Coronavirus as a Catalyst for Global Civil Society

The coronavirus pandemic has placed acute stress and high expectations on governments around the world. Much has been written on a return to big government. The focus on government responses is understandable, as citizens have looked to authorities for effective responses—and often, these responses have made the difference between life and death. Yet, the pandemic has had a profound impact not only on government policies but also on societies. The crisis has played out at the public authority level and, equally, at the community and civil society levels. Somewhat unnoticed amid the focus on governments’ crisis responses, the coronavirus pandemic has sharpened and intensified the importance of organized civil society action.

This compilation examines the nature of these coronavirus-related shifts in global civil society. It is based on the contention that a deeper understanding is required of society-level responses to the crisis and the ways in which the pandemic is reshaping the relationship between states and societies. Across several regions and countries, the compilation asks a series of questions: How far has the pandemic galvanized new forms of civic activism? How far has it led governments to tighten control over civil society actors? To the extent that they have emerged, what do new forms of civic activism look like? Do they portend a different kind of global civil society, a remolded civic sphere likely to influence global politics in different ways in the post-pandemic world? If so, what are the political implications of this civic adjustment?

The compilation explores these issues through twelve chapters that cover Southeast Asia, Taiwan, India, the Middle East and North Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Ukraine, Georgia, Poland and Romania, the Western Balkans, Zimbabwe, the United States, and Latin America. The cases show that the pandemic has acted as a powerful catalyst for global civil society. In all regions, demand for civic activism has risen and new spaces have opened for civil society organizations (CSOs) to play prominent and multilevel roles in the crisis. The pandemic has given global civil society a new sense of urgency, unleashed a spirit of civic empowerment, and prompted CSOs to deepen their presence in local societies. In some countries, civic activism has also had to move up a gear and assume stronger defensive strategies because regimes have used the pandemic to attack critical civil society voices. The coronavirus pandemic period has seen heightened demand for, and an increased supply of, civic activism as well as a need for CSOs to push back against harsher government restrictions.

In terms of the ways civil society has expanded, the case studies reveal three levels of new, coronavirus-related civic activism. First, the crisis has prompted CSOs to step into emergency relief roles to help manage the effects of the pandemic. This has involved both new civic groups emerging, often at a very local community level, and existing CSOs repurposing themselves away from their normal activities. Civil society has moved in to fill the gaps left by governments in their often strained and chaotic policy responses to the emergency. In some countries, these gaps have been left by sheer government negligence and obliged societies to adopt a self-help mentality of managing the crisis for themselves. In other countries, the gaps reflect the scale of the tragedy, with governments taking wide-ranging measures more in constructive cooperation with civil society. Coronavirus-related activism has been a matter of both compensation for government failure and partnership with government intervention.

This strand of civic activism has seen many civic organizations assume new functions and identities. Many CSOs have sought to prove themselves in ways that are relevant to the health emergency and have taken on vital coronavirus-related roles. This has, in many places, helped civil society actors gain greater prominence and even a renewed legitimacy with their local societies. Not all civil society actors have adjusted, but in many countries they have shown themselves more attuned with local communities than for many years. This is true of both very new, informal, mutual aid initiatives and the more structured parts of organized civil society.

At a second level, a more confrontational form of civic activism has gained force as CSOs have increased their role as watchdogs over state authorities. In nearly all the cases studies here, civil society has moved up a gear to monitor government responses to the pandemic. This has entailed a focus on the emergency powers that executives have appropriated to manage the crisis. While these measures have clearly infringed on many basic freedoms, they have also triggered a wave of new monitoring initiatives as civil society seeks to keep governments under close scrutiny in the way they use these powers.

This level of activism has also focused on the basic governance effectiveness of crisis responses and on the breadth of measures to offset the economic impacts of the coronavirus. Governments that have scored badly on these counts have been subject to sharper critical pressure from civil society. Civic groups have been ready not only to support governments in consensual spirit but also to engage in confrontational tactics when governments fall short.

At a third level, the crisis has galvanized global civil society into pushing harder for far-reaching, radical change to social, economic, and political models. The coronavirus crisis has magnified many of the imbalances of countries’ political and economic systems. As many governments have reacted in restrictive and ineffective ways, civil society has pushed back hard. It has begun to mobilize more proactively and with vibrancy for major reform of social and economic models whose shortcomings the pandemic has cruelly revealed. This is, so far, the least widespread and least prominent of the three levels of modified activism; yet, it could prove to be the most significant over the long term.

The balance between these three dynamics has varied dramatically across countries. If this is civil society’s moment, CSOs are rising to the challenge better in some countries than in others.

Civil society is gaining importance in many contrasting ways. The balance between cooperative and conflictual dynamics differs across states, depending on government policies. Those countries in which regimes have downplayed the virus or resisted wide-ranging responses have seen the most game-changing, crisis-like civic activism. In some states, the powerful dynamic is one of conflict, contention, and political crisis, while in others, governments have contained turbulence. In some countries, incumbent regimes have doubled down on their assaults against civil society, while elsewhere, CSOs have found ways to participate more cooperatively and consequentially in key government decisions.

An important question is how these different levels of civic activism sit in relation to each other—both in the immediate crisis and in the longer-term recovery period. Many CSOs now face the challenge of cooperating with authorities on coronavirus relief while trying to retain their more critical agendas on political issues. Civic organizations will increasingly wrestle with the question of how far their new, repurposed pandemic identities can coexist with their previous identities.

These chapters show that in some countries, sharp political tension is likely to crowd out positive cooperation between governments and civil society, while in other places, the danger is more one of co-optation as CSOs work with regimes on health issues and then may struggle to revert to more contentious political strategies. In some countries, governments’ mismanagement of the pandemic has awoken more critical pressure on wider political aims; yet in others, the pandemic has somewhat diverted attention from pressing reform imperatives. In this sense, global civil society may be in a phase of adjustment with significant ramifications: some activism is set to become more practical and community rooted, while other civic mobilization will become more overtly politicized.

In sum, the coronavirus has been a wake-up call for global civil society. The pandemic has placed heavy responsibilities and strains not only on governments but also on societies around the world. While much attention has focused on governments’ emergency responses, at a deeper level the crisis is changing the relationship between states and societies. Global civil society will come out of the pandemic looking very different—and this change will be a significant factor in a now highly fluid international politics.

Southeast Asia Between Autocratization and Democratic Resurgence

In Southeast Asia, the coronavirus pandemic presents both challenges for civic engagement and opportunities for positive change. On one hand, the pandemic has provided a pretext for autocrats to tighten their grip on power, deepening existing regional trends in autocratization and shrinking civic space. On the other hand, civil society organizations (CSOs) have emerged to focus on economic and social welfare needs, and their activism may challenge autocrats in the long run.

Although some regimes have been effective in addressing the health emergency and nascent economic setbacks, others have performed poorly and faced growing domestic criticism. Southeast Asian civil society will need to leverage the weaknesses of autocratic governance that the pandemic has revealed by creating broad-based alliances, challenging autocratic narratives, and proposing democratic visions for post-pandemic societies.

Five trends are emerging in Southeast Asia as a result of the pandemic and are pushing in very different political directions: tougher government restrictions on CSOs, contentious civil society action, new mutual aid initiatives, organized relief efforts, and repurposed advocacy groups.

Tougher Government Restrictions

The spread of the coronavirus is potentially accelerating autocratization in the region as leaders in many countries have used the pandemic as a pretext to increase their power.¹ All major Southeast Asian governments except Indonesia’s have imposed emergency decrees, curfews, or similar laws in light of the pandemic.² This has helped consolidate effective government responses to the pandemic in countries such as Singapore and Vietnam, but such laws have also been used to crack down on government critics and undermine opposition parties, furthering authoritarian power grabs.

