Featured Post – Page 3 – The International Civil Society Centre

Meaningfully connected: Inclusivity requires a lot more than just access

14th April 2022 by Nkosinathi Mcetywa

What does it mean to be truly inclusive in a highly digitised world? Is it time to refine what we mean by ‘access’?

In an increasingly digitised society, access to digital tools does not always equal participation, and as such, access to digital technology is not enough as a measure of inclusion. Oftentimes, the digital divide persists even when people have access to technological tools, because their knowledge may be limited, thus limiting their ability to fully participate on the internet. This redefines the concept of digital inclusion significantly; requiring more introspective questions about what real inclusion means and looks like in relation to digital participation.

The Civic Tech Innovation Network (CTIN) and the International Civil Society Centre (ICsCentre) partnered up for a Digital Dialogue Series and the first dialogue of this series focused on ‘building inclusive civic tech communities’. Onica Makwakwa and Astha Kapoor made up the panel of speakers while malebo sephodi facilitated this dialogue.

Makwakwa opened the discussion by stating that the drive for access to digital technologies is not enough; that those with access to digital tools and the internet needed to be meaningfully connected in order to truly participate in the digital world and economy. According to Makwakwa, to be meaningfully connected means that users are not just merely consumers of content but also active participants who contribute to the internet.

Those who are meaningfully connected…are able to use the internet for more essential activities, such as accessing healthcare information, taking classes, [and] engaging in dialogues like this one. So 30 to 33% of those who are meaningfully connected, are able to use this access to digital technologies in a way that’s empowering, and also enables them to do good in their communities

Speaking from a civic tech perspective, Kapoor criticised the singular lens of access from which civic tech initiatives work. She proposed an additional lens from which to work which involved interrogating digital technologies from the perspective of negotiation. Kapoor encouraged the audience to think about their ability to negotiate with technology and what the next step to access might be.

What happens once you engage with technology? And what happens as we’re generating all of this data? How do we use the data meaningfully [and] resist the sort of extraction of data that we’re all sort of going through? How do we meaningfully engage with both the state and the private sector using technology? And again,…how do we negotiate on questions of our rights? asked Kapoor.

Kapoor continued to say that while access and inclusion are important and should be rigorously pursued, there are questions about how digital technologies affect how governance happens, and how we can interact with the State. Kapoor shared that people’s ability to negotiate with the State diminishes when services are digitised and so does their ability to organise. This is because they lack the language and understanding of how these tools work in the first place, and as such are unaware of when these tools are being used to exploit and abuse their rights.

This lack of awareness creates new challenges, and it has the power to alienate citizens who feel that their struggles are individual and not part of the collective. This is because the dominant narrative around technology is that it is a private experience and not a collective one. This assertion weakens the ability of citizens to collectively challenge the State.

Advocates for inclusion thus need to interrogate what access to digital tools means for how citizens are able to interact meaningfully with their world and with the State; not simply operate from the stance that basic access eliminates the challenges of the digital divide.

Access to digital tools does not automatically eliminate other challenges associated with the digital divide. The aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic gave us many examples of this. Makwakwa recalls governments employing what she calls ‘uncoordinated digital development strategies’ in South Africa and other developing countries as a response to the necessary lockdowns at the time. The government’s deployment of digital platforms for service delivery and learning was done with the assumption that citizens were educated about how to utilise these tools and that they had access to high-speed internet connection to connect them to the platforms they need. She recounts the story of school children in South Africa who needed to learn remotely during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

… the assumption was that parents are digitally literate, that homes are connected, and that teachers are also digitally literate, to be able to conduct instruction over the internet. So there were a lot of assumptions that we made that just really did not match with the reality of what we were actually dealing with. said Makwakwa

Kapoor mentions that civil society organisations offline efforts played an important role in closing the knowledge gap and ensured that citizens could use these tools and access their civil entitlements. Their efforts ensured that citizens would be well informed and skilled enough to use these tools in the first place.

Inclusive communities should therefore not just be about giving access to communities without digital tools but should also be about these communities being able to engage meaningfully with tech tools without harming them in the process. Inclusive civic tech communities should be made up of not only tech innovators but also those that experience and get to use these innovations. These communities should have a say in what and how they would like to experience civic tech tools in their lives.

Makwakwa is Head of Africa at the Alliance for Affordable Internet; a global coalition working to drive down the cost of internet access in low and middle-income countries through policy and regulatory reform.

Kapoor is the director and founder of the Aapti Institute; a research institution that generates public, policy-relevant, actionable, and accessible knowledge from the frontiers of tech and society, about our networked lives, to support the creation of a fair, free, and equitable society.

Nkosinathi Mcetywa

Communications Lead

Civic Tech Innovation Network

Nkosinathi is an Urban Planning graduate and a Wits alumni. While studying planning he took a lot of interest in issues surrounding urban governance and the ability of the State to be transparent and accountable to its constituents. He recently completed a postgraduate qualification in Business Administration at the Wits Business School. Nkosinathi has worked in the education space, as part of the Student Equity and Talent Management Unit which facilitates a number of pre-university and university programmes including the Targeting Talent Programme. He played a significant part in his 2 years there as part of the projects team that brought these projects to life. He currently writes as part of a collective of bloggers writing about youth issues.

The Future of Global Mobility

14th April 2022 by Karl Steinacker and Dr Steffen Angenendt

Our Digital Advisor Karl Steinacker has jointly published with Steffen Angenendt of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs an article addressing the structural bias travellers from the Global South are facing. The article was first published at Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) in German. (English version of SWP‑Aktuell 10/2022) Translation by Tom Genrich

Why We Need a Debate about Multilateral and Digital Solutions to Prevent the Global South from Being Excluded from International Travel

The Covid-19 pandemic has greatly reduced international travel. The economic, social and human consequences of border closures and travel restrictions cannot be fully estimated yet, but they are dramatic. The gap is widening between countries of the Global North, which want to control travel and prevent unregulated mobility, and those of the Global South, which are demanding more legal mobility for their citizens. The freedom to travel is a desirable good that all should be able to access, and is also the object of political negotiations. Unilateral decisions should be complemented or superseded by international agreements between countries about common rules and procedures for a trust-based system. In the meantime, countries should modernise their visa processes and build digital identification systems that create trust. This applies to Germany as well, especially since the coalition government has decided to speed up the issuing of visas.

