CIVICUS Voices CIVICUS

The last thing students and their parents should be worrying about is whether children will be safe while attending school, and yet school shootings and attacks are a real threat around the world.Bruno Langeani, a project manager at the Instituto Sou da Paz, helps us understand the trends and nuances of school violence in Brazil, and what can really make a change. Vuk Cvetković us a Serbian high school student who works with the “I mi se pitamo” initiative and shares his views on how rar...

Safe and accessible drinking water is a crucial right that sadly continues to be threatened in different ways for communities around the work. So, it’s no surprise that access to water is frequently a protest demand, from Ethiopia to the United States. We speak to Alana Potter the global coordinator of EndWaterPoverty at WaterAid to give us an international perspective.Faeza Meyer, a community organiser at the African Water Commons Collective, shares her experiences from Cape Town’s ‘Day...

Russia’s war against Ukraine has taken centre stage in headlines and discussions over the last year, yet a variety of conflicts continue internationally, from Ethiopia to Palestine. Since this season of CIVICUS Voices looks particularly at protests, this episode looks at how to mobilise and campaign in the middle of conflict and war. We speak to Polina Kurakina from OVD-Info, an organisation tracking the rights to freedom of assembly and expression in Russia.Oleksandra Matviichuk is...

The global cost-of-living crisis has been met with a crackdown on the rights of working people in every region of the world, and this year has seen the violations of workers rights reach record highs. We continue this season by looking at workers' rights protests and mobilisations from across the world that have brought about real change, with a special focus on migrants, who are among the most vulnerable of all workers.In this episode, we speak to Lennon Ying Dah Wong, an activist fighting f...

Significant strides have been made across the globe in recognising and upholding the rights of sexual minorities, but despite these successes, the past year has also seen major setbacks when it comes to LGBTQI+ rights. This episode talks to human rights defenders from across the African continent, where anti-rights sentiments and regressive legislation is gaining ground.We talk to Executive Director of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), Frank Mugisha, who is an openly gay activist in a country ...

Freedom of peaceful assembly is a fundamental right exercised around the world, especially where we see democracies backsliding, governments failing to listen to the people, and amid growing anti-rights backlash.To kick of this season we look at what has been happening in the last year. Marianna Belalba Barreto leads the Civic Space Research team at CIVICUS and tracks civic space globally. Then we hear what it has been like to organise protests, with Ruki Fernando from Sri Lanka, where t...