A worrying case occurred in the Philippines, where Congress, dominated by President Rodrigo Duterte’s loyalists, granted the president emergency powers under an act that also contained a provision penalizing fake news. This was widely seen as an instrument to go after opponents, and indeed, the National Bureau of Investigation pressed charges against online critics of the government’s crisis management.³ Similarly, in the middle of the pandemic, Congress passed a new antiterrorism law, which defines terrorism in such broad terms as to allow the government to classify political criticism as terrorism.⁴ In September 2020, Duterte extended the national “state of calamity” by a year.⁵

Things are not looking brighter in Thailand or Myanmar. The Thai military-backed government’s March 2020 emergency decree remains in place even though the threat of the coronavirus has been contained in the country.⁶ Along with other draconian laws, the decree has been used to charge anti-government protesters as young as sixteen years old and circumvent parliamentary checks on executive power.⁷ The decree has also limited the public backlash against allegations of the government’s involvement in human rights violations, including the forced disappearance of an exiled activist who was critical of the government.⁸

Myanmar’s quasi-civilian government has refrained from invoking a nationwide emergency but has arrested large numbers of people for disobedience. Journalists have likewise been prosecuted for alleged violations of pandemic-related regulations, and a group of street artists was charged with offending religion in their artwork about the coronavirus. Meanwhile, restrictions on meetings between CSOs and parliamentarians on grounds of health protection have further limited CSO advocacy for fundamental rights, reinforcing a trend that existed before the pandemic.⁹ After a spike in coronavirus infections, the Myanmar government imposed partial lockdowns in Rakhine state and the country’s largest city, Yangon, in late August and early September 2020, respectively. Myanmar’s State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi warned that disrespecting coronavirus regulations would be punished with up to a year’s imprisonment.¹⁰

Apart from emergency laws, existing media and cyber laws in most Southeast Asian countries have proved useful in silencing civic and democratic criticisms of governments’ pandemic responses. For instance, Indonesia’s 2008 law on electronic information and transactions was used against an independent researcher who was critical of the coronavirus measures taken by the government of President Joko Widodo.¹¹

In Vietnam between January and March 2020, police responded to 654 cases of so-called fake news, sanctioning 146 people including a dissident publisher.¹² In Singapore, the 2019 Protection From Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act has been used to target not only spreaders of fake news about the pandemic but also journalists and political rivals of the ruling People’s Action Party government. Eighty-five percent of all online posts defined as false under the law consisted of negative portrayals of the government’s activities or policies.¹³

In Malaysia, citizens have been arrested for what the government has branded fake news about the pandemic.¹⁴ For instance, through the 1998 Communications and Multimedia Act, the Malaysian police summoned a journalist who was questioning the government’s treatment of migrant workers amid the pandemic.¹⁵

The Cambodian regime tightened its grip on power by declaring a state of emergency in March 2020. Activists were detained on charges of spreading false information about the coronavirus, and the country’s prime minister directly threatened with arrest the leader of a local human rights nongovernmental organization (NGO) who had commented on the government’s crisis response.¹⁶ The allegation of spreading fake news also led to the arrests of key members of the opposition, a practice all too common since the Cambodian Supreme Court dissolved the main opposition party before the 2018 general election.¹⁷

Contentious Civil Society Action

The second trend contrasts with the first, as contentious civic activism has occurred despite and, at times, against draconian government restrictions. This activism has been driven mostly by economic and social welfare needs in conjunction with ensuing grievances against regimes. Most Southeast Asian countries rely on tourism and export industries. Without substantive compensation for workers, governments’ lockdown measures have aggravated the lot of the unemployed, who have sometimes responded by staging spontaneous protests. Regimes’ unsympathetic responses have stirred public anger.

For instance, in the Philippines, a small group of urban poor people affected by the Duterte government’s harsh lockdown protested in Manila to demand livelihood support. They were soon arrested, with Duterte calling on law enforcers to “shoot them dead” if they caused any “trouble.”¹⁸ CSOs such as the leftist Solidarity of Filipino Workers were quick to condemn the arrests.¹⁹ Meanwhile, rights groups and ordinary citizens tweeted their criticism with hashtags such as #DuterteResign and #OustDuterteNOW.²⁰

In Myanmar, factory workers staged small-scale protests against the government’s pandemic-related measures, resulting in the legal prosecution of some workers.²¹ In May 2020, over thirty Cambodian and international NGOs issued a joint statement urging the Cambodian government to allow around 150 Cambodian migrant workers stranded in Malaysia to re-enter their home country.²² With growing job losses and layoffs, independent labor unions in Cambodia, Myanmar, and the Philippines have called on their respective governments to provide urgent compensation for workers.²³

In Thailand, growing economic concerns due to lockdown measures have taken a new turn. Since mid-July 2020, young people, whose job prospects have dimmed and whose grievances over the country’s autocratization are deepening, have been leading nationwide protests against the regime. Students were already on the streets in February and early March 2020 after Thailand’s constitutional court disbanded a progressive party. Defiance against the regime diminished with the advent of the coronavirus and the subsequent lockdown but then resurfaced even more strongly. As of this writing, students—together with LGBTQ groups, labor movements, and development NGOs—have organized more than 200 protests across the country. One major event on September 19, 2020, gathered between 50,000 and 100,000 people—the biggest protest since Thailand’s 2014 military coup.²⁴ In what has become one of the world’s most prominent revolts, protesters are demanding the prime minister’s resignation and democratic reform of the constitution and the monarchy. Corresponding to these three demands is a three-finger salute that protesters have taken from the movie series The Hunger Games as an anti-dictatorship symbol.²⁵

Another type of contentious civil society action has countered problematic government narratives about the coronavirus and related government relief efforts. In several Southeast Asian countries, civil society activists and journalists have actively disputed government misinformation about the pandemic, for instance through online campaigns. In the Philippines, civil society activists have worked with the nonprofit media organization Vera Files in a fact-checking community on Facebook whose existence predates the pandemic. In Malaysia, civil society activists and media outlets such as the online magazine Malaysiakini have sought to hold the government accountable during the crisis and lobbied against government attempts to curtail online expression.²⁶

New Mutual Aid Initiatives

New volunteer groups have emerged to provide humanitarian relief and welfare services in place of governments. These groups are not necessarily run by seasoned activists but often by local residents who have organized to cope with the health crisis, subsequent economic setbacks, and coronavirus-related lockdown measures.

A striking example is the citizen-organized task force of the village of Gumuk Indah in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, where the government’s responses to the pandemic have been slow and uncoordinated.²⁷ The task force has provided health responses, including health education and hygiene measures, to prevent transmission of the virus; supported people affected by the lockdown with aid kits; and sought to counter the security impacts of the pandemic and associated lockdown measures. The task force has drawn on volunteers, some of whom were previously active in neighborhood associations and local community-building organizations. The example of Gumuk Indah has sparked discussions in the international humanitarian community of ways to include people-centered approaches in humanitarian programs better and, possibly, move from community engagement to community-led engagement.²⁸

While in March 2020 the Indonesian authorities still downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic, professional groups were quick to respond. Tech start-ups launched crowdfunding campaigns to raise funds for informal-sector workers and buy personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers. By late March, around 15,000 medical students from 158 universities across Indonesia had volunteered in understaffed hospitals.²⁹ The Women’s Police in West Java donated their already low salaries to buy food for affected residents.³⁰

In Myanmar, CSOs, religious organizations, and local companies have provided food and other emergency supplies for the needy, filling gaps left by the state. In addition, Buddhist monks, religious leaders of the Muslim minority, and Christian churches have allowed their religious compounds to be used as quarantine centers.³¹ Similarly, in the Philippines, citizens have come together to make PPE for frontline health professionals, distributed food packs for the homeless, and made cash transfers to the unemployed.³² In Cambodia, diverse actors, including CSOs and business tycoons, have made donations to support the government’s efforts to counter the coronavirus.³³

Organized CSO Relief Efforts

Organized CSOs have played critical roles in helping vulnerable communities. In Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, charity groups were set up to raise funds to buy medical supplies and food for slum dwellers, disabled people, and migrant workers.³⁴ Although these charities are not by nature advocacy organizations, some have urged the government to adopt more comprehensive social policies that aid economically and socially vulnerable people in times of crisis.³⁵

In Malaysia, NGO relief efforts kick-started a renegotiation of NGO-government relations in the field of care for vulnerable migrant and refugee communities. The Movement Control Order, issued by the government to counter the spread of the coronavirus, initially barred NGO access to migrant and refugee populations, with the military and a paramilitary corps distributing all pandemic-related aid to these communities.³⁶ But after NGOs launched a campaign called Let Us Work With You, the government adjusted the order to allow NGOs to distribute food and other emergency supplies to affected communities.³⁷ Subsequent cooperation has improved relations between the government and some NGOs.³⁸ Still, a recent study also shows that Malaysian CSOs that help vulnerable communities themselves face serious challenges in light of the pandemic, including financial shortages and the disruption of staff development due to economic uncertainties.³⁹

In Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi’s government has for a long time been reluctant to cooperate with civil society and so far failed to provide adequate support for CSOs that work to counter the coronavirus pandemic.⁴⁰ Yet, the country’s CSOs play important roles in mitigating the social and economic impacts of the coronavirus and have engaged in critical advocacy to influence the government’s response to the health crisis.