Many European Union (EU) citizens now to have to show their vaccination certificate to board a plane or cross a border. Proof of vaccination status as a requirement for entry is nothing new: travel to tropical countries, for example, has long been conditional on being vaccinated against yellow fever, which had to be proved by a paper document. However, electronic documentation, for instance in the form of smartphone apps, is gaining in importance now – and not just for vaccinations. Travellers to North America are familiar with such systems, which were introduced after the attacks of 11 September 2001 as part of the Smart Borders Initiative.

International Efforts to Create “Smart” Borders

These US security measures contain new security standards for travel documents, the systematic recording of flight passenger data (PNR), the introduction of an electronic entry permit (ESTA), an entry and exit register (EES) with biometric visa and a screening system to prevent the boarding and arrival of terrorism suspects. Nevertheless, to facilitate travel, the US has initiated the Trusted Traveller programmes. These include among others the Global Entry programme, under which pre-approved travellers who are considered a low security risk by the authorities can have their interview after arrival instead. Participants in the programme can also use – like US nationals or green card holders – the PreCheck programme, which speeds up security checks at US airports.

The US is undoubtedly a pioneer in “intelligent” border efforts; however, since 2008 the EU commission has been driving forwards its own visa information system, which works with biometric data, as well as an entry and exit register and a system for flight passenger data. The European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) is expected to be operational in 2022. Similar to the US’s ESTA, it is intended for conducting security checks on travellers from currently over 60 countries that do not need a visa for the Schengen area. The electronic Entry Exit System (EES) should also be put into service soon, and automatically monitor the travel movements of third state nationals at the external borders of the Schengen area. This IT system is intended to match those entering with those exiting and thus catch potential visa overstayers. Therefore, data sets including biometrics will be established for first-time arrivals in the Schengen area.

For decades, public health played only a minor role in international mobility management. The Covid-19 pandemic and associated containment measures, such as the designation of high risk areas and virus variant areas, have changed this for an unforeseeable duration. Over the course of the Covid pandemic, international mobility has collapsed: in 2019, the year before the pandemic, the global aviation industry carried more than 4.5 billion passengers. In the first year of the pandemic, over 108,000 travel restrictions linked to Covid-19 were imposed across the world. The number of flight passengers fell by 60 percent. Numbers of new international migrants also remained well below previous estimates until mid-2020, and worldwide the pandemic is believed to have reduced their total by 2 million.

Such travel restrictions risk generating new distortions and a further widening of the gap between the Global North and the Global South. The (legitimate) wish to protect populations in industrialised countries against the risk of infection can lead to a blanket disadvantaging of and discrimination against people from countries which do not have the means to vaccinate their populations as successfully as the countries of the Global North, despite all the difficulties, have done. Moreover, the governments of developing nations also want to protect their populations against the risk of infection. But they have fewer options – especially because of their inadequate access to vaccines.

In the context of the pandemic, questions over the legitimacy of mobility controls are particularly pressing. The most recent reform proposals to the Schengen rules, which the EU intends to apply in the event of a pandemic to impose common entry bans, can therefore appear ambiguous. The planned formalisation could reinforce entry bans but also force the authorities to justify them.

The Issuing of Visas as the Key to International Mobility

At the heart of international mobility is the issuing of visas. This primarily serves to regulate tourism and business travel, as well as justifications for stays (such as labour migration, family reunification and asylum). To pre-empt undesired immigration, EU members and many other destination countries pursue a parallel strategy. They resort to unilateral measures and technologies to control numbers, and they use political pressure to induce countries of origin to cooperate on reducing irregular migration. However, many countries of origin now make their cooperation in migration regulation conditional on destination countries taking seriously their demands for easier international mobility (for instance through free-of-charge visas or a generalised visa waiver for their citizens). This is the case with Turkey, for example, which has long been pressing the EU for a visa exemption and has repeatedly linked its demand to the threat of suspending its collaboration on migration control.

In 2020 EU member embassies and consulates received around 3.5 million visa applications for stays of up to three months in the Schengen area, a marked Covid-linked drop compared to 2019, when there were approximately 17 million applications. Of the applications submitted in 2020, around 85 percent were granted, slightly fewer than in 2019 (88 percent). However, rejection rates for certain regions of origin, especially sub-Saharan Africa, were far higher. And these numbers only offer a partial picture of the mobility blockages since they only take into account processed applications; the many visa applications that were abandoned or not even submitted for reasons of hopelessness are not included in the statistics.

Mobility for Germans looks entirely different. German travellers are at the very top of global passport rankings; they have outstanding travel opportunities and access to almost all countries without needing to go through visa procedures. The Henley Passport Index currently has Germany in joint second place with South Korea; their citizens can enter 190 states without a visa. Only the passports of Singapore and Japan had higher rankings (192 states). Citizens of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian countries have a noticeably experience. African passports generally permit visa-free travel to only 20 to 25 percent of countries, mostly to neighbouring African nations.

In her thesis on the birthright lottery, Ayelet Shachar, the former director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, points to the privileges and disadvantages that result from acquiring citizenship. She argues that the acquisition of such political membership today corresponds to the acquisition of private property in times past.

Public Order or Structural Discrimination?

The EU’s 2001 Regulation on visas stipulates that the visa requirement is the standard mechanism of its mobility system and that any potential exemption is merely a unilaterally granted exception and a privilege. The Regulation, last revised in summer 2021, also explains that all abuse of visa exemptions by nationals of a third country must be combated “where they [the nationals] pose a threat to the public policy (ordre public) and the internal security of the Member State concerned”. In the event of inadequate cooperation by countries of origin, visa exemptions can be suspended. Thresholds have been set for this, for instance where a country of origin rejects over half of the EU’s readmission applications, or where fewer than four percent of asylum applications from the country are approved.

The Regulation indicates that greater migratory pressure is to be avoided, and it is obvious that EU members consider the European mobility regime as an instrument to regulate migration. The Regulation, which entered into force in 2009 and was last revised in 2019, also allows the issuing of visas to be used as an instrument to reward good cooperation on readmissions, or to sanction inadequate cooperation.

