Restoring Civic Space for Civil Society - TNGO

Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs

Transnational NGO Initiative present

Restoring Civic Space for Civil Society

A talk by Lana Baydas, Senior Fellow, Human Rights Initiative, CSIS - Center for Strategic and International Studies

Around the world, governments are using a variety of approaches to limit the space for civil society to operate. These range from controlling the media, creating onerous registration requirements, and passing restrictive legislation to cut off foreign funding, to depriving human rights activists of their nationality, detaining civil society leaders, and in some cases, engaging in targeted killings. This includes some countries that, until recently, were considered consolidated democracies. Lana Baydas, Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), will discuss the major threats and drivers of closing civic space, as well as key responses and strategies already underway to make civil society more resilient and sustainable.

Lana Baydas is a senior fellow with the CSIS Human Rights Initiative. Prior to joining CSIS, she worked as both an academic and a practitioner in the fields of human rights, gender equality, development, and international humanitarian law for the last 16 years, holding posts with the United Nations, Crisis Action, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the American University in Cairo. She holds a Ph.D. and LL.M. in public international law from the University of Glasgow in Scotland and a B.A. in political science from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon.

Lunch will be served.

For more information, please contact Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken, tmbruno@maxwell.syr.edu

Sponsoring Departments: Transnational NGO Initiative, Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs