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Civic Pride Month 2024
The Civic Pride campaign celebrates civic activism.
This year, we’re holding the first Civic Pride Month, celebrating three of 2024’s most inspiring, but also most heavily repressed, movements.
Civic Pride defends the freedoms of peaceful assembly, association and expression as essential components of democracy.
Watch video testimonies from activists!
Everyone has the right to speak their mind and make themselves heard.
We want to champion civic engagement and highlight the importance of open civic space, representing a diversity of opinions, beliefs and forms of expression.
Through these movements, we aim not only to challenge negative narratives about protestors and activists, but to showcase how all these diverse struggles are interconnected.
Movements
Solidarity with Palestine
One of the biggest and most visible movements in 2024 has been the global movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people, calling for justice and an end to the violence in the Middle East.
About this movement
From the student encampments to boycott movements and massive street demonstrations, this movement has been remarkable for its size, determination and diversity.
It has also faced some of the heaviest and most widespread restrictions in Europe. In our annual Civic Space Report, we documented an alarming and persistent pattern of restrictions – including protest bans, the use of excessive force, intimidation and harassment.
In spite of these enormous restrictions, and the huge emotional toll surrounding their cause, Palestine solidarity activists continue to mobilise every day for peace, justice and human rights.
Climate Justice
The movement for climate justice has a long history, but it has grown enormously in recent years as the ecological crises we are facing become increasingly apparent.
About this movement
While governments and institutions profess to support environmental causes, climate movements have faced a huge number of civic space restrictions, with detentions of activists and criminalisation common. In some EU member states, activists have even been prosecuted on terrorism or national security grounds.
Climate activists have nonetheless remained steadfast, with new and innovative movements springing up all over Europe to push for environmental justice and to hold those responsible for the climate crisis to account.
Migrants’ Rights
One of the most crucial causes of our time is the movement for the rights of people on the move.
About this movement
Migration has become perhaps the predominant political topic in the EU, with far-right forces exploiting people’s insecurity to pit them against the most vulnerable in our societies. That’s why we want to celebrate the essential work of those defending the rights of migrants, including refugees and asylum seekers.
Those defenders are on the front line, rescuing people at sea, providing essential services and basic humanitarian aid and assistance, denouncing rights violations at borders and helping those threatened with return.
But increasingly, every such act of solidarity is being criminalised. At its core, this is a criminalisation of migration itself – a denial of human dignity. Migrants’ rights defenders are operating in some of the most challenging of circumstances, and their work is more important and needed than ever.
Civic Space
Police in Regensburg dragged me out of my house because I told the local news that we would hold a protest in the town in the afternoon. They put me into preventative detention until the evening and I couldn’t take part in this demonstration.
What is Civic Space?
Civic space is the political, legislative, social and economic environment which enables citizens to come together, share their interests and concerns and act to influence and shape their societies.
Those involved in the Palestine Solidarity, Climate Justice and Migrants’ Rights movements have faced serious civic space restrictions over the past year. This includes protest bans, arrest, criminalisation, cernsorship, harrassment, and much more.
How does ECF assess civic space?
We base our analysis on five elements that we believe are crucial for an open and vibrant civic space:
1. A conducive political, cultural and socio-economic landscape: the historical legacy on political culture, together with socio-economic structures and contingent events profoundly shape the public’s understanding of the role of civil society and the values it embodies, the activities it pursues, thus influencing public trust and support.
2. The respect of civic freedoms: a supportive legal and regulatory framework for civic freedoms, in particular freedom of association, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, and its effective implementation ensure the full-stretching, correct functioning and protection of civil society space. Governing bodies have the duty to protect the civic space, refrain from, investigate and discipline actions, laws and statements that threat civic freedoms.
3. A supportive framework for CSOs’ financial viability and sustainability: supportive legislation on funding, including foreign and international funding, and availability of sufficient and predictable resources are crucial to civil society’s capacities, independence and long-term strategic planning.
4. The dialogue between civil society and governing bodies: governing bodies must pursue policies and narratives that empower citizens and their organisations to be meaningfully engaged in the public debate and policy-making.
