and I am convinced she will energise the movement we began.” said Anabel Cruz, CIVICUS Board Chair. Kumi Naidoo, who has served as Secretary General since 1998, will step down as Secretary General at the end of July following a 3 month hand over period, after which time he will remain highly involved in the work of CIVICUS as the new Honorary President. Kumi led CIVICUS though a period of intense global change.   more »