Obstructed Does Not Mean Finished
Putting the US downgrade in the wider CIVICUS picture, and noticing the small, hard-won gains that show change can still move both ways.
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Dear friends
Earlier this week, when CIVICUS downgraded the United States from a “narrowed” to an “obstructed” civic space rating, many of us felt something inside drop — a jolt, but also a kind of confirmation. The trends that we have been noticing and living through for several months now appeared, suddenly, in black and white, described in the measured language of an international watchdog.
In my last piece I walked through that downgrade in detail, setting it alongside the six-stage playbook for dismantling protest that I mapped earlier in the year (you can read Part 1 of the playbook here, and Part 2 here), and looking at how closely reality has followed that pattern. Protest reframed as extremism. Laws rewritten. Enforcement sharpened. Organisers targeted. Repression slowly normalised. The chill spreading outwards into everyday life.
After that piece, I noticed that a number of you had commented and restacked with some version of the same response: this is terrifying, we have fallen, how did it come to this?
The downgrade not only confirmed your fears; for many of you it crystallised them, leaving you feeling shaken, disheartened and uncertain about where you now stand or what role you can still play. For that reason, I am taking a small step sideways from what I originally said would come next. Instead of moving straight into the detailed, stage-by-stage comparison with CIVICUS, I am putting that work briefly to one side so that I can offer a wider frame and a steadier form of reassurance.
I still keep the promise I made earlier — setting my protest guides directly alongside the CIVICUS findings, stage by stage, so you can see in practical terms how the pattern has unfolded. But this follow-up has a different centre of gravity.
I recognise the need to stay honest about the severity of the moment, and I am not asking you to minimise your concern. At the same time, I want to shift our focus to a quiet, grounded kind of hope, the sort that grows out of evidence, history and the sober fact that people do recover civic ground — even from very dark places.
Today, I want to show you that civic space does not only close; it can widen again. The very same CIVICUS report that recorded the US downgrade contains examples of that happening.
Where CIVICUS is Tracking Improvements
CIVICUS monitors civic space in almost every country on earth. It tracks whether people can speak, organise, protest and publish without fear, and gives each country a rating: open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed or closed.
In the most recent reporting period, ratings changed for 18 countries. The main story most people picked up on was negative: 15 moved in the wrong direction. Among them were the United States and Argentina, both now classified as obstructed, and El Salvador and Israel, which dropped into the repressed category. France, Germany and Italy also fell, and now sit alongside several other countries in the obstructed group in Europe.
While that part of the picture has travelled widely, far less attention has gone to the three countries whose ratings improved.
In Africa south of the Sahara, Gabon, Mauritania and Senegal each saw their civic space rating move up. On paper that may look like a small counter-current against a larger tide of decline, but it matters more than the numbers suggest. Those upgrades show, in a concrete way, that deterioration is not inevitable. Civic space can widen again, even after serious setbacks, when pressure from below meets changes at the top and when institutions — however fragile or compromised — are pushed back towards their intended purpose.
The report’s “bright spots” section goes into more detail. It records, for example, how sustained advocacy in Chile has brought a landmark bill to protect environmental human rights defenders to the brink of adoption. The bill would establish binding rules to prevent attacks on those who defend land, water and ecosystems, and it is explicitly tied to the regional Escazú Agreement, which sets out access rights on environmental matters across Latin America and the Caribbean.
In the Philippines, the city of Baguio has adopted a Human Rights Defenders’ Protection Ordinance that openly recognises human rights work as legitimate and commits to protecting those who carry it out. This is happening in a country where defenders have faced years of harassment, “red-tagging” and more direct forms of harm, so the signal it sends is significant even at city level.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Federation entity has amended its Criminal Code to criminalise femicide and strengthen protections against gender-based violence. Civil society groups pushed for these changes after a series of killings that might, in other times, have faded into the background.
None of these measures has solved everything. Chilean defenders still face risk, while Philippine activists still confront serious threats, and women in Bosnia and Herzegovina still live with violence. Even so, each of these changes represents hard-won progress carved out of an increasingly hostile global climate.
So when we look at the same document that sounds the alarm about the United States, in the quieter sections we can also see proof that pressure works. Laws can move towards protection as well as restriction. Local authorities can shift course even when national governments stay hostile. International treaties, once signed, can be used to lever domestic law in a safer direction.
Civic space is never permanently settled. It shifts with what people and governments do, and these “bright spots” show that even in a hostile climate there is still room to move things in a safer direction. Gains may be small, but taken together they remind us that the current wave of closures sits inside a longer story in which people have, again and again, managed to win some of that space back.
In essence, while the CIVICUS downgrade is a diagnosis, it does not decide the outcome.
Are you seeing anything, however small, in your own city or community that feels like civic space pushing back rather than simply shrinking?
On Saturday, I’m going to place what is happening in the United States inside a wider global pattern. That does not make what you are living through any less serious, but it can take away some of the sense of freefall. When you see similar moves elsewhere — how they began, how far they went, and how people responded — it becomes easier to recognise the shape of this moment and to see that there are tested ways of pushing back.
In solidarity, as ever
— Lori
© Lori Corbet Mann, 2025
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Thank you for helping us understand the Civicus rating better. I appreciate that you gave us some context and reference of what it means in general. I never knew there was such a thing in existence!
We're losing everything we've held dear at breakneck speed. It's overwhelming to keep track. Laws may be able to protect in some instances, but those in power are not interested in the rule of law. The election process is now almost completely owned by nefarious actors, which may not allow for the civic rating, and therefore our freedoms, to expand for quite some time. If ever. Bless you 🙏 for guidance- you've been through this before- and for offering a sliver of hope and an upcoming outline of tested methods for fighting back.