Restricted Spaces Case Studies and Ways Forward

Restricted Spaces Case studies and ways forward Ru Freeman, editor Andrei Gómez-Suárez A research document of the Atziri Ávila Nigel Nyamutumbu Pinar Akpinar Niyibigira Alexis September 2019 About AFSC The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) is a Quaker organization that promotes lasting peace with justice, as a practical expression of faith in action. Drawing on continuing spiritual insights and working with people of many backgrounds, we nurture the seeds of change and respect for human life that transform social relations and systems. AFSC’s work for shared security AFSC works with communities, decision-makers, and ally organizations to advance global shared security. In simple terms, traditional security is when you target a particular group, and build a wall around them under the pretext that it will keep you safe; shared security is when you build ties with that group such that your relationship keeps you both safe. Shared security harkens to a far more thoughtful way of approaching our common fate. We do this by supporting evidence-based good practices, documenting success stories, and linking our work to policy recommendations. We promote nonviolent approaches to reduce violence and militarism, engage all actors in seeking peaceful solutions to conflicts, and support local people as positive change agents in their societies. AFSC focuses its global shared security work on several key issues. They include: Prevention of electoral violence Migration and human mobility Restricted spaces for peacebuilding Business and peace Political and organized violence Our work to promote shared security looks different in different places as we respond to community needs in specific contexts, but it is bound together by a search for truly shared solutions to our shared problems. 1 Contents Background .................................................................................................................................................................. 3 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................ 4 Best practices ............................................................................................................................................................... 9 Case studies: The Paradox of Restricted Space in Colombia (2008–2018) .............................................................................. 15 The Role of Women in the Defense of Human Rights in Mexico ..................................................................... 33 Civic Space and Access to Information in Zimbabwe ......................................................................................... 43 Turkey's Democracy Dilemma and the Restriction of Its Civic Spaces ............................................................ 58 Challenges of Trauma Healing and Reconciliation in Burundi ......................................................................... 70 2 Background For the past 20 years, academics, activists, practitioners, and peacebuilders have documented the shrinking space in which they are able to operate. The trend is global and has garnered significant attention from scholars, think tanks, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and donors. The restriction of space is a problem that affects all of us at an international, national, and individual level. The past year has seen a rapid shrinking of civil space, as government agencies in the U.S. and around the world have become more restrictive, more punitive, and more intolerant of any form of criticism or protest. In the U.S., leaders in the immigration movement have been targeted for detention and deportations. Globally, government policies and bank de-risking in the name of “counterterrorism” have also increased difficulties for staff and partners to travel and for transferring funds to support international programming. Partner agencies in other countries are facing new legal restrictions, as well as threats and harassment. Around the world, political attacks on media and hyper-partisanship have undermined the basic foundations of policy debate, political compromise, and democratic power sharing. Restricted space criminalizes and threatens international peacebuilding, activism, the organizing of civil society and networks and weakens civil liberties and free press. The values of equality, human rights, and free self- expression are threatened and compromised. Oppression and repression can become widespread and especially dangerous for all who work to challenge it. 3 Introduction We live in a world where a speech made in one country can have an immediate and often destabilizing effect on another—as we saw in 2017 when the American president declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, further fueling conflict in the region. Our reliance on one another—particularly with regard to shared and limited resources based on factors including climate change, geographic location, wars, and profit—can also deepen the divide between the rich and the poor. Such is the case with many Gulf countries (long dependent on Asia and Africa for food supplies), which have begun to buy more land in Africa, displacing indigenous people, and draining water resources. Of course, sometimes this interconnectedness can be turned to good: When the Saudi government decided to starve Qatar into submission, Qatar received food aid from Iraq and Turkey, created a model to have sustainable agriculture, and used technology and innovation to increase food production and self-sufficiency. Yet overall the needle has tended toward abuse of our interconnectedness, rather than good. Meanwhile, the rise of nationalism in many countries has precipitated fear among those seeking refuge, and anger on the part of insular communities. What is of significance is how easily nationalism can be wielded to manipulate citizens. Corporations and the extremely rich enjoy power, prominence, and continued acquisition of wealth predicated on populations deprived of basic necessities being too fearful to seek common ground on larger issues with one another or reach across national borders to build the kinds of alliances that are necessary to counter the interests of global capital and the people who control it. Given this context, the role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in helping to address the larger issues, while also responding to the specific dislocations experienced by local communities, is critically important. In his book, “Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India” (Yale University Press, 2002), Ashutosh Varshny offers this definition of what we mean by civil society: "According to the conventional notions prevalent in the social sciences, a civil society refers to that space in a given society a) which exists between the family on the one hand and the state on the other, b) which makes interconnections between individuals or families possible, and c) which is independent of the state. Many, though not all, of the existing definitions also suggest two more requirements: that the civic space be organized in associations that attend to the cultural, social, economic as well as political needs of the citizens; and that the associations be modern and voluntaristic, not ascriptive. " Although Varshny moves on to question if these parameters capture the entirety of what is meant by civil society, his is a useful clarification for the purposes of understanding the conundrums faced by individual and group actors around the world in our present milieu. If our well-being rests upon our ability to achieve our individual human potential within the context of shared resources and civic spaces 4 (which are themselves governed by laws and institutions formed and maintained for the good of the whole), then what does it mean to have that potential constrained within and outside our domiciles and places of work? Secondly, if our very functioning as human beings depends upon our ability to identify, and form partnerships, with the people among whom we live, what psychological dislocations occur when we are forcibly prevented from doing so? Finally, if the pathways to securing justice and peaceful coexistence are blocked by violence on the part of the very state actors—political leaders, police forces, government officials—who are supposed to facilitate our access to those goals, what recourse s left for ordinary citizens but anarchy? These questions have long since left the purview of literature where relentless censorship (Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”), the crushing defeat inflicted by untenable regulations (Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” or Basma Abdel Aziz’s “The Queue”), and propaganda, perpetual war, and omnipresent government surveillance (George Orwell’s “1984”) once seemed securely confined to the realm of the fantastic. Today, citizens across the world are threatened by electronic oversight of their every action—the loss of livelihood and life itself due to divergences of opinion, and seemingly insurmountable obstacles to securing a just peace in their homelands or the possibility of seeking sanctuary in safer places in other countries. Violence is often condoned by authorities, as has been the case in the United States, and protest—unless it is organized and managed by the authorities against whom the people have risen— regularly backfires on those seeking to obtain redress. The five case studies included in this report highlight the difficulties faced by civil society

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