Instead of Shrinking Space, Let’s Talk About Humanity’s Shared Future

Civil society is one of the great success stories of the 20^th century. If civil society is to shape the 21^st century, it needs to stop talking about “shrinking civic space” or “civil society under attack” and get better at telling its own story. If people constantly hear about activists being arrested, monitored and regulated, they will eventually start to believe those activists must have done something wrong. In spite, the civil society story could be based on our belief that the great moments of progress in history, the great leaps in empathy and openness, were achieved by people coming together to improve their communities—in other words through civil society. To make the case for civil society, we have to talk less about the threats it faces and more about the values it stands for, how it contributes to society and show people how they can make change happen. Read more here.

Source: OpenGlobalRights