Civil Society Space

Urges States to create and maintain a safe and enabling environment, online and offline, in which civil society can operate independently and free from hindrance, insecurity and reprisals, including by putting in place relevant legislation, policies and practices and ensuring that existing or proposed legislation, policies and practices do not undermine the capacity of civil society to operate independently and free from hindrance, and also urges States to ensure that such measures are gender-, disability- and age-responsive, address racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and take into account the needs of different groups and the online dimension of threats and attacks;

Also urges States to recognize and promote the important role of a diverse and pluralistic civil society and to acknowledge the important contribution of civil society, including grass-roots organizations, human rights defenders, journalists and media workers and academia and academic institutions, to the promotion of human rights, including the principle of non-discrimination, and encourages States to take every opportunity to support diversity in civil society participation, with particular emphasis on underrepresented parts of civil society;

Calls upon States and encourages relevant international and regional organizations to review, and update as appropriate, their frameworks for engagement with civil society and ensure that those frameworks reflect and respond to the challenges faced, including by taking measures to tackle barriers to participation, including by underrepresented parts of civil society, and also calls upon States and encourages relevant international and regional organizations to enable and institutionalize meaningful online participation in hybrid meetings;

Also calls upon States to ensure that provisions on funding to civil society actors are in compliance with their international human rights obligations and commitments and are not misused to stigmatize or hinder the work or endanger the safety of civil society actors, and underlines the importance of the ability to solicit, receive and utilize resources for their work in a sustainable and predictable manner;

Encourages business enterprises, both transnational and others, including media and technology companies, in line with their responsibilities as set out in the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, to exercise human rights due diligence and to identify, prevent and mitigate adverse human rights impacts related to their business activities, such as those related to the spread of disinformation and hate speech targeting civil society and its work;

Encourages States and regional and international organizations to put in place transparent, fair and gender-responsive accreditation processes that deliver prompt decisions, respect human rights and safeguard the meaningful, safe, diverse and inclusive participation of civil society, including by establishing grievance mechanisms for redress, and to address any erroneous accreditation decisions;

Calls upon States to establish or enhance information-gathering and monitoring mechanisms, such as databases, including by benefiting from data collected by civil society and the media, to facilitate the collection, analysis and reporting of concrete quantitative and qualitative disaggregated data on threats, attacks or violence against civil society, including human rights defenders, journalists and media workers and academia and academic institutions, to consider methodologies to monitor online civil society space trends and online threats and attacks and to do their utmost to make data available to relevant entities, in particular the Office of the High Commissioner;

Urges States to ensure that the issue of the creation and maintenance of a safe and enabling environment for civil society is addressed in the context of the universal periodic review, and encourages States in that regard to consult civil society in the preparation of their national reports, to consider including in their national reports information on relevant domestic provisions and steps, to consider making relevant recommendations to States under review and to assist States in the implementation of relevant recommendations through, inter alia, the sharing of experiences, good practices and expertise and offering technical assistance on the basis of requests and with the consent of the States concerned, and to conduct broad consultations with civil society in the follow-up to their review, in compliance with Human Rights Council resolutions 5/1 of 18 June 2007 and 16/21 of 25 March 2011;

Also urges States to take all steps necessary to prevent killings, threats, attacks, discrimination, arbitrary arrests and detention or other forms of harassment, stigmatization and smear campaigns, reprisals and acts of intimidation against civil society actors, including human rights defenders, online and offline, including those carried out by States and actors under their effective control with impact abroad, to investigate any such alleged acts, to ensure access to justice and accountability and to end impunity where such violations and abuses have occurred;

Requests the High Commissioner to prepare a thematic report in follow-up to the report containing practical recommendations for the creation and maintenance of a safe and enabling environment for civil society, based on good practices and lessons learned,³ submitted to the Human Rights Council at its thirty-second session, to review progress against the recommendations contained therein, to identify new and emerging trends concerning civil society space, including through an analysis of the specific contribution and risks faced by underrepresented parts of civil society, and to provide an updated set of recommendations in the light of those trends, and also requests the High Commissioner, in the preparation of the report, to draw on the views of States, civil society, non-governmental organizations, national human rights institutions and other relevant stakeholders, including special procedure mandate holders, and to present the report to the Council at its sixty-third session;