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, indigenous and human rights 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...

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, indigenous and human rights 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...

Claims to Success: ICT based Advocacy for the Protocol 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...

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.

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.

Civic driven change in West Asia

What can an organisation like Hivos do in repressive regimes like Iran and Syria? Does Civic Driven Change (CDC) offer opportunities or new insights for developing strategies in those countries? These are the questions Maaike van Adrichem poses in her research paper on Hivos programme in Syria and Iran: From civil society building to civic driven change?

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…