About the Knowledge Programme West Asia

Tags: West Asia , Civil Society in West Asia

The Knowledge Programme on Civil Society in West Asia is a joint initiative by Hivos and the University of Amsterdam/AISSR with the purpose of generating and integrating knowledge on the roles and opportunities for civil society actors in democratization processes in politically challenging environments. This programme integrates academic knowledge and practitioner’s knowledge from around the world to develop new insights and strategies on how civil society actors in Syria and Iran can contribute to various processes of democratization. Besides that, the programme also puts these developments in a broader regional perspective by comparing Iran and Syria with other case studies of the MENA region.

Civil society has been seen as an important force for democratization. However, the role of civil society and processes of democratization face challenges and obstacles and depend on multiple factors such as the relationship of civil society actors in relation to the state. Since both Syria and Iran know a politically authoritarian context this influences the number of options for civil society actors and international actors to contribute to civil society building, capacity building and democratization processes. In Iran and Syria civil society activists are generally pictured as “Western agents aiming at regime change”. Over the past few years the repression in Iran and Syria has increased, in Iran particularly since 2005 and again after the elections of 2009. In Syria the repression has augmented again since 2006. As a result, many civic activists have chosen to work with a low profile.

Objectives and guiding questions

The Knowledge Programme Civil Society in West Asia has two specific objectives. The first objective is to acquire insights about factors that drive and obstruct civic engagement within Syria and Iran. The second objective is to explore and identify the impact and effect of external involvement on various types of civil society actors and their activities.

Insights in the objectives are acquired via two main research questions:

1. How can civil society actors contribute to strengthening of civic initiatives in Syria and Iran?
2. To what extent can international actors contribute to civic activities and initiatives in Syria and Iran?

From the two main questions other questions arise like: How can the private sector be an actor in democratization processes? Why are authoritarian regimes resilient and what does this mean for the future of civil society? Are Islamist movements the unusual suspects that could contribute to democratization processes? What role does civil society play in notions of democratization theories? To what extent can the media foster democratization? What could be the role of NGOs in countries such Iran and Syria?

The output of the programme is freely accessible on this website and is produced for a broad audience of academics and practitioners. The knowledge programme puts great emphasis on the shared creation and dissemination of knowledge.