Challenging the Closing Space for Civil Society: A practical starting point for funders, May 2016

The aim of this report is to give all funders and members of civil society a practical starting point for thinking about possible approaches for working together and contesting the closing space for civil society. The report, drawing on funders' workshops on closing space, and other reports and responses, shares the perspectives of numerous donors, civil society representatives, and experts engaged with this issue and offers ways of aligning work moving forward.This report comes from the Funders' Initiative for Civil Society (FICS), which a number of donor organisations have committed funds to set up, and which aims to develop a coherent and strategic response to this trend. This new initiative will help private funders align their efforts in this field, provide information to civil society organisations about the different forms of support available, begin to build crosssector networks between humanitarian, environmental, development, democracy and peace-building, indigenous rights, social change and human rights funders, and start work on creating better channels of communication with state actors and international institutions