Multilateral Engagement to Defend Civic Space
ICNL guidance on how civil society can work effectively with regional and international governance bodies.
Promoting civic space and an enabling environment for civil society at the national level requires persistence, creativity, and coalition building. For more than 30 years, ICNL has supported local partners around the world in advancing these goals. In that time, we have found that national advocacy is often strongest when paired with strategic engagement beyond borders, including in multilateral fora.
While multilateral engagement is rarely a “silver bullet” for defending civic space, it can be helpful in a variety of ways, including by establishing norms and standards, assessing state compliance with those norms and standards, creating space for advocacy, promoting state accountability, and sometimes engaging directly to counter specific abuses. All these activities can provide leverage, incentives, and encouragement that helps complement domestic work on civic space.
This series of briefers provides advice and guidance to civil society partners on how to best use multilateral engagement abroad to defend and expand civic space at home. The first installment focuses on general strategic advice, while the others dive into how civil society can pursue specific objectives through multilateral engagement with UN bodies, specialized and technical bodies, and regional mechanisms.
What do we mean by “multilateral”?
Multilateral processes and mechanisms refer to activities and decisions involving three or more parties, especially the governments of different countries. Multilateral processes can also embrace multistakeholder engagement, including civil society, businesses, and representatives of international organizations.
These multilateral spaces are diverse: they can formalized or informal; regional or global; and general or organized around a specific technical issue.
Briefer #1
Multilateral Engagement Strategies to Strengthen Civic Space
New to multilateral engagement? Start here.
Our introductory briefer outlines how to develop a strategy for engaging with multilateral institutions on civic space issues. It breaks down setting objectives, identifying which multilateral fora to prioritize, the importance of engaging with allies, and how to develop an action plan.
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Briefer #2
Promoting Civic Space through Engagement with UN Bodies
The United Nations is the largest and arguably most important multilateral institution in existence today – but it is also the most complex, with over 20 principal organs and agencies.
This briefer demystifies the process of engaging with UN mechanisms, exploring the four UN bodies with principal responsibilities relating to promotion of civic space and the exercise of civic freedoms: (1) the UN Human Rights Council; (2) the UN Human Rights Committee; (3) UN special procedures; and (4) the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights.
Read moreBriefer #3
Engaging with Specialized and Technical Multilateral Bodies to Defend and Expand Civic Space
The UN is not the only multilateral body with a mandate to protect and promote human rights. This briefer explores five technical and specialized bodies that have incorporated concern for civic space and civic freedoms into their work: (1) the Open Government Partnership, (2) Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, (3) the Financial Action Task Force, (4) OECD Development Assistance Committee, and (5) multilateral development banks.
Each of these bodies presents their own unique opportunities for civil society to engage.
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Briefer #4
Engaging with Regional Bodies
Coming soon.