For instance, the Livelihoods and Food Security Fund, a multidonor fund managed by the United Nations Office for Project Services, estimates that over 80 percent of its coronavirus response activities are conducted by its local partners, with local CSOs engaging in relief efforts as different as welfare and health service delivery, education, awareness training, and the provision of legal assistance to migrant workers.⁴¹ In May 2020, over 200 CSOs from diverse professional and ethnic backgrounds issued a joint statement in which they urged Myanmar’s government to provide food and financial support for people in need; advocated respect for human rights, democracy, and social justice in the government’s crisis response; and demanded an end to armed conflict in ethnic areas.⁴²

Repurposed Advocacy Groups for Welfare Delivery

Finally, advocacy groups that repurpose their agendas for social and economic welfare activities have been able to leverage the health crisis to carve out a new civic space, counter regimes’ narratives, and generate progressive social visions for the post-coronavirus context. In Thailand, student activists who launched anti-junta campaigns before the pandemic have partly shifted to humanitarian work by distributing food packs to the unemployed, slum dwellers, and affected sex workers.⁴³ Meanwhile in Myanmar, some ethnic minority activists have reoriented themselves from human rights campaigns to health advocacy and service provision, including by distributing food and other basic goods in remote areas.⁴⁴

Challenging Duterte’s militaristic framing of the fight against the pandemic, Filipino human rights groups such as Active Vista have refocused their activities to link human rights with equal access to public health. These groups hope to reshape human rights discourses in terms of “people working together out of generosity to achieve a common goal” and “a shared sense of identity and treating others with respect and dignity as [equals].”⁴⁵

A similar trend has occurred in Singapore, where xenophobic rhetoric against migrant workers has surged in light of the country’s second coronavirus wave. An outspoken LGBTQ movement, Pink Dot, has extended its support to migrant workers by raising funds for, and delivering care packages to, many of those who were trapped in dormitories because of coronavirus restrictions. Based on the informal modes of activism the movement has developed, Pink Dot has organized online activities such as livestreamed performances and interactive discussions. On June 27, 2020, the movement invited supporters to light up their homes and workplaces in pink and share pictures of small gatherings with close ones. These activities sent a message of solidarity between Singaporeans and migrant workers, countered xenophobic attitudes toward migrants, and, most importantly, ignited conversations about social justice in post-pandemic Singapore.⁴⁶

Harnessing Opportunities

It is clear that the coronavirus pandemic is reinforcing an existing trend of autocratization in Southeast Asia and that this trend will persist in the short to medium term. This will have detrimental effects on contentious antiregime activism, although it remains to be seen whether Thailand’s high-profile, ongoing protests will yield substantive outcomes in the coming months. All Southeast Asian regimes have imposed severe legal or de facto restrictions on civil liberties, preventing the development of strong, civil society–based opposition movements. However, increasing social engagement in the context of the health crisis seems to be enlarging civic space in the area of social service provision. This engagement may have the potential to strengthen links between national and international civil society as well as between formally organized CSOs and informal, community-based groups in individual Southeast Asian countries.

This new dynamic of civic activism in the welfare sector does little to alter the autocratizing trend in the region. However, improved relations between organized CSOs and local communities may, in the long term, contribute to creating a more legitimate and organic civil society in many Southeast Asian countries. Thus, new and reorienting civic groups with socioeconomic welfare agendas may slowly gather the political force necessary to resist autocratization.

For this to happen, politically contentious civic groups will need to form alliances with welfare-based groups that are gaining traction among local communities. Human rights and pro-democracy advocacy organizations will need to connect their political agendas with issues of citizens’ welfare, including healthcare and economic redistribution. Civic coalitions must counter regime narratives that depict authoritarian leadership as a success factor for an effective crisis response. In Singapore and Vietnam, where governments have responded swiftly and effectively to the pandemic, such narratives are difficult to crack. However, in Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand, where governments have often failed to meet citizens’ expectations, CSOs may well be able to challenge regime narratives about authoritarian effectiveness. And finally, the pandemic should push Southeast Asian civil society to develop more appealing visions of democracy that leave no one behind in the post-pandemic world.

Notes

¹ Autocratization has been defined as a “substantial de-facto decline of core institutional requirements for electoral democracy” that can take place in both democratic and nondemocratic regimes. Anna Lührmann and Staffan Lindberg, “A Third Wave of Autocratization Is Here: What Is New About It?,” Democratization 26, no. 7 (2019): 1096, 1099.

² James Gomez and Robin Ramcharan, “Coronavirus and Democracy in Southeast Asia,” Bangkok Post, April 1, 2020, https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1890655/coronavirus-and-democracy-in-southeast-asia. For a comprehensive list of laws implemented in Southeast Asia in light of the pandemic, see “COVID-19 Civic Freedom Tracker,” International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, https://www.icnl.org/covid19tracker/.

³ Jason Castaneda, “Why Duterte Wants to Extend His COVID-19 Emergency,” Asia Times, June 9, 2020, https://asiatimes.com/2020/06/why-duterte-wants-to-extend-his-COVID-19-emergency/; Mariejo S. Ramos, “Rights Groups Wary as NBI Summons 17 for ‘Fake News,’” Inquirer, April 4, 2020, https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1253684/rights-groups-wary-as-nbi-summons-17-for-fake-news.

⁴ Nick Aspinwall, “The Philippines’ Broad Anti-Terrorism Law Takes Aim at Dissent,” Diplomat, June 5, 2020, https://thediplomat.com/2020/06/the-philippines-broad-anti-terrorism-law-takes-aim-at-dissent/.

⁵ Pia Ranada, “Duterte Extends State of Calamity Due to Coronavirus Until September 2021,” Rappler, September 18, 2020, https://rappler.com/nation/duterte-extends-state-of-calamity-due-to-coronavirus-until-september-2021.

⁶ “State of Emergency Extended Until End of July,” Nation, June 29, 2020, https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30390469.

⁷ Sunai Phasuk, “Thai Activist Arrested on COVID-19 Pretext,” Human Rights Watch, May 15, 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/16/thai-activist-arrested-COVID-19-pretext; “Chiang Rai Students Summoned for Violating Emergency Decree,” Post Today, July 21, 2020, https://www.posttoday.com/social/local/40326; Shawn W. Crispin, “COVID-19 Gives Prayut New Political Life in Thailand,” Asia Times, July 3, 2020, https://asiatimes.com/2020/07/COVID-19-gives-prayut-new-political-life-in-thailand.

⁸ George Wright and Issariya Praithongyaem, “Wanchalearm Satsaksit: The Thai Satirist Abducted in Broad Daylight,” BBC, July 2, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-53212932.

⁹ RSF Hub, “Covid-19 in Myanmar: Effects of the Pandemic on the Rule of Law,” Rule of Law Promotion in Times of Covid-19, no. 4, June 2020, https://www.polsoz.fu-berlin.de/polwiss/forschung/international/atasp/forschung/projekte_laufende/RSF-Hub/RSF-Hub-CP_4-Impacts-of-Covid-19-in-Myanmar.pdf.

¹⁰ Zaw Zaw Htwe, “Myanmar’s COVID-19 Cases Exceed 1,000,” Irrawaddy, September 3, 2020, https://www.irrawaddy.com/specials/myanmar-covid-19/myanmars-covid-19-cases-exceed-1000.html.