Nanjala Nyabola, a Kenyan commentator on current affairs and politics who gave one of the opening speeches at the May 2019 Future Affairs Forum on the digital revolution organised by the German Foreign Office in Berlin, considers the visa regime of developed countries to be structural racism, aiming to exclude the populations of the Global South from global mobility. The issuing of visas, she argues, reflects neo-colonial structures. It would seem that large swathes of the elites in Africa, the Arab world and South Asia share Nyabola’s position. The local press – and travel blogs – criticise not only the visa policies of the Global North but also the procedures employed in embassies and at borders. These commentators raise accusations of institutional racism and racial profiling. Many complain about the humiliating nature of the procedures that applicants and those wishing to travel have to undergo. Such perceptions are counterproductive for winning over the Global South to the essential cooperation needed to meet the challenges of migration and forced displacement.

Elements of an International Framework

Discriminating mobility regulations are used to control migration not least because countries mistrust the identity documents and visa decisions of other governments. The Israeli historian and political analyst Yuval Noah Harari speaks of trust being the most important capital of any human society, referring to small communities as well as countries and international politics as a whole. To build trust, we need to strengthen multilateralism.

Two elements are required for a set of rules that shape international mobility: multilaterally negotiated objectives, strategies and procedures; and digital technologies that facilitate mobility – as long as they are not an end in themselves but pursue political objectives. This need for a set of political rules derives inter alia from the risk that technologies might be used as substitutes for such rules – for instance, when important actors such as the US rely on specific techniques, these are subsequently adopted by international bodies such as the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), and other countries then have to follow suit to avoid being left behind.

Building Block 1: The Political Definition of Goals

Cross-border mobility is still a policy area in which – except for zones with internal freedom of movement, such as the Schengen area – national sovereignty is given greater importance than multilateral efforts for joint regulations that are beneficial to all. At the centre of current mobility regulations is unilateralism – which also falls short of the goal of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, adopted by Germany in 2018, to improve international cooperation on migration.

Lessons on changes in mobility systems can be learned from history, especially from the political transformation in Europe from the Cold War to German reunification in 1989. This transformation was also inspired by a political declaration of intent. In 1975 the representatives of 35 countries from West and East signed the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in Helsinki, which stipulated many simplifications of cross-border mobility, especially for family contact. It also wanted to enable travel applications for personal or professional reasons, and promote conferences, youth exchanges and tourism.

Of course, this specific historical constellation cannot simply be transferred to today’s circumstances: the Warsaw Pact countries did not want to grant their citizens freedom of movement, whereas the West saw free movement in particular as the leverage for change, chiefly for inter-system contact. This change in turn was meant to lead to détente and the dismantling of threat perceptions. Indeed, when the Iron Curtain fell, the result was not total freedom of travel; the latter remained linked to visas and (transitional) rules for work permits.

Nevertheless, a process similar to the Helsinki Conference – which would ideally result in a Global Compact for International Mobility – could be a useful complement to existing international law and political agreements on migration and displacement. The process could be based on the idea of a modernised and rule-based international mobility that is a win-win for all participating countries – and thus counter the accusation that the North is only interested in reducing irregular immigration.

In such a mobility regime, signatory countries would, as in the Helsinki Final Act, commit to facilitating international mobility for nationals of all countries, including those of the Global South, and in the process exclude discrimination. Countries would also politically commit themselves to developing and applying technological innovations – particularly digital identity and trust systems – so as to create the technical conditions for a global mobility that is both legal and in accordance with the rules.

Building Block 2: Digital Technologies

This kind of rule-supported international mobility system could only be implemented using digitalisation. Currently 19^th and 20^th century tools continue to determine international travel control – with a great deal of effort, uncertainty, vulnerability to forgery and corruption: passports and visas; stamps and stickers; personal interviews and paper pushing. The experiences from the Covid pandemic could be helpful in modernising the system. For example, the rapid introduction of a digital vaccine certificate (although not forgery-proof) in the EU member states showed that digitalisation can contribute to upholding freedom of movement.

However, the pandemic has also revealed that current instruments are too unwieldy to react to rapidly changing framework conditions, and that trust in traditional regulatory instruments is low. Any new mobility system must therefore modernise certification and identification instruments.

Such modernisation is necessary in Germany as well, as the National Regulatory Control Council (NKR) regularly makes clear, inter alia in its annual monitoring reports on the state of digitalisation in Germany, published since 2016. The NKR also illustrates how this could be achieved at the national level: by the Council calling on the administration to make data-based decisions and treating it as a service provider, which responds to needs and allows the state’s performance to be measured qualitatively from the perspective of those concerned.

Of course, the NKR has a domestic mandate and its recommendations refer to Germany. Nevertheless, if its key concern – namely to attend to the interests of those affected – is transferred to international mobility rules, it becomes clear that the current fixation on nationality as the decisive criterion for the issuing of visas is problematic. If visa decisions were instead primarily founded on other characteristics – such as profession, qualifications, age, integrity and health – then the international mobility regime would be more efficient as well as fairer.

The mobility regime of the future must be based on digital trust systems which can certify the identity of persons and attributes in a forgery-proof manner. An example is the EU’s digital vaccination pass, despite the concerns we have raised above: it confirms the identity of the vaccinated person, that the vaccine has been approved, that the vaccination was carried out by authorised medical staff and that the issuer of the certificate is competent to do so.

The German government is already promoting such “trust systems” through its research policy. They are intended as the future foundation for trustworthy digital interactions and to secure the access to digital services, such as telemedicine and digital prescriptions, the gig economy, online banking and e-government. These intentions primarily concern German citizens, but the federal government should also pursue this approach for travellers from third countries.

The Role of Private Service Providers

Private companies have already taken on important functions in international mobility management. This does not have to be a contradiction of the state’s sovereignty and control. On the contrary, states have brought in the private sector for support in providing their consular services but also in securing their borders. This concerns airlines in particular: under threat of substantial fines for omission, they carry out the relevant mobility control tasks for states at whose airports they land. Commercial migration services providers, such as CIBT (from the US) and the market leader VFS Global (founded in India, domiciled in Dubai), are now established, and are commissioned by states to assume parts of visa processing or delivery functions. Technology companies offer the requisite hardware, software and data analysis.

In all cases, these companies act as data brokers, which means that they possess large amounts of data on rejected and approved visa applications, regular travellers and irregular migrants. This can lead to controversy since it is unclear under what jurisdiction these service providers might fall, and what legal avenues might be available for complaints. However, the EU has at least pointed out that its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) also applies to companies that carry out visa services for nationals of third countries, and that these companies have to ensure an appropriate level of protection for personal data.

