States must urgently protect civic space in the face of globally-spreading harmful “foreign agent/influence”-like laws: UN and regional experts urged

September 13, 2024

States and the international community must urgently halt and reverse the dangerous global trend of adoption of restrictive laws on associations, including foreign agents/foreign influence-like laws, to protect democracy, UN and regional human rights experts urged in a joint declaration.

Ahead of the World Democracy Day, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom to peaceful assembly and of association issued a Joint Declaration with experts from the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), warning of the harmful global phenomenon of increased use of foreign agents/foreign influence laws, amidst other laws, policies and practices, accompanied by harmful anti-rights rhetoric, restricting the right to freedom of association and democratic freedoms.

These laws threaten the existence of independent civil society which is key for ensuring inclusion, pluralism and public participation of everyone in society. The weaponization of these laws across all regions, to crackdown on civic space, on the pretext of enhancing transparency and protecting State’s security and sovereignty, have contributed to the global democratic backsliding and raising authoritarianism, the experts further warned. This is further undermining full and inclusive public participation especially as the world has been undergoing a year of elections.

Among other issues, the UN and regional experts raised concerns that the so-called “foreign agent”/foreign influence legislative initiatives, and laws with similar effects, introduce unnecessary, disproportionate and discriminatory obligations, restrictions or prohibitions on associations such as: separate registration obligations, adopting stigmatizing labelling as a “foreign agent” linked to the foreign origin of their funding or other benefits; overly burdensome, intrusive and costly reporting requirements; and prohibition of engagement in public participation in the decision-making processes.

As such, these laws fail to comply with international human rights standards, including the right of associations to freely access resources, and are exacerbating hostile narratives and the stigmatization of civil society as a whole and are having a chilling effect on public activism.

To ensure enabling environment for people to freely and safely organise and form associations, such as to act collectively to strengthen and protect democracy, the experts jointly called on States to repeal existing, and refrain from adopting these type of legislations.

Enhancing “transparency” and security is paramount, however, these broad and stigmatizing laws clearly targeting civil society, in fact reduce the ability of civil society to play its vital role in ensuring transparency, accountability and inclusive democracy and democratic institutions.

No. R214/24

8:10 AM