¹¹ Ary Hermawan, “The Curious Case of Ravio Patra: Why Indonesian Cyberspace Is a Dystopian Nightmare,” Jakarta Post, April 24, 2020, https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2020/04/24/the-curious-case-of-ravio-patra-why-indonesian-cyberspace-is-a-dystopian-nightmare.html.

¹² David Hutt, “Some Thoughts on Vietnam’s COVID-19 Repression,” Asia Times, May 22, 2020, https://asiatimes.com/2020/05/some-thoughts-on-vietnams-COVID-19-repression/.

¹³ Paul Meyer, “Singapore’s First Election Under the Fake News Law,” Diplomat, July 7, 2020, https://thediplomat.com/2020/07/singapores-first-election-under-the-fake-news-law/.

¹⁴ Felix Bethke and Jonas Wolff, “COVID-19 as a Threat to Civic Spaces Around the World,” PRIF Blog, Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, April 1, 2020, https://blog.prif.org/2020/04/01/COVID-19-as-a-threat-to-civic-spaces-around-the-world/.

¹⁵ Hadi Azmi, “Malaysian Police Question Reporter Over Tweets About Migrant Roundup,” Benar News, May 6, 2020, https://www.benarnews.org/english/news/malaysian/journalist-questioned-05062020163143.html.

¹⁶ “Cambodia: Rights Groups Concern Over Arrests & Harassment of Activists During the Covid-19 Pandemic,” Business & Human Rights Resource Center, April 3, 2020, https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/cambodia-rights-group-concerns-over-arrests-harassment-of-activists-amid-the-covid-19-pandemic-measures/.

¹⁷ “Cambodia: COVID-19 Clampdown on Free Speech,” Human Rights Watch, March 24, 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/24/cambodia-COVID-19-clampdown-free-speech.

¹⁸ Sofia Tomacruz, “‘Shoot Them Dead’: Duterte Orders Troops to Kill Quarantine Violators,” Rappler, April 1, 2020, https://www.rappler.com/nation/256705-duterte-orders-troops-shoot-kill-coronavirus-quarantine-violators.

¹⁹ Rambo Talabong, “Quezon City Residents Demanding Help Amid Lockdown Arrested by Police,” Rappler, April 1, 2020, https://www.rappler.com/nation/256628-residents-quezon-city-protesting-help-coronavirus-lockdown-arrested-by-police-april-1-2020.

²⁰ Lynzy Billing, “Duterte’s Response to the Coronavirus: ‘Shoot Them Dead,’” Foreign Policy, April 16, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/16/duterte-philippines-coronavirus-response-shoot-them-dead/.

²¹ RSF Hub, “Covid-19 in Myanmar.”

²² “Joint Statement on Repatriation of Cambodia Nationals to Cambodia,” Human Rights Watch, May 29, 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/29/joint-statement-repatriation-cambodia-nationals-cambodia.

²³ “South East Asian Unions Turn Online to Defend Workers’ Rights,” IndustriALL Global Union, May 12, 2020, http://www.industriall-union.org/south-east-asian-unions-turn-online-to-defend-workers-rights.

²⁴ “19 September Demonstrations,” BBC, September 20, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/thai/thailand-54217719.

²⁵ Janjira Sombatpoonsiri, “Thailand’s Anti-Establishment Protests,” International Politics and Society, August 31, 2020, https://www.ips-journal.eu/regions/asia/article/show/thailands-anti-establishment-protests-4604/.

²⁶ “Stronger Alliance of Civil Society and Media in Asia Called to Fight Infodemic,” Digital Thinkers Forum/CoFact Thailand, April 16, 2020, https://www.freiheit.org/stronger-alliance-civil-society-and-media-asia-called-fight-infodemic.

²⁷ Sana Jaffrey, “Coronavirus Blunders in Indonesia Turn Crisis Into Catastrophe,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 29, 2020, https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/04/29/coronavirus-blunders-in-indonesia-turn-crisis-into-catastrophe-pub-81684.

²⁸ “Fighting COVID-19 in Indonesia / Melawan COVID-19 di Indonesia,” Sphere webinar, June 25, 2020, recording available at https://spherestandards.org/wp-content/uploads/COVID19-WEBINAR-INDONESIA.mp4.

²⁹ Ghina Ghaliya, “Medical Students Ready to Join Fight Against COVID-19,” Jakarta Post, March 27, 2020, https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/03/27/15000-medical-students-ready-to-join-fight-against-COVID-19-house.html.

³⁰ Renne R. A. Kawilarang and Zahrul Darmawan, “Polwan di Depok Sumbang Gaji Bantu Warga Miskin,” Vivanews, April 24, 2020, https://www.vivanews.com/berita/metro/46588-polwan-di-depok-sumbang-gaji-bantu-warga-miskin.

³¹ Kyi Kiy Sein, “The Coronavirus Challenges Myanmar’s Transition,” United States Institute for Peace, March 26, 2020, https://www.usip.org/publications/2020/05/coronavirus-challenges-myanmars-transition.

³² Filomin Gutierrez, “Solidarity and Sharing in an Unequal Society: COVID-19 in the Philippines,” openDemocracy, May 2, 2020, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/solidarity-and-sharing-unequal-society-COVID-19-philippines/.

³³ Kimkong Heng and Len Ang, “Who’s Helping Cambodia Weather COVID-19?,” Diplomat, July 8, 2020, https://thediplomat.com/2020/07/whos-helping-cambodia-weather-COVID-19/.

³⁴ Kornkamol Sriwiwat, “X-Ray Thailand: On the Day We Say We Would Leave No One Behind,” 101, May 20, 2020, https://www.the101.world/living-with-covid-3/; “COVID-19: Impact on Migrant Workers and Country Response in Malaysia,” International Labor Organization, May 8, 2020, https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/ groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/documents/briefingnote/wcms_741512.pdf; Tania Nguyen, “Realising Rice and Rights: The Role of Civil Society in Realising the Right to Food in Vietnam During the COVID-19,” SHAPESEA, April 17, 2020, https://shapesea.com/op-ed/COVID-19/realising-rice-and-rights-the-role-of-civil-society-in-realising-the-right-to-food-in-vietnam-during-the-COVID-19/.

³⁵ “Civil Society Suggest State Aid for Everyone,” Thai News Agency, June 4, 2020, https://www.mcot.net/viewtna/5ed89cdfe3f8e40af844cfdd.

³⁶ R. Loheswar, “Send Food for Homeless to District Collection Centres, RELA and Army Will Disburse, Defence Minister Tells NGOs,” Mail Malaysia, March 28, 2020, https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2020/03/28/send-food-for-homeless-to-district-collection-centres-rela-and-army-will-di/1851112; Natalie Shobana Ambrose, “Malaysia’s Marginalized and COVID-19,” Asia Foundation, May 13, 2020, https://asiafoundation.org/2020/05/13/malaysias-marginalized-and-COVID-19/.

³⁷ Grace Chen, “JKM’s New Guidelines Allow NGOs to Distribute Food to Needy Folk,” Star, April 2, 2020, https://www.thestar.com.my/metro/metro-news/2020/04/02/jkms-new-guidelines-allow-ngos-to-distribute-food-to-needy-folk.

³⁸ Ambrose, “Malaysia’s Marginalized.”

³⁹ “Survey Report: Impact of COVID-19 on Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Malaysia,” Yayasan Hasanah Foundation, 2020, https://caps.org/doing-good/survey-report-impact-covid-19-civil-society-organisations-csos-malaysia/.

⁴⁰ Authors’ email and phone conversations with experts, July 2020.

⁴¹ Thu Thu Nwe Hlaing, “No COVID-19 Response Is Possible Without Civil Society Involvement,” Livelihoods and Food Security Fund, June 16, 2020, https://www.lift-fund.org/blog/no-covid-19-response-possible-without-civil-society-involvement.