The Canadian and Dutch governments along with the technology company Accenture and the World Economic Forum (WEF) are currently testing the Known Traveller Digital Identity system (KTDI) for flight passengers. Travellers using this system register biometric and cryptographic data about themselves, for instance on their mobile phones. On request and at their own discretion, these travellers then grant the authorities access to their verified personal biometric, biographical and historical travel data to enable them to conduct risk assessments and pre-screening. KTDI allows journeys to be depicted and traced, with travellers interacting with authorities and private companies via mobile devices by making available historical and real-time data (“identity attributes”).

The project for a hotel check‑in for business travellers – which the German government is using to test the construction of an infrastructure for the secure exchange of identity attributes, not just for the digital identities of humans but equally of institutions and objects (Internet of Things) – pursues similar objectives. Pilot projects would clarify if this approach can also be applied to nationals of third countries.

It will be indispensable to integrate the private sector into any international mobility regime. Airlines, hotel chains, banks and financial service providers as well as insurances should act jointly with consulates and registry offices on a platform that not only offers travellers from third countries services under internationally agreed rules and processes them, but that can also issue verified identity attributes.

Ethical Issues

The most pressing ethical issue that concerns all “wallet” applications in which individuals save information on their identity derives from the imbalance in power between the representatives of state bodies and the owners of the data, in this case the travellers. It is debatable whether the latter ultimately retain control over their own personal data and whether they will be allowed to pass on the data exclusively of their own free will and at their own discretion – given immigration and control practices that demand personal data and at times empower agents to ask for passwords or even download the contents of mobile phones, computers or other devices.

This imbalance of power undoubtedly exists. It must be countered through binding and actionable rules. This also applies to the data of travellers stored by authorities and private service providers. Today they are inaccessible for those concerned (the data subjects): biometric data are stored at the consulate or by the company to which this service has been outsourced. The traveller’s digital self is controlled by others.

In the United Kingdom civil society organisations have sued the Home Office, accusing the algorithms of the artificial intelligence employed by this ministry of being racist and discriminatory. Such risks must not be underestimated. It is also true, however, that digital processes, when correctly conceived, can reduce the influence of discriminatory prejudices in decision-making.

An ethical debate about the details of the mobility system becomes necessary precisely when digital technologies are to be employed. One criticism will be that a digital identity and trust system based on the imbalance of power between poorer and richer nations will not facilitate the mobility of people from the poorer countries. Objections such as this must be taken seriously since people wishing to travel will probably continue to be rejected – and the suspicion of discriminatory prejudices, whether by natural persons or by algorithms, cannot be eliminated.

Beyond this, further fundamental issues will have to be clarified. How to deal with the tension between the travellers’ agency over their data and the requirement that a trust system, to be effective, must contain enough data? When has anyone attained “sufficient trust” – or will the expansion of certification and identification create a “spiral of distrust”, in other words an uncapped need for ever more, even better verified but never sufficient data? How to define a “key area” in which no data are collected, such as bank accounts? How to prevent an accountable person’s control being transferred to a machine when artificial intelligence is used and the decision-making process is automated? Are the guarantees contained in Article 22 GDPR sufficient? And how to design effective objection and appeal processes?

The fundamental ethical issues also include the objection that millions of people in the Global South will probably not attain a sufficiently high degree of trust due to their inadequate socioeconomic resources and limited access to digital resources, and will therefore continue to be excluded from travel to Germany and the EU. A counter-argument is the fact that in Germany and other OECD countries the unequal distribution of resources also constrains citizens’ mobility: a high passport ranking is of little use for those who cannot afford to travel. Ultimately the objective is to develop technical solutions that correspond to the political modernisation targets; safeguard individual rights from an ethical perspective; prioritise data protection; coincide with Chapter 3 of the GDPR; and endow everyone with rights, such as the right to transparent decisions, appeal, correction and compensation.

Political Objections

There needs to be a debate about political issues as well as ethical ones. They include the argument that governments tend to view decisions about access to the national territory as central to their activity and do not want to give up any competency in this regard. The counter-argument runs as follows: a modernised travel system would not make decisions about longer stays, for instance for work purposes; such decisions would remain the countries’ “domaine réservé”. At least the debate would address the problem that a travel regime which is frustrating for the Global South would be counterproductive since it would thwart cooperation on other topics as well. In contrast, a transparent process aiming to facilitate global mobility for everyone would put cooperation before unilateralism and create new opportunities for cooperation so as to better manage irregular migration and the unjustified onward migration of asylum-seekers.

An international mobility policy would also be generally economically advantageous for all participating actors; we could therefore expect enough countries to join in such a project. Germany has the political leeway and technical competence to contribute to modernising international mobility. It also has the will, as the December 2021 coalition agreement has shown in reference to the issuing of visas.

Recommended Actions

The German government should launch a national strategy to digitally modernise international mobility with its partners from business, technology and civil society.
The government should also verify whether a trust system with a digital platform can be established as a public-private partnership and as a public body.
Moreover, the German government should initiate an international policy dialogue that could result in negotiations on a Global Compact for International Mobility, and one that enumerates the weaknesses of technical processes such as Trusted Traveller.
Industry, service providers and social partners should participate: first, in the strategy dialogue; second, in building a digital platform to support mobility policy through the provision of services (e.g. insurance, monetary transactions, travel and tourism, consumer advice); and third, in the supervisory bodies of a trust system with a digital platform.

Finally, it is important to include civil society, both in this dialogue and in the supervisory bodies of the trust system. There could, for example, be a digital platform that offers civil society services in information, advice and cooperation. Not least, this platform could serve as a means of exchanging with foreign civil society actors on issues of international mobility.

Karl Steinacker

Digital Advisor

International Civil Society Centre

Karl Steinacker is currently the Digital Advisor of the International Civil Society Centre. He studied political science at the Free University of Berlin and international law at Cambridge University. He then spent three decades working for the United Nations (UNDP, UNRWA, DPKO, UNHCR) in the fields of development, peacekeeping and refugee protection. At the UN Refugee Agency, he held positions in Africa and at its Headquarters and was responsible for Registration, Statistics, and Data and Identity Management as well as for Camp Coordination/Camp Management.

