We are glad to inform you that the C20 Civic Space Sub-Working Group has launched its first public webinar on April 14th, 2022. “Protect and Expand Civic Space: Discussion on Perspectives and Experiences” was chosen as our discussion theme in line with our first priority issues in C20. The discussion was moderated by Chenny Wongkar (Indonesian Center for Environmental Law) with four civil society organisation actors joining as speakers and 79 attended as participants.

We thank you for your active participation in the webinar. For those of you who were unable to join, we provide you with the recorded version below.

As a brief summary: the first speaker, Cornelius Hanung from CIVICUS (South Africa), elaborated on the latest monitoring on global situation, including the recent trend of shrinking civic space in Asia region in which he is in charge of as an advocacy and campaign officer. Next, Eszter Hartay from European Center for Not-for Profit Law (ECNL) (Netherlands) as the second speaker highlighted the phenomena of ‘rule by law’, in contrast to rule of law, to be among the causes of global civic space crisis. Anita Wahid, researcher from Public Virtue Research Institute (Indonesia) shared her insight on hoax or disinformation issues and its implication on civic freedom, resulting in a highly polarised society. At last, Eryanto Nugroho from Center for Law and Policy Studies (Indonesia) presented a list of priority issues of the Civic Space C20 Sub-Working Group, and what kind of policy action the G20 leaders should take to expand the civic space. The C20 forum serves as a strategic opportunity for the civil society to demand the G20 leaders to make a policy towards safe and expanded civic space as well as meaningful and inclusive participation.