From February 4 - 6, 2020, ICNL's Sub-Saharan Africa team facilitated a three-day consultative meeting in Banjul-The Gambia to discuss the country's new NGO bill. Participants discussed how the bill can be improved by bringing its provisions in line with existing international and regional standards, as well as best practices on freedom of association.

This report provides a detailed overview of the legal framework for association in Central Asia, focusing on Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. It examines how freedom of association is exercised, the legal status of non-commercial organizations, structure and internal governance, NCO activities, financial sustainability, state monitoring, and transparency in each country.

In this inaugural publication of the Civic Freedom Digest, ICNL highlights some of the key challenges that digital technologies pose to civic freedom, as well as successful civil society efforts to combat these threats.

This legislative briefer focuses on how critical infrastructure bills can undermine protesters’ right to peaceful assembly by creating draconian penalties for trespass as well as severely penalizing vaguely defined interference with the construction or operation of critical infrastructure sites.

This ECNL paper aims to empower civil society organizations, activists, donors, researchers, and others to counter restrictions on international funding and advocate for a more enabling environment for civil society's activities and impact.

This handbook builds an understanding of the legal and policy framework affecting the daily work of media and other organizations and proposes strategies for navigating restrictions in Tanzania.

On July 15, 2019, Egypt’s Parliament approved a new draft law on civil society organizations (CSOs). (The draft law is available here in English and Arabic.) If ratified by President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, the draft law will replace Egypt’s current, draconian CSO law, Law 70 of 2017 on Associations and Other Foundations Working in the Area of Civil Work.

General Comments are an important standard setting instrument and a powerful advocacy tool for the rights enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In this 2019 report, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Clément Voule, focuses on the opportunities and challenges facing these rights in the digital age. 

This report from the Consortium for Financial Access discusses how security-focused regulation of the financial sector has resulted in “de-risking” of the non-profit sector and makes recommendations for addressing this problem.