Dr Steffen Angenendt

Senior Fellow in the Gobal Issues Research Division

Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik

Scoping Study on Operating Conditions of Civil Society in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

4th April 2022 by Eva Gondor

Within the framework of the Solidarity Action Network (SANE), we commissioned a scoping study to analyse operating conditions of international and local civil society organisations in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). In recent years, attacks on civil society organisations (CSOs) working on humanitarian, development and, especially, human rights programming in the oPt have come under more sustained and targeted attack, mirroring deteriorating CSO operating conditions and shrinking civic space and freedoms globally. Building on previous work in the field, this study aimed to capture up-to-date evidence of how the current environment impacts CSOs ability to deliver their mandates. The data generated may be used to inform policy and advocacy efforts and to identify possible solidarity mechanisms to support CSOs.

The study provides key findings on barriers and restrictions faced by civil society actors in the oPt based on the collected quantitative and qualitative data and presents recommendations for governments, donors and civil society actors.

oPt Scoping Study PDF

Solidarity Action Network (SANE)

Eva Gondor

Senior Project Manager

International Civil Society Centre

Eva leads on the Centre's civic space work - the Solidarity Action Network (SANE) aimed at strengthening resilience of and solidarity among civil society actors, and the International Civic Forum (ICF), our annual civic space platform to network and identify opportunities for collaboration. Prior to joining the Centre she worked at the Robert Bosch Stiftung (Foundation) in Stuttgart where she managed the foundation’s projects focusing on civil society and governance in Turkey, the Western Balkans, and North Africa.

Podcast – Power Shift: Seizing the Window of Opportunity for True Transformation

17th March 2022 by Elizabeth Parsons

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Listen to Nana Afadzinu, Wolfgang Jamann and Miriam Niehaus reflect on the latest progress the sector has made on powershift, how it has changed over the years and which key actors are pushing the powershift agenda. Plus, get inspired by their recommendations on how to seize the momentum and take action to bring about true transformation.

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Elizabeth Parsons

Communications Manager

International Civil Society Centre

Building Inclusive Civic Tech Communities

1st March 2022 by Nkosinathi Mcetywa

These women are helping change dominant narratives about tech and the tech industry in Africa

Equality, in its many forms, breeds a more confident, united, and productive society that benefits all who live in it. Societies working towards equality are seeing a more democratic dispensation allowing for greater opportunities to all segments of society, including women and other underrepresented groups that have been historically excluded. This drive for equality can be achieved through strategic and intentional means in the political and socio-economic spheres of governance.

Digital transformation has played an essential part in increasing levels of equality across the globe. This transformation has allowed for greater access for all members of society, including women and other underrepresented groups in the world. Access to technology albeit not being the answer for most issues has been instrumental in ensuring that historically excluded groups can better their lives through access to information, access to welfare services, and even access to economic opportunities.

In the 21st century, increasingly women are using technological tools to get access to economic opportunities as well as opportunities in technology. According to UNDP (2019), women in tech make up only 28% of professionals in the world and only 30% in Sub-Saharan Africa, and as such are seeing a significant increase in women representation in this sphere. Generally, gender parity has increased by 0.24 percentage points per year since 2006, according to the Global Gender Gap Report (2021). Change is happening at a slow pace but there remains hope for a tipping of the scales and more balanced representation in the field. Despite much progress in workplace equality around the world, there remains a big gap in the technology industry for women.

While many women are in the tech industry, the environment continues to be inconducive primarily because it is a male-dominated field and can be quite exclusionary. However, some of these women have managed to succeed in this industry despite numerous barriers in an industry that does not cater to them. Some of these women have not only succeeded but have taken it upon themselves to do meaningful work that speaks to the needs of other women interested in the world of tech. Women like Baratang Miya, Tina James, Niousha Roshani, and Zine Nkukwana are but a few women working in technology who are working to balance the scales and use their influence, and resources to do good in the world.

Speaking on the Civic Tech in Africa podcast’s Women in Tech series, these women spoke proudly about the progress they were helping to make in the field of tech and were quite open in sharing their own experiences as women in technology.

Although tech is still a relatively underrepresented field for women around the world, more so in Africa, there have been women who have been working at the intersection of inclusion for women in technology for a long time now. Thirteen years ago, Tina James had already been working in digital inclusion when she realised that she had not been making the difference that she had envisioned she would be making in the space. She co-founded FemTech so she could create meaningful change through women empowerment, entrepreneurial development, skill-sharing, and training. Today, James’ groundbreaking work with FemTech ensures that women aren’t just part of the digital age; they are also able to use digital tools as well as ensure that they are self-reliant, confident leaders and entrepreneurs. She expresses great satisfaction with being able to make meaningful change in the lives of other women:

I think it’s the human side of it, seeing women develop from not being confident as entrepreneurs, or not even sure that they are entrepreneurs and seeing them emerge on the other side, making a difference. And I think that at the end of the day, isn’t that a great thing to achieve, when people feel they’re making a difference, and actually are in their environments, no matter what they tackle?

Zine Nkukwana believes that women in tech need to support each other. She believes that women have a lot to learn from each other regardless of how much experience they have in the tech industry.

We need to be able to uplift each other, through mentorships, through coaching, through developing, really talking to each other. And also even you being honest about what you know, and what you don’t know. And going out there and seeking advice

she says. True to her word, Nkukwana is one of the women in Sub-Saharan Africa helping other women in the tech industry through her ICT skills development programmes at Lindamahle Management Systems. Her work focuses on women and unemployed youth, a segment of the population she believes are marginalised.

Also working with youth on the African continent and the diaspora is Dr. Niousha Roshani; social scientist, serial entrepreneur, and researcher who makes the point that technology can help Africans on the continent and the diaspora to change dominant narratives about themselves. Dr. Roshani says her biggest dream is to “foster a global ecosystem of young people who are disrupting the status quo, for outsmarting the status quo and who are doing fantastic things and coming up with solutions to our most pressing issues”. Her work with Global Black Youth ensures that she is able to connect, amplify, and invest in the world’s most innovative and disruptive black youth. Dr Roshani is determined to change dominant narratives about where the best ideas and innovations come from:

It’s really important to undo a lot of the social conditioning that we have been subjected to a lot of lies and to find the real narrative, our own narrative, but also the narrative of, of the region of the people that we belong to…

Baratang Miya, also determined to change dominant narratives, entered the tech industry many years ago and has been determined to be an agent of change.When she started working in tech, she soon found out that the space was not created for her, and others like her, mothers and wives. Baratang found out that even among the women who were in the tech industry there were not many who had children or families of their own as she had.