⁴² “Myanmar Civil Society Organizations and Networks Urge the Myanmar Government and Other Relevant Stakeholders to Take Urgent Measures During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Transnational Institute, May 28, 2020, https://www.tni.org/files/article-downloads/cso_leaders_covid-19_urgent_statement_english.pdf.

⁴³ Duanpen Chuipracha, “Netiwit and #SongTorKwamImm: Sharing Campaigns for Mutual Survival,” A Day, May 20, 2020, https://adaymagazine.com/food-sharing-project/.

⁴⁴ Maggi Quadrini, “Civil Society Grapples With COVID-19 Impact in Myanmar’s Ethnic Areas,” Myanmar Mix, May 4, 2020, https://www.myanmarmix.com/en/articles/civil-society-grapples-with-COVID-19-impact-in-myanmars-ethnic-areas.

⁴⁵ James Savage, “How Civil Society Is Fighting Back Against Coronavirus Crackdowns,” OpenDemocracy, June 24, 2020, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/how-civil-society-fighting-back-against-coronavirus-crackdowns/.

⁴⁶ Lynn Ng Yu Ling, “What Does the COVID-19 Pandemic Mean for PinkDot Singapore?,” Interface 12, no. 1 (2020): 72–81, https://www.interfacejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Interface-12-1-Ng.pdf.

Watchdogs and Partners: Taiwan’s Civil Society Organizations

Taiwan adopted a widely acclaimed, successful strategy to cope with the coronavirus pandemic. This tempered criticism from civil society organizations (CSOs). Unlike in most other countries covered in this compilation, in Taiwan the pandemic did not trigger a major political crisis or polarization in civil society. Nevertheless, Taiwanese civic activists have engaged strongly to make sure the government respects fundamental rights in its responses to the coronavirus. On several specific issues, this has involved heightened civic mobilization during the pandemic.

A Success Story

Despite its geographic proximity to China and high flows of travelers to and from the mainland, the island nation of 23.7 million people had recorded only around 500 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and seven related deaths as of mid-September 2020.¹ Because of rigorous preventive measures, Taiwan’s residents did not experience lockdowns or stay-at-home orders, and most commercial and civil activity went on as usual. While the world’s economy plunged, Taiwan’s gross domestic product has continued to grow in 2020.

In April, as Western countries began to experience rapid spikes in infections, Taiwan launched an international aid campaign, branded online with the hashtag #Taiwancanhelp, and donated face masks and medical supplies to countries in need. The campaign garnered significant attention, raising Taiwan’s profile as an international actor during the pandemic and effectively neutralizing attempts by China and the World Health Organization to isolate the nation. Taiwan’s success has broader implications: a democracy that honors information transparency can generate effective responses to the health crisis without resorting to draconian measures, and citizens are voluntarily complying with the government’s directives without giving up their rights and liberties.

There are several ingredients in Taiwan’s successful recipe for responding to the pandemic. The government adopted early and proactive measures, such as travel bans and border screenings, to prevent the virus from entering the island. After its experience with the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a disease caused by an earlier coronavirus that came from China, Taiwan already had legal and physical frameworks in place for responding to a public health crisis. Once news of COVID-19 broke, Taiwan’s government leaders activated the Central Epidemic Command Center on January 21, 2020, two days before a lockdown was imposed in Wuhan, China.² Taiwan’s public healthcare system, National Health Insurance, played a critical role in this emergency. It provided universal protection for citizens and residents, and the system’s database and pharmacy networks were vital in distributing rationed face masks.³

Taiwan’s strong machinery industry was a valuable asset in helping to combat shortages of medical masks, goggles, and protective clothing. Before the outbreak, Taiwan relied heavily on imports of masks, but with concerted action by officials and industries at the outset of the pandemic, Taiwan quickly set up new manufacturing lines that dramatically increased the daily production of masks. With this, Taiwan became the world’s second-largest producer of face masks, not only achieving self-sufficiency but also producing a surplus for international aid and export.

Finally, due to its previous experience of contagious diseases, particularly SARS, the Taiwanese public generally embraces a hygienic lifestyle. Hand washing before meals is rigorously promoted in kindergartens and elementary schools, and hand sanitizers are commonly available at the entrances to public buildings. Wearing a face mask does not carry an unwelcome stigma but is seen as a considerate gesture to protect one another’s health. Adherence to government guidelines on quarantine, physical distancing, and the compulsory wearing of masks is generally seen as a civic virtue and duty.⁴

On January 11, 2020, Taiwan held presidential and legislative elections, which yielded landslide victories to the incumbent, independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). President Tsai Ing-wen won a second term, and her party maintained its legislative majority. If the elections had taken place after the coronavirus outbreak, politics could have prevented coordinated responses. And if the China-friendly opposition Kuomintang party had won the elections, government officials might have been reluctant to issue timely travel restrictions and regulations for passengers entering Taiwan from China.

What is more, the winning DPP government boasted public health specialists among its top brass. Former Taiwanese vice president Chen Chien-jen is a leading epidemiologist with hands-on experience in the SARS crisis, and Chen Chi-mai, a former vice premier, has a background in preventive medicine. These specialists were instrumental to the government’s ability to craft a robust package of responses.

Taiwan’s civil society, however, did not have to play a prominent role in the nation’s crisis response, simply because the government reacted preemptively and generated creditable results. It is sobering to see that many affluent democracies have failed to deliver sufficient personal protective equipment to frontline medical workers and that charities and other CSOs have had to take care of these basic provisions instead. While some democratically elected leaders have flouted the expertise of scientific communities and promoted contradictory and inconsistent messages, Taiwanese civil society has been spared the thankless task of correcting misinformation and disseminating scientific knowledge about personal hygiene.

The trend of civil society repurposing itself to fulfill urgent needs is absent in Taiwan.⁵ Yet, Taiwan’s civil society is not lying dormant in the ongoing health crisis. It has closely monitored the government’s coronavirus policies and decrees to make sure that these temporary measures do not violate the fundamental principles of democracy and human rights or unnecessarily marginalize vulnerable groups. And Taiwanese civil society has collaborated with government agencies to ensure citizens receive undistorted information and rationed face masks. In short, Taiwan’s civil society remains active simultaneously as a watchdog to, and a partner of, the government.

Monitoring Government Responses

With its stellar management of the coronavirus emergency, the DPP government is enjoying high public approval—an unusual phenomenon for a second-term presidency. In a June 2020 poll, 97 percent of respondents assessed the Taiwanese government’s response positively, while 80 percent judged the Chinese government’s performance negatively.⁶ Chen Shih-chung, Taiwan’s emergency commander in chief and minister of health and welfare, emerged as a household name and Taiwan’s most popular politician, receiving a startling approval rating of 94 percent in a May 2020 opinion poll.⁷

By contrast, those critical of the government’s policies have been met with a public backlash. The Kuomintang party’s approval rating has continued to nosedive since its electoral setback in January. One of the reasons for the slump is that opposition politicians are perceived to have politicized the government’s responses to the coronavirus, from banning exports of face masks in January to rationing them in February to donating them internationally in April.

Taiwan’s advocacy groups have stepped up their watchdog functions. The groups have been largely free from short-term political considerations because their missions are inspired by universal values or commitments to underprivileged groups. One concern of advocacy groups has been the pervasive use of digital technology by authorities to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. In a health emergency, Taiwan’s laws allow the government to link databases of immigration, household registration, and national health insurance to improve the surveillance of individuals with suspected travel and contact histories.

The government also accessed the global positioning system information of mobile network operators and sent text messages to people who might have been in the same place at the same time as those who were reported to be infected with the coronavirus.⁸ The government enforced a strict fourteen-day quarantine order for people who had recently returned from abroad and those who were permitted to enter Taiwan. These people were put on a rather intrusive scheme of electronic surveillance by a mandated use of government-issued SIM cards in their cell phones.

While many officials appeared complacent about these new digital tools and their efficacy, CSOs such as the Taiwan Association for Human Rights expressed grave concern about the pernicious implications of suspending privacy protections in favor of tracing the spread of the virus. Such human rights advocates have issued many statements to remind the Taiwanese government that temporary measures need to be proportionate and terminated in due course and that collected personal data must be properly disposed of after the pandemic.

