Tempering Transnational Advocacy? The Effect of Repression and Regulatory Restriction on Transnational NGO Collaborations

Abstract

This paper examines through qualitative study the effect of government regulatory restriction and repression on non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) engaging in transnational advocacy. The focus is on NGO’s advocacy activities, in the realm of human rights, environment, labor and development in particular, using illustrations from Bangladesh and Zambia. It finds that next to some NGOs disbanding and moving towards service activities, many NGOs shift in terms of substantive advocacy and form of organizational collaboration. To continue cross‐border interactions with their foreign partners, many NGOs adjust to circumvent or compensate for restrictions and repression. Because of this, transnational advocacy can be said to continue, but repression and restrictions have significant substantive and organizational effects for the collaborations studied, and cross‐border NGO collaborations in our sample are increasingly fragile and their advocacy more tempered.

Illiberal democracy and nutrition advocacy

“…Another respondent claimed that they have shifted from direct advocacy to conveying to officials the demands and concerns of communities in which they work (KII 31), a tactic that reconfigures their role from leading the vanguard to simply being a messenger of the people. Transforming from an advocacy organization that demands accountability to a more technical, service delivery organization is yet another mode of adaptation (KII 13), echoing similar findings about CSO responses to government restrictions in Bangladesh and Zambia (Fransen et al, 2019).…”

NGOs, international courts, and state backlash against human rights accountability: Evidence from NGO mobilization against Tanzania at the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights

“…But state backlash against human rights defenders and other civil society actors can also deter NGO litigation when state backlash renders actors that are essential for NGO litigation strategies unwilling or unable to challenge the state and participate in litigation (Hillebrecht, 2019, p. 167). Like NGOs, as discussed above, these actors may refrain from engaging in advocacy that could increase their vulnerability (Fransen et al, 2021, p. 16).…”

“…States' use of domestic‐level legal and extralegal measures to counteract actors and institutions promoting human rights accountability can impact NGOs' advocacy, with the potential to both promote and deter their litigation at an IHRC. States' domestic‐level backlash tactics can involve state legislation, regulation, policies, rhetoric, and violence that threaten the security and reduce the capacity of NGOs and their staff (Bakke et al, 2020; Buyse, 2018; Fransen et al, 2021). These state tactics can make it difficult for NGOs to be registered to operate within a state, gain foreign funding, and so on.…”

“…In this case, NGOs' legal consciousness and expertise would be important. States' domestic‐level backlash tactics, however, could also deter NGOs from pursuing human rights advocacy, including litigation at an IHRC, that they would perceive as increasing their vulnerability to state repression (Fransen et al, 2021, p. 16). Some NGOs may be completely deterred from participating in litigation, but other NGOs may draw on their networks for partners that can take the lead in litigation, while those vulnerable NGOs participate indirectly to evade state detection and possible reprisals.…”

Harmful Side Effects: How Government Restrictions against Transnational Civil Society Affect Global Health

“…Dupuy, Ron and Prakash (2015) find that most local human rights NGOs disappeared from Ethiopia after the 2009 Charities and Societies Proclamation. In Bangladesh and Zambia, restrictions made cross-border NGO collaborations on human rights and other causes increasingly fragile and their advocacy more tempered (Fransen et al 2021). Based on a large cross-national sample, Smidt et al (2021) find that if governments impose multiple types of restrictions, the ability of domestic NGOs to monitor local human rights abuses declines, which, in turn, reduces international naming-and-shaming campaigns that depend on information from those local NGOs.…”