It sometimes would be women who were giving glances when I bring my child to a space. It was a very tough space to be in as a mother and a woman

Today, Baratang is at the forefront of women’s inclusion in technology and is determined to make a difference wherever she can. She takes motivation from her own struggles from when she was a child in high school. The lack of resources, mentors, and opportunities left her technically impaired and ill-prepared for her first encounter with a computer at university. Through GirlHype she is actively working to close the digital divide and preparing young high school girls with the necessary skills they need to go into their professional lives.

From age nine to 18, [we teach] them how to code, [teach] them how to use computers in school so that when they get to universities, they know they can make better career choices

These women and many more in the tech space play an important role in narrowing the gap between men, women and other marginalised groups in the industry. Women in civic tech and other tech fields are not only narrowing the gender gap but are also ensuring that they can be catalysts for change through their social enterprises. These women are not only tipping the scales through their involvement in the tech industry, they are bringing others with them and changing the world as they go along.

Join us on the 17th of March 2022 as we partner with the International Civil Society Centre (ICSCentre) as we engage in a digital dialogue about ‘Building Inclusive Communities’. This session will unpack the role of digital innovations in facilitating inclusivity and diversity within civic tech. Register and be part of the discussion.

Nkosinathi Mcetywa

Communications Lead

Civic Tech Innovation Network

Hope, with a pinch of anger – Collective insights on how to respond to rise of anti-rights groups

23rd February 2022 by Miriam Niehaus, Eva Gondor, Poonam Joshi

At the International Civic Forum in early December, one of the speakers, Israel Butler from Liberties, showed us, a group of some 50 civil society and donor representatives from across the world, how to adjust our framing and build a narrative that can shift the moveable middle of societies – persuading a wider public to support progressive approaches to build a more equitable and sustainable world and to reject the regressive agendas of ‘anti-rights’ civil society. A baking cake metaphor comes to mind as we learned about the different ingredients required to make a message not only stick but motivate people to take action. Very simplified, there’s a whole lot of hope (eggs, sugar, flour and milk combined), but also a pinch of anger (maybe that’s the baking soda?) needed to create powerful messages that will be heard instead of fear-based narratives spread by anti-rights actors. We will endeavour to implement this recipe in this blog with a list of five key takeaways that resonated with us at the forum.

But let’s take a step back: Since 2016, the International Civic Forum (ICF) has been an annual space for civil society representatives to come together across sub-sectors but also with representatives from business, philanthropy and media, to discuss responses to the clampdown on civil society rights and the operational environment for organised civil society. Usually, the focus is on the state as the aggressor. However, building on the 2019 CIVICUS report on civil society responses to anti-rights groups, we wanted to shift the focus to non-state actors – exploring how the distinct category of anti-rights groups impacts ‘progressive’ civil society and what can be done about it. This seemed especially timely as, particularly in countries of the Global North, anti-rights groups have managed to harness anti-vaccination sentiments, further gaining traction and feeding off the fear and frustration of populations as the pandemic is still in full swing. Therefore, the ICF 2021 centred on the issue of anti-rights groups on the rise and how ‘progressive’ civil society can jointly address this challenge.

The conversations at the ICF were incredibly rich, nuanced, and self-critical, with a wide range of speakers including the Carnegie Europe’s Richard Youngs, Inés Pousadela from CIVICUS, founder of new initiative Noor Naureen Shameem, and representatives of international and local civil society organisations from around the world. Many strategies were shared, but also gaps were identified where we lack experience or don’t yet have good, actionable ideas. These five takeaways stuck with us:

1. The strength of coming together.

Several groups, mainly LGBT+, women’s rights and migrants’ rights groups, have felt the brunt of anti-rights aggressions towards them. For them this is in no way a new phenomenon. During the discussions, it became more glaring how other civil society actors are attacked by anti-rights groups as well. Environmental activists are increasingly feeling anti-rights attacks. The example of aggressions against child advocates in international fora was particularly eye-opening. And while these are terrible developments, it means we have the opportunity for forging much greater alliances and benefitting from a pool of learning and creativity. We must build on the strength of our growing number of affected stakeholders.

2. Tap into unlocked solidarity.

We can strengthen our causes even more by tapping into unlocked solidarity, namely that of faith-based groups. Representatives from several civil society sub-sectors cited how faith-based organisations have supported them when they were attacked: they have helped build bridges with religious actors that have more moderate and sympathetic views and can defuse escalating conflict. However, this can be a complicated matter as sympathetic religious dignitaries in some cases take considerable risks by standing in solidarity. Therefore, nuanced and mindful tactics are key.

3. Hope is on our side.

Whereas most anti-rights actors run on a narrative of fear, ‘progressive’ actors develop aspirational narratives built on core human values. We highly recommend looking at the concept of hope-based communication to understand how messaging affects the brain on a neurological level and how we can make that knowledge work for us.

4. Frame our own narratives instead of accepting unhelpful dichotomies.

We need to be careful to not cement dichotomies put forward by anti-rights actors, or we might lose vital ground in that “moveable middle”. An example of where this comes in to play (and this will be old news to many) is LGBT+ or women’s rights advocates being portrayed as anti-family by anti-rights actors. Some LGBT+ actors have done wonderful work on ‘claiming back family’ and shifting the frame of family not to who it consists of, but what it can mean, namely love.

5. Never let a good crisis go to waste?

This seems certainly to be true for anti-rights actors. Imagine this: A virus threatens humanity. A logical response is to mobilise all forces of humans against the virus. That’s the battle line. But no, how about we as humans divide and help the virus conquer by scape-goating certain populations (remember the attacks against people of Chinese heritage in the U.S.)? This is just one example of how some anti-rights groups in some contexts have exploited the current pandemic (and the tactic may ring awfully familiar for LGBT+ groups in reference to HIV). ‘Progressive’ civil society needs to better understand how to take over the narrative in such crises, because while the current COVID-19 pandemic is still ravaging, the climate crisis is in equal swing.

Clearly, more conversation, strategising and action need to take place within civil society and with cross-sectoral likely and unlikely allies. We will further address this issue within the scope of the Solidarity Action Network (SANE). Is this a burning topic for you too? What do you do on this front? Who and what are you still missing and looking for to make your work on this fly? If this list of takeaways has made you hopeful but also angry enough to want to collaborate on the topic, let us know about it!