Another concern flagged by civil society was that an existing law authorized the government to reveal, if necessary, the personal information of those who had violated a quarantine order. Taiwan’s human rights activists urged the government not to invoke this emergency authorization. Many feared that these reinforced measures of surveillance might become permanent features, because they had popular support and were perceived as necessary for safeguarding public health.

In February 2020, several illegal migrant workers were found to be infected with the coronavirus, which quickly generated a nationwide wave of nervousness. Many migrants had either stayed beyond their permitted period or changed employer without due process during the pandemic. Taiwan’s civil society activists and academics urged the government not to stigmatize these illegal migrants or escalate deportation measures, because, the activists argued, such steps would be counterproductive by driving the migrants further into hiding.⁹ Taiwan’s health officials took heed and formally promised not to take further action against illegal migrant workers.

Because the job of sex workers involves intimate contact with customers, the government ordered the immediate suspension of related businesses, such as karaoke clubs and dancing halls. The decree brought about acute economic distress to many sex workers and their coworkers because of the lack of cash income. Feminist scholars and women’s rights groups argued that the order was disproportionate and discriminatory, pointing out that confirmed cases in universities, hospitals, accounting firms, and other workplaces outside the sex industry were not shut down and were treated differently. In June, the restrictions were lifted, although it remained unclear whether CSOs’ criticisms had been influential.

Some activism and protests erupted around Taiwanese-Chinese family links. Affected family members took the lead in organizing these protests, and their voices were amplified with the endorsement of Kuomintang politicians. In what became a controversial move, certain Chinese nationals with kinship ties to Taiwan were forbidden from entering the island from late January 2020 onward. The DPP government initially attempted to lift the ban in late February, but an outpouring of negative opinion brought about a policy U-turn. Protests by the affected families followed, and the ban was finally lifted in mid-July.

Collaborating for Disease Prevention

Clarity and accuracy of information about the pandemic has been another focus of emergent civic activism. In Taiwan’s experience, transparent information has been necessary to maintain citizens’ trust in the government’s emergency responses. One of the reasons for Chen Shih-chung’s surging popularity is that he held daily press conferences over one hundred consecutive days. In this period, tuning in to his daily announcements became an everyday routine that helped people manage their anxieties. Chen was not a charismatic speaker, but his willingness and patience to answer all the reporters’ questions, including some patently hostile and misinformed ones, made him an effective political communicator during the crisis.

However, despite officials’ commitment to transparency, rumors and fears were bound to circulate in the present age of disinformation. Starting in February, news that purported to reveal mass deaths in Taiwan began to spread on several online platforms. Lurid and untrue information, such as a claim that mass graves had been dug in many places to bury the dead hastily, went viral. Additionally, unfounded conspiracy theories were abundant, for example that officials kept a secret stash of face masks from which to profiteer during nationwide rationing. Many of these rumors were found to have been generated by online chatbots based in China and deliberately spread by pro-China collaborators based in Taiwan.

As Western countries later experienced, China’s propaganda machine was at full throttle, even when the coronavirus was killing thousands of people on a daily basis. In response, the Taiwan FactCheck Center (TFC), a nonprofit set up by communication scholars and activist journalists, launched a project to monitor coordinated inauthentic behaviors in cyberspace and respond with fact-checked clarifications. TFC attempted to cultivate digital media literacy so that users were less likely to be misinformed. TFC also collaborated with Facebook, and as a result, more than sixty accounts were taken down because of their role in spreading coronavirus-related disinformation.¹⁰

Another area of partnership between the government and civil society focused on providing information about the distribution of face masks when the government began to ration them in February 2020. G0v, an open-source platform for digital activists and programmers, worked with the government to design several free cell phone apps that gave real-time information about the locations of face mask distribution centers and stocks of masks so that citizens could find and buy their rations. This collaboration was made possible by Taiwanese Digital Minister Audrey Tang, a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur and a pioneer of Taiwan’s civic technology. It was due to her intervention that software engineers could access the government’s database and build accessible platforms for cell phone users.

Conclusion

The worldwide coronavirus pandemic is far from over, and Taiwan’s achievement in containing the virus remains precarious at best. Yet, Taiwanese civil society has been an integral part of the country’s effective strategy for dealing with the unprecedented health crisis and is an often-ignored source of the island nation’s resilience.

CSOs can assume different roles vis-à-vis the government. They can scrutinize the executive’s policies and raise red flags when those policies have consequences in the form of human rights violations or discrimination. Alternatively, CSOs can enter into partnership with the government to improve legislative measures. Whether Taiwan’s civic activism can maintain these two sources of vitality and resourcefulness remains to be seen for the post-pandemic era.

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed democracies’ vulnerabilities across the globe. Many popularly elected leaders have either ignored scientific expertise or hesitated to implement necessary but unpopular preventive measures for political reasons. Unfortunately, the universal guarantee of citizens’ rights has often been abused for frivolous lawsuits, divisive protests, or the spread of inauthentic information, which all stand in the way of a coordinated response to the health emergency. In the spring of 2020, China promoted the narrative that its decisive yet draconian lockdown in Wuhan province was instrumental in flattening the curve of contagion. Yet, Beijing’s claim was met with universal skepticism because it was precisely the dictatorial regime’s lack of transparency that had led to the global spread of the virus.

Authoritarianism is emphatically not a solution to the common threats that confront human beings, be they climate change or the coronavirus pandemic. In this regard, Taiwan’s success story stands out as a vindication of democracy. Democratically elected leaders are obliged to abide by the norm of transparency so that official figures are unlikely to be doctored. What is more, a vibrant civil society can thrive only in an environment that fully respects human rights and the rule of law. As such, while robust and timely government responses make up the necessary frontline defense against the coronavirus, CSO efforts embody the resilience that can sustain a democratic nation over the longer term.

Notes

¹ Paula Hancocks, “Taiwan Led the World in Closing Down for Covid-19, Now It Wants to Do the Same With Opening Back Up,” CNN, September 22, 2020, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/21/asia/taiwan-model-coronavirus-hnk-intl/index.html.

² C. Jason Wang et al., “Response to COVID-19 in Taiwan: Big Data Analytics, New Technology, and Proactive Testing,” Journal of the American Medical Association 323, no. 14 (2020): 1341–1342, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762689.

³ Ya-wen Lei, “National Health Insurance, Health Policy, and Infection Control: Insights From Taiwan,” Contexts Magazine: Sociology for the Public, March 25, 2020, https://bit.ly/2C6KM99.

⁴ Ming‑Cheng Lo and Hsin‑Yi Hsieh, “The ‘Societalization’ of Pandemic Unpreparedness: Lessons From Taiwan’s COVID Response,” American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-020-00113-y.

⁵ Saskia Brechenmacher, Thomas Carothers, and Richard Youngs, “Civil Society and the Coronavirus: Dynamism Despite Disruption,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 21, 2020, https://bit.ly/2DeeM3z.

⁶ Radio Taiwan International, June 2, 2020, https://bit.ly/2DbVKux.

⁷ Newtalk, May 13, 2020, https://bit.ly/3e2ZGe2.

⁸ Chi-Mai Chen et al., “Containing COVID-19 Among 627,386 Persons in Contact With the Diamond Princess Cruise Ship Passengers Who Disembarked in Taiwan: Big Data Analytics,” Journal of Medical Internet Research 22, no. 5 (2020): 1–9, https://www.jmir.org/2020/5/e19540/.

⁹ Ming-cheng Lo, “Taiwan’s State and Its Lessons for Effective Epidemic Intervention,” Contexts Magazine: Sociology for the Public, March 25, 2020, https://bit.ly/2C6KM99.

¹⁰ Yi-ting Lien, “Why China’s COVID-19 Disinformation Campaign Isn’t Working in Taiwan,” Diplomat, March 20, 2020, https://bit.ly/3e53yLm.

