EU SEE | EU System for an Enabling Environment for Civil Society

The EU System for an Enabling Environment for Civil Society (EU SEE) brings together civil society organizations from 86 countries to monitor the enabling environment and contribute to early warning and action. The program is implemented by Hivos, CIVICUS, Democracy Reporting International, European Partnership for Democracy, Forus, and Transparency International.

Why is civil society under pressure?

All around the world, those in power are increasingly imposing restrictions on citizens to freely express themselves, to protest against systemic injustices and to form coalitions and organizations to defend fundamental human rights. This can be observed not only in countries led by authoritarian governments but in established democracies as well.

Under these circumstances, coordinated efforts by civil society and their allies to promote civic space and an enabling environment are more important than ever. EU SEE is supporting civil society to improve their ability to detect and respond to situations of a deteriorating or improving enabling environment conditions.

An enabling environment empowers citizens and increases their ability to exercise their civil and political rights by ensuring human rights being respected and upheld, including in particular, freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of expression and safe access to information.

How do we promote an enabling environment for civil society?

Our overarching aim is to support civil society to improve their ability to detect and respond to changes in the enabling environment. The system sheds light on both progress and obstacles affecting the ability of civil society to do their work.

Comprising of two complementary tools, the project aims to deliver comprehensive and timely insights.

The Monitoring and Early Warning Mechanism (MEWM)

Early Warning Mechanism (EWM): This tool will gather near-real-time data on event-based shifts in the enabling environment for civil society. Our network of national CSO partners will submit regular alerts, some of which will trigger the early warning mechanism. Advocacy on the alerts will be carried out nationally and internationally by the network member with support from EU SEE towards local public opinion, diplomats and international organisations depending on the security environment and where useful and appropriate.

Enabling Environment Snapshots (EE) will be produced by network members to give concise summaries derived from Network Members’ assessments of events or changes affecting the enabling environment reported through the Early Warning Mechanism. These snapshots are designed to provide a quick yet insightful overview of significant events, developments, and trends that have occurred over the past four months and their implications for civil society.

Country Focus Reports: these detailed annual assessments integrate existing indicators and information, as well as the information collected throughout the year via the EWM and EEs by our national partners. The five dimensions of the enabling environment covered by the project will be analysed: the Respect and protection of fundamental freedoms, a Supportive legal framework for civil society actors, Accessible and sustainable resources for their work, State Openness and Responsiveness, and the Political Culture and Public Discourse on Civil Society.

These reports aid in identifying critical trends, challenges, and catalysts that may lead to either a deterioration or enhancement of the enabling environment, and identify responses.

EU SEE Flexible Support Mechanism (FSM)

The EU SEE Flexible Support Mechanism (FSM) will operate across the 86 EU SEE countries (MENA, Sub-Saharan Africa, Americas and The Caribbean, Southern Neighbourhood). This CSO led system will support civil society to adapt and react to changes in their operating environment, prevent further deterioration of, and contribute to upholding and improving an enabling environment. This will be achieved through the provision of financial support through a variety of funding modalities, closely coordinated with and triggered by the EU SEE MEWM.

The FSM aims to support a wide range of civil society actors such as CSOs and CSAs including women, youth, LGBTIQ+ people, Indigenous communities, groups protecting the environment and common goods, and particularly self-led groups or organizations. It is designed to enable funding quickly also for smaller organisations and collectives that are usually excluded from existing sources of funding.

The FSM forms a major component of the support to be provided, corresponding to approximately €12.600.000 to be disbursed to civil society through grants. A minimum of 75% of grants disbursed will be informed by triggers received through the MEWM.

The FSM will provide funding through six different modalities:

Emergency Support Fund: aims to mobilize quick, principled and effective responses to urgent situations within a short period of time, to support actions that may not have been planned and therefore may not be covered by longer-term grants.
Sudden Opportunity Fund: strategic interventions aimed at responding to unexpected opportunities to build on and expand the environment in which civil society operates and where rapid intervention can have a significant impact.
Protection Fund: aims to strengthen organisations and collectives at different levels (from grassroots to informal movements and regional networks) to safely (offline and online) strategize, react and adapt, and become more resilient, to changing developments in civic space and support continued human rights activism in the long term.
National Prevention and Proactive Support Fund: will provide CSOs with financial support to design actions targeting one or more enabling factors preventing further deterioration to the enabling environment or proactively pursuing opportunities that can contribute to expand the available space for civil society organisations in a specific country, to adapt their ways of working or strengthening their capacities.
Core Costs Fund: Core Funding to CSOs (informal or formal) that strengthen and improve the enabling environment for civil society.
Global Prevention and Proactive Support Fund,provides CSOs (informal and formal) funds to support other civil society actors in a specific group of countries or regions to design actions targeting one or more enabling factors (depending on the context).

In addition, the program will develop civil society partners’ capacity to promote an enabling environment through a multi-faceted learning agenda and will amplify their voices in national, regional and global fora through knowledge exchange, policy dialogue and advocacy. Linking and Learning (L&L) is a core strategy that will be co-designed with civil society & reviewed during the 6 years. L&L grants provided to national- and regional-level actors to support grantees to bring CSAs together to share learning at organisational (network/collective) levels on Enabling Environment Factors & the protection, prevention and proactive work.