Miriam Niehaus

Head of Programmes

International Civil Society Centre

Miriam leads the Centre’s programmes. She started at the Centre as Executive Assistant in 2014 and then, as Project Manager, developed and implemented the Centre’s projects on civic space between 2016 and 2019. Prior to joining the Centre Miriam worked for VSO International and GIZ in the Palestinian Territories. She holds a BA in Islamic Studies and Social Anthropology from the University of Freiburg and an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Eva Gondor

Senior Project Manager

International Civil Society Centre

Poonam Joshi

Director

Funders’ Initiative for Civil Society (FICS)

Poonam Joshi is Director of the Funders’ Initiative for Civil Society (FICS). Prior to this Poonam was the Executive Director of the Sigrid Rausing Trust. Poonam has worked on range of human rights issues as a lawyer, policy advisor and grant-maker, and has established and managed programmes to support civil society in the Middle East North Africa, South Asia, Central and Eastern Europe and Balkans.

New – 2022 events and programme flyer, find out what’s on and what we are doing

17th January 2022 by Elizabeth Parsons

Welcome to our 2022 flyer. You can download the flyer below to find out about what we plan to do this year and how you can get involved.

Download 2022 Flyer

Elizabeth Parsons

Communications Manager

International Civil Society Centre

Six takeaways for action from Global Perspectives 2021 – Let’s Talk About Power!

15th November 2021 by Vicky Tongue, Miriam Niehaus, Wolfgang Jamann

We have spent the last two weeks around the world – in Colombia, Kenya and Indonesia and online – talking about power in many different forms – from de-concentrating data and digitalisation, to decolonising aid and organisational structures, and embracing new power. Global Perspectives 2021 again gave the Centre’s communities the opportunity to immerse themselves in themes and workshops, discussing strategies to address key trends, challenges and opportunities to shift power across the civil society sector.

We’re still digesting everything we heard throughout two intense, thought-provoking weeks, but here are some key takeaways we can all put into practice immediately:

1. Collaborate to be better champions of digital and data equity for others

Information and communications technology has a huge role to play as an empowerment tool in power shift and decolonisation for civil society to generate its own solutions, knowledge and information transfer. Building both grassroots and organisational digital skills and security and championing data privacy and equity in advocacy and programming work is essential. But to do this better, civil society organisations (CSOs) need to establish a basic understanding of emerging technological developments and their implications for digital rights and equity across all parts of an organisation. They also need to build stronger networks and work closely with expert tech/rights CSOs, academia and researchers to understand these issues and laws, and challenge big tech narratives about the magic of emerging technologies, and promote and develop more local- or regionalised research and bodies of knowledge on digital developments.

As our opening keynote speaker for Day 4, Nanjira Sambuli of the UNSG’s High-Level Panel For Digital Cooperation compellingly reminded us, civil society has a collective moral responsibility to understand and sound the alarm on the adverse social harms and outcomes of unproven technologies. After all, algorithms are ‘opinions embedded in code’, fashioned in the image of their creators rather than the hyperlocal actors around the world who live the complex realities of these ‘unintended consequences’ further down the line.

2. Engage new mindsets – centralise care not charity and learn to walk behind

We heard calls to abandon charity mindsets and appreciate the agency of communities, and an inspiring challenge to ‘centralise care as the major currency’ to redistribute power. We heard experiences from other sectors which are decolonising – research, architecture and local government – on the need to learn to walk behind and be led by the communities we work with before we can even properly understand how to walk alongside them. We heard from ActionAid how we can change fundraising imagery and narratives from emphasising difference – with single stories that stereotype people and invoke pity – to making a difference. They shared Development Engagement Lab’s compelling evidence that positive and negative funding appeals raise the same amount of money, but positive appeals inspire efficacy and higher emotional engagement from the feeling that one can make a difference.

3. Assess what it means to be locally led and what changes organisations can make to embrace new power values

Many CSOs see themselves as embracing new power values, but as being stuck in hierarchical, linear, old power models. Some international CSOs shared how deep engagement with their constituencies have challenged questions around legitimacy and led to reflections on the power of their organisations, their own expectations, the difficulty of giving up control and the need to consider and change linear paths of thinking and decision-making. We heard calls for how local organisations should push back on donor demands and also say no to international CSO partnership interest where these mean too much compromise in their delivery of people-driven solutions. All organisations should assess what being locally led means to them and the realities of the changes, compromises and constraints they are able and willing to bring about or have to accept.

4. Ask ourselves and others ‘who is we?’ when offering solutions

Shannon Paige of Peace Direct, Casey Harden from World YWCA and Stella Agara from YouLead Africa all highlighted in different ways this simple but profound self-challenge which we can all put into practice immediately in our work. What does it mean if your organisation is recognised internationally and regionally, but communities around the area where you work don’t think you’re legitimate? How are CSOs tapping into the spaces of community knowledge and indigenous solutions and ensuring that the activities they are funding are promoting these solutions which already work, and not erasing them or compromising the problem? Like World YWCA, ‘who is we?’ is a fundamental question for everyone – local CSOs, international CSOs and donors alike – to constantly ask themselves and each other. This will help organisations to truly understand both their identity and integrity as a solution grower with their community, on whose behalf they may be managing external resources ‘in trust’ to bring those solutions about.

5. Seek, share and offer solutions to shift power

In her closing speech, Stella Agara reminded us that decolonisation is also about content and not just process – are fundamental equity issues like climate justice and tax justice making their way into these conversations? We need to be sure that we are really solving problems and root causes through our work, rather than running programmes which are just maintaining a resourced and running civil society sector.

We also need to acknowledge that there are different framings of these issues – for instance, concepts of ‘decolonising aid’ did not resonate with participants in the Latin American and Caribbean workshop, who preferred the term ‘deconstructing’. But for others, the experience of colonisation is still very present in the international civil society sector. Accepting these contextual differences is important, while still sharing ideas and ambitions, and build collective wisdom and practical ways forward to truly challenge and change power systems, structures and narratives.

When it comes to offering solutions to shifting power, ‘who is we?’ is clearly everyone.

6. Join or promote these inspiring calls to action right away

Our workshops focused on how civil society organisations can shift power. At the end of the conference, we heard ten inspiring ‘calls to action’ of collaborative projects that aim to do just that. We encourage you to check them out, even if you didn’t attend:

Access Now – #WhyID, a global coalition of CSOs, activists, technologists, researchers, lawyers, and other digital identity experts, to fight back against the dangerous wave of centralised digital identity systems appearing around the world, and to advocate for rights-respecting approaches to identity management. Sign the #WhyID open letter.