Dark Clouds and Silver Linings: Authoritarianism and Civic Action in India

The curve of the coronavirus pandemic will likely flatten sooner or later; the upward curve of authoritarianism that has effectively used the pandemic and associated lockdown measures may take much longer to do the same. In India, the government converted a health crisis into a law-and-order issue, and democratic governance slid into a police raj. The pandemic has helped the executive cover up misadventures with economic and foreign policies and gain unchallenged authority under a narrative of protecting citizens.

In the Indian case, the battle against the pandemic cannot be separated from the battle to regain democracy, the rule of law, constitutionalism, and human rights. Indian civil society has intensified its actions and been at the forefront of the struggle; in short, the pandemic has been a game changer for civic activism. A revival of democracy is needed to underpin this resurgence of civic action.

Activists Under Attack

The coronavirus hit India gradually but severely. The country had become a global hot spot for the disease by September 2020, when India was registering close to 100,000 new cases a day with an exponentially rising curve of infections that reached 6 million.¹Many factors have contributed to India’s particular struggles with the disease: a large population, high-density urban dwellings that do not allow for physical distancing, and the fact that India’s impoverished majority simply does not have the option of sitting at home to ride out the pandemic.

The Indian government was slow to react. Although the earliest case of the coronavirus in India was detected in late January 2020, there was no stringent government advice of any sort for the public throughout February and well into March. Many mass religious congregations and social gatherings were still allowed, and business went on as usual. International arrivals were not screened or quarantined, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself hosted U.S. President Donald Trump in a large public gathering in the state of Gujarat.²Exactly a month later, on March 24, 2020, Modi announced a countrywide lockdown.³

Having reacted late, the government moved quickly into an authoritarian response mode. It amended the 1897 Epidemic Diseases Act to expand the powers of the central government. The police began intervening on the streets with striking brutality. Left with no income, migrant workers started returning to their hometowns en masse; the police were on the highways and roads harassing, abusing, and detaining thousands of these destitute workers.⁴At the same time, a handful of pro-government media houses ran a campaign blaming the Muslim community and, in particular, a sect called Tablighi Jamaat for spreading “corona jihad” in India.⁵

The authoritarian drift entailed a direct attack on civil society. The government used the lockdown to clamp down on protests against the controversial, religion-based Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)—the so-called anti-CAA protests, which had been raging since November 2019.⁶ A violent crackdown on Muslim and Dalit leaders engendered widespread criticism of the government. Anti-Muslim violence in February 2020 killed fifty-three people.⁷ The Delhi Minority Commission reported that the Muslim minority community had suffered extensive damage to property and economic losses.⁸ Despite leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) being directly linked to the incitement of violence, no inquiry was initiated.⁹ Instead, young Muslims and supporters from women’s groups like Break the Cage were jailed.¹⁰

A wider witch hunt began against leading civil rights activists, linking them to violence at a 2018 celebratory gathering in the village of Bhima Koregaon.¹¹ Well-known human rights defenders and public intellectuals like Anand Teltumbde, Gautam Navlakha, and Hany Babu were arrested. Activists were jailed under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, which gives the government and police the absolute authority to declare individuals or organizations to be terrorists and detain them without bail for months or even years.¹² The act was amended in 2019 for these purposes by the Indian parliament, in which the ruling coalition enjoys a clear majority.¹³

More specifically, the government introduced new restrictions on civil society activism related to the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir and to rising tensions with Pakistan and China. The national government and many media houses took the threat of war as an opportunity to divert attention away from poor governance and the failure to curb the pandemic. The government used military casualties—like the June 2020 Galwan Valley tragedy, in which twenty Indian soldiers were killed by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army—and so-called coffin nationalism to promote chest-thumping about a strong ruler and sacrificial armed forces.¹⁴

The territory of Jammu and Kashmir was already under a militarized lockdown after India revoked the state’s constitutional autonomy in August 2019.¹⁵ Thousands of activists were arrested and jailed under preventive detention clauses of draconian legislation like the Public Safety Act and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.¹⁶ The government used the pandemic to double down on these restrictions and impose a near-total communication ban, despite the requirements of dealing with the coronavirus.

Civil Society Steps In

This creeping authoritarianism did not provide effective pandemic governance. The Indian government put out hundreds of often contradictory notifications in quick succession. The Kerala state government was applauded for its supportive actions to control the pandemic while assisting the people, but it was an exception. A survey of migrant workers found that almost 96 percent had received no government rations and around 90 percent of those had also received no wages in the first month of the lockdown.¹⁷ A group study by this author in working-class areas of New Delhi found a pervasive sense from the population that the government had abandoned them and was getting little relief support out to communities.¹⁸ The Indo-Global Social Service Society, a nongovernmental organization, noted that government measures were more about exerting control than about offering democratic responses to what citizens needed.¹⁹

It was in an effort to fill this gap that Indian civil society began to mobilize. Citizens organized themselves in thousands of small, local clusters to respond to the crisis. Organizations of all shapes and sizes stepped in by arranging for the provision of food, rations, and relief to migrant workers on national highways and in urban centers. A May 2020 media survey pointed out that in two-thirds of India’s mainland states, it was essentially civic initiatives that had helped feed the poor in the early phases of the lockdown.²⁰ An area in which the central and state governments failed and civic actors made a significant impact was arranging the logistics and transportation of stranded migrant workers.²¹

Civic activism focused primarily on providing food relief, medical assistance, transportation, shelter for the needy in urban centers, help for the elderly, and guidelines and alerts in India’s vernacular languages. Rights-based groups, which have little experience with relief-based services, repurposed themselves and were deeply involved in training and delivering assistance on the ground. The emancipatory role played by religious bodies, faith-based groups, and secular organizations, often working hand in hand, sent an important social message of tolerance.

Another layer of interventions by rights-based civic groups was composed of consistent responses to government orders and actions. These responses focused on the threat to political rights as it became clear that the government was intent on bypassing the parliament and democratic norms. Civil society organizations (CSOs) critically monitored instances in which the government pushed forward legislative and policy changes that had nothing to do with the emergency situation. Enhancing the watchdog role of civil society was no easy task at a time when veteran public intellectuals and CSO leaders were being targeted by the government and even jailed. CSOs stepped up their efforts by filing legal interventions, using traditional and social media to counter communal hate propaganda, and issuing criticisms of the government’s assaults on labor rights and environmental norms.²²

This more political focus included campaigns for the release of political prisoners like those accused of involvement in the Bhima Koregaon violence, the activists behind the anti-CAA protests, or those implicated in riots in northeast New Delhi. In the early months of the pandemic, the campaigners demanded the activists’ release not only for political reasons but also for fear of them contracting the virus in crowded jails. In July 2020, veteran teacher and poet Varavara Rao tested positive for the coronavirus in the Taloba jail in the state of Maharashtra.²³ Under pressure from civil society, the government shifted him to a private hospital for better treatment, although as of this writing, the judiciary has not yet conclusively intervened for his bail and better medical care. Similarly, leaders of the anti-CAA protests in the state of Assam, such as Akhil Gogoi and his colleagues, are at risk of coronavirus infection while in custody.²⁴

As the human race has faced an unprecedented crisis, humanism has reemerged through civic interventions. If it had not been for the collective efforts of people and civic actors, India would have had substantially more deaths from the coronavirus.²⁵ This was recognized by the Policy Commission of the Government of India, which wrote to thousands of organizations across the country to thank them for their significant contributions in organizing relief.

A final feature of CSO action during the lockdown consisted of new initiatives by peace and justice movements. People-to-people relationships and track 2 efforts have increased with respect to Jammu and Kashmir. Civil society ran solidarity gestures—like the social media campaign Counting Days, which describes itself as “dedicated to counting the days of Kashmir under Indian occupation”—led by young scholars and artists.²⁶ Engaging use of social media platforms and messenger services like Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, and Twitter became the face of campaigns such as Stand With Kashmir.²⁷ CSOs like the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society produced impactful documentation and conducted research and advocacy with international organizations to counter the military siege and rights violations by the occupying Indian forces in the territory.²⁸

Adapting to the New Normal

After its repurposing in the early stages of the pandemic to help manage the immediate crisis, Indian civil society is now engaged in careful reimagining, realigning, and restrategizing. Civil society has undertaken important roles during the pandemic and gained in prominence. CSOs have been able to talk about other crises, like the climate crisis, alongside the pandemic. Reimagining labor, livelihoods, and people’s relationships with nature and natural resources—while pushing forward alternative visions of education, healthcare, tourism, and the economy—has become the crux of such conversations curated by new alliances of CSOs.²⁹ Organized as online meetings and webinars, several such exercises have enhanced the role of civil society groups as architects for a different, better future and have helped CSOs engage with new actors in society.