5. Civil society’s responses to challenges to democracy, rule of law and fundamental rights.
Civic Space Watch
ECF operates Civic Space Watch – a platform collecting findings and analyses from actors in Europe on the state of civic space.  Through ongoing monitoring of social media and regular contact and interviews with a strong network of members and partners on the ground, we strive to provide easy access to resources and improve information sharing within civil society across Europe with policy-makers and the media.Â
In the past year, all activists for Palestine around the world have encountered repression of some kind. In Belgium, the repression might not be as intensive […] but we do have pressure from right-wing politicians threatening to remove funding if we do not walk in line.
ECF Civic Space Report 2024
Every year, we publish our Civic Space Report, assessing the space for civil society in Europe in general, and in specific case study countries.
Our latest report documents how civic freedoms have continued to deteriorate. This year’s report also includes a chapter on restrictions on Palestine solidarity, which has been a notable pattern in the last year.
Testimonies
Salah Said
Salah is a Palestinian activist living in Germany, advocating for social justice and human rights. He has frequently documented civic space violations on social media.
Ester Goffi – Ultima Generazione
Ester is an activist with Ultima Generazione (Last Generation) in Italy, an organisation employing nonviolent civil disobedience to stop climate collapse.
Eitan Bronstein –Â Antizionist Jewish Alliance in Belgium
In this video, we hear from Eitan Bronstein of the Antizonist Jewish Alliance in Belgium (AJAB). AJAB describes itself as “an organisation of self-loving Jews in Belgium who oppose Zionism and organise in solidarity with Palestine”
David Karvala – UCFR
David is an activst with Unity Against Facism and Racism – a social movement based in Catalonia, working to prevent the rise of the far right.
Ana Diaz – Ecologistas en Accion
Ana works with Ecologists in Action – a confederation of environmental groups which believes in social environmentalism: understanding that environmental problems have their origin in an increasingly globalised model of production and consumption, from which other social problems also arise, and that this must be transformed.
Majed Abusalama – Palästina Spricht
Majed Abusalama is a member Palästina Spricht – a political, democratic and anti-racist movement uniting Palestinian and non-Palestinian individuals, activists and various human rights groups in Germany.
Jakub Grzeda
Jakub is a climate justice activist from Poland.
Rouddy Kimpioka – RAD International
Rouddy is an activist, musician and founder of RAD International, working to bring people together through music.
Nahlieli, Finland
Nahlieli – Jews for Justice in Palestine was formed in 2023, to, in their words “establish a Finland-based platform for Jewish resistance to the oppression and massacre of Palestinians by the Israeli Government.”
Anne Klenge and Fride – Folk mot Fossilmakta
Folk mot fossilmakta (People Against the Fossil Power) is a newly launched campaign, which “resists the fossil fuel industry’s undemocratic forces in Norwegian society through the use of non-violent civil disobedience.
Ansje van Beselaere, INTAL
Ansje is a Belgian activist working with Intal – a movement dedicated to promoting solidarity and liberation in the Global South through an anti-imperialist and internationalist perspective.
Silvana Cabrera – Regularizacion Ya!
Silvana is an activist with Regularizacion Ya! – a group of anti-racist collectives and organisations working for the regularisation of migrants.
Mariam Chfiri –
Platform of French NGOs for Palestine
Created in 1993 in the context of the Oslo Accords, the Platform of French NGOs for Palestine aims to mobilise for the recognition of Palestinian rights, in particular that of a sovereign Palestinian State, on the so-called 1967 lines.
Simon Lachner – Letzte Generation
Simon is an activist with Letzte Generation (Last Generation) in Germany, a movement that uses peaceful civil resistance to fight for a phase-out of fossil fuels by 2030.Â
Syksy Räsänen – Sumud
Syksy Räsänen is the Vice-Chair of Sumud, the Palestine solidarity network in Finland. Sumud’s stated goal is to work “to end Israeli apartheid and occupation and for the human rights of Palestinians”.
Tytus Kiszka – Ostatnie Pokolenie
Ostatnie Pokolenie is a civic resistance movement that demands accessible and affordable public transport for all Poles.
Anna Camposampiero – Mai più lager – No ai CPR
Anna is an activist working with Mai più lager – No ai CPR – an organisation based in Italy, working to close migrant detention centres.
Nada Pretnar –
Gibanje za pravice Palestincev
Gibanje za pravice Palestincev is an association of interested and active individuals in Slovenia, who, in solidarity with the Palestinian population, support their struggle for freedom, justice and equality.
Sinan Eden – Climaximo
Sinan is an activist with Climaximo, a Lisbon-based climate justice and anti-capitalist collective.