<A+> Alliance for Inclusive Algorithms is a global and multidisciplinary feminist coalition of academics, activists and technologists prototyping the future of AI. Call to Action on decolonising tech and creating new models of equality and systems change. Submit your paper.

Civic Tech Innovation Network (CTIN) is a Community of Practice and action learning network for people with an interest and commitment to leveraging the nexus between technology and civic activism. Learn more about the network.

CIVICUS Grassroots Revolution and the Shift The Power UK Funders Collective are strategic streams of work aimed at improving funder relations, ways of work and power dynamics with grassroots activists and movements left behind, marginalised and most impacted by structural inequities. Join the grassroots-led movement and learn more about the Youth Action Lab.

Connect Humanity supports, catalyses, and scales holistic solutions providing people with the internet access and means needed to participate fully in a digital society. Learn more about the support they provide.

Purposeful is a feminist hub for girls activism, rooted in Africa and working worldwide, calling all girls groups and collectives interested in funding opportunities and connecting with other girl activists in their region. Submit your profile.

Red S.O.S Aldeas Infantiles: The initiative was created to promote and support spaces for participation, mobilisation and citizenship for young people in Bogota. Learn more.

Rights CoLab advances human rights by fostering collaboration among experts across the fields of civil society, technology, business, and finance. Fill out the Google form to express interest in engaging with the ‘RINGO‘ project.

“Stopping As Success: Locally Led Transitions in Development” (SAS+) seek to learn how to facilitate responsible development transitions from international to local actors. Explore SAS+ resources.

TechSoup’s Hive Mind is a cutting-edge online harbour and community of practice gathering activists, journalists, CSOs, teachers, university students, and a wider community interested in learning more about improving media literacy skills online countering disinformation, digital safety and security, and creating positive narratives. Get inspired.

Read the full outcome from our six days of convening here.

We hope everyone enjoyed Global Perspectives 2021. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Vicky Tongue

Vicky Tongue was the Centre’s Head of Futures and Innovation/Scanning the Horizon project manager from 2018-2022, leading the Centre’s futures strategy and collaborative trends scanning community. In this role, Vicky wrote and edited many of the Centre’s Scanning Sector Guides and Civil Society Innovation reports.

Miriam Niehaus

Head of Programmes

International Civil Society Centre

Wolfgang Jamann

Executive Director

International Civil Society Centre

Dr. Wolfgang Jamann is Executive Director of the International Civil Society Centre. Until January 2018 he was Secretary General and CEO of CARE International (Geneva). Before that he led NGO Deutsche Welthungerhilfe and the Alliance 2015, a partnership of 7 European aid organisations. From 2004-2009 he was CEO & Board member of CARE Deutschland-Luxemburg and President of the CARE Foundation. Previously, he worked for World Vision International as a regional representative in East Africa (Kenya) & Head of Humanitarian Assistance at WV Germany. After his Ph.D. dissertation in 1990 he started his career in development work at the German Foundation for International Development, later for the UNDP in Zambia. As a researcher and academic, he has published books and articles on East & Southeast Asia contributing to international studies on complex humanitarian emergencies and conflict management.

Podcast: Integrating technology into children’s daily lives

11th November 2021 by Elizabeth Parsons

For the Centre’s 2021/22 Report on “Civil Society Innovation and Digital Power Shift’’, we’re speaking with inspirational innovators from civil society organisations (CSOs) around the world to hear the stories of their inclusive innovation approaches to advance people-centred digitalisation, to either address system power imbalances or capitalise on emerging people power and technological capabilities.

In this episode, María Berenguer, co-leader of the Youth&ICT4D department at SOS Children’s Villages International, talks about the organisation’s Digital Village project, which aims to integrate technology into the daily lives of children and families.

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Find out more about the Digital Village project.

Explore the Centre’s ‘Civil Society Innovation and Digital Power Shift’ report.

If you are interested in joining this exciting project, please fill in the form.

Elizabeth Parsons

Communications Manager

International Civil Society Centre

A Growing Partnership: New Coalitions in Malawi and Denmark & HelpAge International Joins as Global Member

10th November 2021 by Colette Rose

The Leave No One Behind partnership is growing at both the country and global level. The partnership has launched coalitions in two new countries: Malawi and Denmark. At the global level, the partnership is excited for HelpAge International—a worldwide alliance standing up for the rights of older people— to join as a global member organisation.

In Malawi, a cross-sector coalition including the national planning commission is co-led by three civil society organisations: CARE Malawi, the Centre for Social Accountability & Transparency (CSAT) and Plan International Malawi. The coalition is currently finalising plans for their first data project. The country team’s inaugural project aims to make young peoples’, girls’ and women’s voices heard and count in Malawi.

Denmark is the first country from the Global North joining the Leave No One Behind partnership, in a coalition led by ActionAid Denmark. This marks an important milestone for the project since the Sustainable Development Goals are often perceived as primarily being relevant for countries in the Global South. However, some marginalised communities in northern countries, such as older people, refugees and people with disabilities, can also be left behind due to underreporting—resulting in public policies and services that do not account for the needs of marginalised populations.

HelpAge International was a collaborator on the report An Unequal Pandemic earlier this year and now formally joins the Leave No One Behind partnership. Official data on older people is often sparse or ignored in the design of policies and programs, including most recently in pandemic response planning. Civil society organisations focusing on the rights of older people work to fill these gaps, including many of the members of the HelpAge Global Network spanning 86 countries.

The newly formed coalitions in Malawi and Denmark, and HelpAge International’s expertise on older people’s needs will undoubtedly enrich and further diversify the Leave No One Behind partnership’s work to make voices heard and count.

LNOB

Colette Rose

Project Manager

International Civil Society Centre

Colette joined the Centre in September 2021 as Project Manager for Making Voices Heard and Count, a project of the Leave No One Behind partnership. Before joining the Centre, she lived in New York for over a decade, where she most recently led strategic communications at the Guttmacher Institute for its international research on sexual and reproductive health and rights. Previously, at Physicians for Reproductive Health, Colette trained doctors in advocacy communications for evidence-based health policy. She has worked as a policy researcher, editor, writer and project manager with OutRight Action International, Amnesty International, Oxfam Germany and the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions. Colette holds a BA in international relations from Connecticut College and an MSc in political sociology from the London School of Economics.