Seminar report:

Joint action for creating enabling environment for civil society in Tanzania

23.3.2016

Kirsi Koivuporras-Masuka

Introduction

● Kepa, a Finnish NGO Platform for development CSOs, and the Embassy of Finland in Tanzania organized a joint seminar on the 23rd of March called ”Joint action for creating enabling environment for civil society in Tanzania”.

● The aim of the seminar was to bring together different actors, civil society organizations, donor partners and representatives of governmental institutions in Tanzania to discuss on how together act for enabling environment for civil society in Tanzania.

● This presentation summarizes the main points of the seminar discussion as well as the proposed solutions for shrinking civic space we collected from participants during the day.

● Also some additional information and links are added after the actual seminar.

● The content is divided into four parts 1) what is civil society space and current trends, 2) how the space is shrinking i.e. current challenges and hindering factors, 3) solutions for tackling the challenges and ways forward.

What civil society space?

● Space for civil society or civic space can be defined as the public sphere where debate and deliberation allows the negotiation of the common interest and where civil society actors are carrying out the different roles they have in society.

● Recently CSOs, especially human rights organizations, pro-democracy and change seeking actors in many countries are facing increased restrictions when trying to carry out their work = space for civil society is shrinking or closing.

● In practice this means e.g. legal and administrative barriers for CSOs, difficulties for getting funding e.g. governments make it more difficult to CSOs to receive foreign funding, restrictions for public gatherings and freedom of expression, intimidation, harassment and even violent assaults on civil society actors.

Current trends of civic space

● According to CIVICUS 96 countries significantly violated civic space in 2014 and Tanzania was one of these countries (see the map below).

● In 2015, the number has grown to at least 101 countries. Rise from 9 to 16 countries on European continent; 31 African, 38 Asian countries. Alarming is that most serious kind of violations are also in the rise.

Yellow card for civic space in Tanzania

● Watch the video ”Space for Change”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylpVQsu1mdk

Challenges and hindering factors

● Legislation and regulations: Freedom to establish associations and organizations exists as well as the freedom of assembly, but the government has a legal right to de-register CSOs and limit assembly; Recently Statistics and Cyber Crime Laws, Media Services Bill and Access to Information Act.

● Pekka Hukka, the Ambassador of Finland: “After many years of developments in Tanzania we can see some signs of concern. While the legislation has always given the state the powers to interpret the acts, it looks to me that new related legislation and its implementation is getting less coherent.”

● Onesmo Olengurumwa from Tanzania Human Rights Defenders Coalition (THRDC): “The space of CSOs is closing at the very astonishing speed. There is high level of CSOs control, marginalization, exclusion, repressive laws and hostile relationship with state officials.”

● Example: In 2014 and 2015 the THRDC's Protection desk received and documented about 20 claims from CSOs of being suppressed or rather banned by state actors.

● Example: Cyber Crime Law was used to raid the office of the CSO coalition TACCEO doing election observing during the general elections 2015.

● Political and governmental environment:

● Harassment and threats against human rights defenders (14 cases in 2014 according to THRDC).

● Amani Mustafa from HakiMadini: Have been facing threats, office has been raided, phones taken, accused of being ”anti-business, against the government and being opposition” when defending the rights of small-scale miners.

● Many of the government lead process are still done in secrecy, without any possibility for the CSOs to engage with. However in recent years there has been improvement; the civil society actors have been invited to take part in policy reforms e.g. the Constitution making process & Local Government Reform Programme. However CSOs are normally engaged at a later stage meaning that they mainly have a commenting role instead of being engaged already from the planning phase.

● Accountability and transparency:

● Lack of access to information of decision making and public documents, e.g. access to budget information, public policies and legislation as most of material is classified as confidential or is difficult to access to.

● Even though the relationship between the government and the civil society has been improved, there’s still lack of trust. Better dialogue and means for meaningful engagement are required.

● Challenges when it comes to freedom of expression and freedom of speech (closing down newspapers, harassment of journalist, 11 cases in 2014 according to THRDC's report).

● Public attitudes, trust and participation:

● Wide-range voluntary participation doesn’t exist even though the socio-cultural environment would be favorable for this.

● Lack of trust for CSOs in communities to certain extent; “external actors bringing interventions from top down.”

● Resources:

● Tanzanian civil society faces challenges when it comes to resources (dependency on external funding, in average over 40%, advocacy organization and networks 85% to 90%; lack of capacities to develop means for fundraising and increased self-financing).

● ODA channeled to CSOs is decreasing also in Tanzania. This is a challenge as external funding is still important for many organizations.

● Public funding for civil society is very scarce and access to existing instruments is limited. It is hard to find information on available government funding for civil society.

● Internal challenges for civil society:

● Lack of joint effort and cooperation. Onesmo Olengurumwa: “CSOs have proved to be much disorganized and proved to have no common stand and unity.”

● Ismail Suleiman from National Council of NGOs (NACONGO): “Before we were talking and pushing things together, now small NGOs and INGOs, umbrellas and networks are moving to their own direction.”

Solutions and ways forward

Pekka Hukka: ”Vibrant civil society plays important part in democratic development, where Tanzania has made considerable strides in past years. Democracy is an integral part of the global development agenda. The newly agreed SDGs are a clear sign of this. Specifically the goal number 16, about promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, proving access to justice for all and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels, clearly states democracy's importance in development. An enabling environment for a vivid civil society is a surely needed for any country to implement successfully this goal.”

● Collected ideas from seminar participants and speakers:

● Enhancing civic education and raising awareness for civic space

● Using social media for disseminating information, and strenghtening community medias (if and when there's barriers to get through with other medias, e.g. airtime on TV)

● Figthing for law reforms and pushing for implementation of relevant laws e.g. the Budget Act

● Networking with other CSOs, international cooperation and allies, forging strong connections with partners

● Utilizing better available opportunities for policy influence and international advocacy

● Strenghtening relationship with local and district level authorities

● Working with relevant parliamentary committees

● Improving dialogue with the government, improving understanding of civil society

● Pushing for a law to protect civil society, utilizing international protection mechanisms, improving CSOs participation in legistlative discussions

● Keeping activities public and visible (to protect one self), increasing engagement with general public

● Utilizing existing global initiatives e.g. Open Government and EITI

● Strenghtening civil society, building CSOs capacity, improving coordination and cooperation

● Improving access to information, especially budget information, without delays, increasing public documents to be available online

● Ariadne Network has published a guidebook for challenging the closing space for civil society targeting especially funders. This practical starting point can be found here:

http://www.ariadne-network.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Ariadne_ClosingSpaceReport-Final-Version.pdf

● CIVICUS is developing monitoring tools for civic space. Find out more by reading the pilot report for Civic Space Monitor: http://www.civicus.org/images/CivicSpaceMonitorPilot.pdf

Tips for further information