Southeast Asia knowledge hub for grassroots justice movements and resilient civic spaces

Southeast Asia is one of the fastest growing regions in the world. With a growing population, a rapidly shrinking civic space that poses increasingly dangerous risks to human rights defenders, and systematic suppression of human rights defenders and civil society organizations, research is needed to find new ways for civil society to engage with decisions that dramatically affect their lives.

State and non-state actors have weaponized laws. This is the case with the Philippines' Anti-Terrorism Act and Indonesia's ‘hate speech’ laws, which criminalize those who advocate for justice and human rights. Burdensome state regulations for civil society organizations, particularly complex registration processes and operational demands, have the effect of reducing groups’ abilities to organize and share information and further restrict civic space.

This project establishes a Southeast Asia knowledge hub to strengthen civic spaces and deepen democratic participation in Southeast Asia. It builds on insights from research conducted by the Legal Empowerment Learning Agenda on how grassroots strategies can counter authoritarianism. This research project’s organizations showed promising results by integrating evidence building around community-level support. In-depth follow up research will help find ways to systematically enhance democratic participation and build resilience, as well as to confront human rights violations and abuses.

Using a participatory research methodology, knowledge exchange and comparative case studies, the project aims to increase the participation of marginalized communities. It will generate lessons, strategies and coalitions for grassroots actors to address the backlash against human rights defenders, including people who are active on climate issues. Leveraging existing networks, it will work with communities and researchers to produce knowledge that is informed by recommendations on how to localize legal empowerment strategies. As a result, communities will be in a stronger position to document their experiences and formulate strategies by participating in the design process for the research.