Avatar meets the Amazon: how to support indigenous movements?

Movies can prove to be a powerful tool to raise awareness for a certain cause. Recently the buzz around blockbuster Avatar is being used by environmental and indigenous organizations to create global media attention for their struggle. In Avatar the indigenous Na’vi people fight to save their land and traditional way of living on planet Pandora from human beings who want to destroy it to extract minerals for energy supply on planet Earth. The story in Avatar is based on fiction, but many fil...

Claims to Success: ICT based Advocacy for the Protocal on the Rights of Women in Africa

How can the internet be used to promote the advocacy efforts by civil society organizations? In this paper, Caroline Kemp reflects on this question by examining the Solidarity for Women’s Rights Coalition (SOAWR) and their work towards promoting the Protocol for Women’s rights in Africa. The African Union adopted this protocol in 2005, but to date the ratification, popularization and implementation by member-states has been a slow process. SOAWR been instrumental in civic efforts to promote...

Human rights NGOs have to think more strategically

Do NGOs and other civic actors undertake the most effective measures to hold governments accountable to their international obligations to protect human rights, and in particular to protect vulnerable populations? Jeff Handmaker, ISS lecturer and member of the Hivos/ISS Civil Society Building Knowledge Programme team, explores this question in the book ''Advocating for Accountability, civic-state interactions to Protect Refugees in South Africa". The work of human rights organizations i...

Framing and Claiming Reproductive Rights: A Case Study of Civil Society Actors in Tanzania

How do grassroots organizations engage with, understand and use human rights discourses? In the current development context many civil society actors have adopted a ‘rights based approach’ (RBA). However, ‘human rights’ are often articulated at the international level, but understood, experienced and practiced in a local context. What does this dynamic imply for the way local civil society actors lobby the state to implement global human rights at a national policy level?

Seizing and Stretching Participatory Space: Civil Society Participation in Tanzania’s Policy Processes

Civil society participation in PRSP processes has become part and parcel of modern aid modities. Assumed benefits include stronger checks and balances, inclusion of marginalized interests, and a broader support base for implementation. This hints at transformative potential. Yet, where governments or donors drive the process, participation hardly ever surpasses a mere consultative role and risks of cooption loom large.

LGBT research update

The LGBT movement in Peru slowly reveals some of its dynamics as Marten van den Berge and his Peruvian colleague Giancaro Cornejo facilitate conversations and workshops with organizations in Lima and in some of the provincial capitals, whilst participating in marches, protests and meetings.

Local democratic governance in fragile states

In late November, Jon Gaventa and Marjoke Oostrom from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) facilitated a PSO hosted workshop about local democratic governance in fragile settings. Dutch NGOs concentrate their discussions on how to adjust their bottom-up strategies to fragile settings to contribute to peace, security and democratic governance, and to reconciliation and justice, but more may be required to (re)build local democracy…

Dialogues of knowledge in action

The Civil Society Building Knowledge programme supports the Kabarole Research Center in Fort Portal, Uganda to elaborate a new initiative that seeks to bring together politicians, policy makers and communities to jointly engage in development dialogue and knowledge generation. Edit Tuboly, Programme Officer at HIVOS, is currently visiting the region and participated in an open space meeting. An impression

Mobilizing social justice - Unlocking the potential for structural change

On the 23rd and 24th of November, the Hivos-ISS knowledge programme organizes a conference on 'mobilizing social justice; unlocking the potential for structural change'

Citizenship narratives in the absence of good governance; Voices of the working poor in Bangladesh

How does the interaction between the poor and civil society organizations effect perceptions of and possibilities for citizenship? Naila Kabeer and Afirul hoque interviewed 70 citizens from rural and urban Bangladesh, belonging to the so called ‘working poor’. Their voices are the backbone of a fascinating IDS working paper which offers plenty of food for thought.