Technology has played a pivotal role in these conversations: Zoom and Google meetings, podcasts, YouTube channels, Facebook Live events, and Instagram TV broadcasts have helped these discussions and outreach efforts. Often, this engagement has become a rallying point for groups that have been advocating different futures and developmental alternatives. Such intellectually rich, rejuvenating conversations help keep the battle for democracy going. In this sense, the pandemic has opened up new avenues and ambitions for civic activism as the health crisis has revealed the failings of existing economic, social, and political models.

Notes

¹ Rhythma Kaul, “India’s Covid-19 Tally Crosses 6 Million,” Hindustan Times, September 28, 2020, https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-s-covid-tally-crosses-6mn/story-cY2wlOzpbM1UoDTGJOwgAN.html.

² Hannah Ellis-Petersen, “‘Namaste Trump’: India Welcomes US President at Modi Rally,” Guardian, February 24, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/24/namaste-donald-trump-india-welcomes-us-president-narendra-modi-rally.

³ Jeffery Gettleman and Kai Schultz, “Modi Orders 3-Week Total Lockdown for All 1.3 Billion Indians,” New York Times, March 24, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/world/asia/india-coronavirus-lockdown.html.

⁴ “Coronavirus Lockdown | Police Cane Migrant Workers Near Vijayawada,” Hindu, May 16, 2020, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/andhra-pradesh/police-cane-migrant-workers-near-vijayawada/article31602812.ece.

⁵ Apoorvanand, “How the Coronavirus Outbreak in India Was Blamed on Muslims,” Al Jazeera, April 18, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/4/18/how-the-coronavirus-outbreak-in-india-was-blamed-on-muslims/.

⁶ Zoya Hasan, “An Anatomy of Anti-CAA Protests,” Hindu, January 1, 2020, https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/an-anatomy-of-anti-caa-protests/article30446145.ece.

⁷ “Delhi Riots Death Toll at 53, Here Are the Names of the Victims,” Wire, March 6, 2020, https://thewire.in/communalism/delhi-riots-identities-deceased-confirmed.

⁸ “Minority Body Faults Police Role in Anti-Muslim Riots in Delhi,” Al Jazeera, July 17, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/minority-body-faults-police-role-anti-muslim-riots-delhi-200717110600080.html.

⁹ “‘Delhi Riots Began With Kapil Mishra’s Speech, Yet No Case Against Him’: Minority Commission Report,” Wire, July 16, 2020, https://thewire.in/communalism/delhi-riots-kapil-mishra-minority-commission-report.

¹⁰ Hannah Ellis-Petersen, “Delhi Police Accused of Filing False Charges Over February Riots,” Guardian, June 23, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/23/delhi-police-accused-after-charging-activists-over-february-riots.

¹¹ “The Bhima Koregaon Case: What Really Happened,” Leaflet, January 2, 2019, https://theleaflet.in/videopodcast/watch-the-bhima-koregaon-case-what-really-happened/.

¹² “The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act,” India Code, 1967, https://www.indiacode.nic.in/handle/123456789/1470.

¹³ Nitika Khaitan, “New Act UAPA: Absolute Power to State,” Frontline, October 25, 2019, https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article29618049.ece.

¹⁴ Nirupama Rao, “Galwan: Postscript to a Tragedy,” Hindu, June 19, 2020, https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/galwan-postscript-to-a-tragedy/article31863515.ece.

¹⁵ Yojna Gusai, “Article 370 Scrapped, J&K Loses Its Special Status; State to Be Bifurcated Into 2 UTs,” Asian Age, August 6, 2019, https://www.asianage.com/india/all-india/060819/article-370-scrapped-jk-loses-its-special-status-state-to-be-bifurcated-into-2-uts.html.

¹⁶ Devjyot Ghoshal and Alasdair Pal, “Thousands Detained in Indian Kashmir Crackdown, Official Data Reveals,” Reuters, September 12, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-kashmir-detentions/thousands-detained-in-indian-kashmir-crackdown-official-data-reveals-idUSKCN1VX142; Sruthi Radhakrishnan, “Explained: The Jammu & Kashmir Public Safety Act,” Hindu, September 17, 2019, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/explained-the-jammu-kashmir-public-safety-act/article29438694.ece.

¹⁷ “Data | 96% of Migrant Workers Did Not Get Rations From the Government, 90% Did Not Receive Wages During Lockdown: Survey,” Hindu, April 27, 2020, https://www.thehindu.com/data/data-96-migrant-workers-did-not-get-rations-from-the-government-90-did-not-receive-wages-during-lockdown-survey/article31384413.ece.

¹⁸ The group study and survey were an extension of the relief efforts conducted by CSOs in New Delhi. The evidence collection was largely to safeguard the interests and incomes of the migrant workers in the National Capital Region of Delhi vis-à-vis contractors and employers, who owed them payments from the pre-lockdown months of December 2019 and January–March 2020.

¹⁹ “Seeking Justice for the Informal Sector During the COVID-19 Lockdown,” Indo-Global Social Service Society, May 2020, https://igsss.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Analysis-of-Informal-Sector-Circulars_COVID.pdf.

²⁰ Mukesh Rawat, “Coronavirus in India: In 13 States, NGOs Fed More People Than Govt Did During Lockdown,” India Today, April 9, 2020, https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/in-13-states-ngos-fed-more-people-than-govt-during-coronavirus-lockdown-1665111-2020-04-09.

²¹ “NGOs Deserve All Appreciation for Helping Migrants During COVID 19 Pandemic: SC,” Hindu, June 9, 2020, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/ngos-deserves-all-appreciation-for-helping-migrants-during-COVID-19-pandemic-sc/article31786947.ece.

²² Ashima Obhan and Bambi Bhalla, “India: Suspension of Labour Laws Amidst Covid-19,” Mondaq, May 8, 2020, https://www.mondaq.com/india/employment-and-workforce-wellbeing/935398/suspension-of-labour-laws-amidst-COVID-19; Rohit Jain, “Environmental Law: Proposed Norms Dilute the Process Rigours, Experts Say,” Bloomberg, April 8, 2020, https://www.bloombergquint.com/law-and-policy/environment-law-proposed-norms-dilute-the-process-rigours-experts-say.

²³ Soutik Biswas, “Varavara Rao: Outrage As Jailed Indian Poet Contracts Covid-19,” BBC, July 17, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53441846.

²⁴ “Assam: Prisoners Go on Hunger Strike Demanding Akhil Gogoi’s Release,” Wire, June 30, 2020, https://thewire.in/rights/assam-akhil-gogoi-prison-COVID-19-hunger-strike.

²⁵ Annie Banerji, “Nearly 200 Migrant Workers Killed on India’s Roads During Coronavirus Lockdown,” Reuters, June 2, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-india-migrants/nearly-200-migrant-workers-killed-on-indias-roads-during-coronavirus-lockdown-idUSKBN2392LG.

²⁶ Counting Days (@countingdaysk), Instagram, https://instagram.com/countingdaysk; Pipfpdindia (@pipfpdindia), Twitter, https://twitter.com/pipfpdindia.

²⁷ Stand With Kashmir, https://www.standwithkashmir.org/.

²⁸ Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, www.jkccs.net.

²⁹ “Webinar: Re-Imagining the Future,” Centre for Financial Accountability, September 15, 2020, https://www.cenfa.org/RTF; Vikalp Sangam, www.vikalpsangam.org; “Lockdown Janta Bulletin #18 Vishal, Uttar Pradesh,” Soundcloud, May 23, 2020, https://soundcloud.com/media-collective/lockdown-janta-bulletin-18.

The Coronavirus and Civic Activism in the Middle East and North Africa

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has seen a variety of new trends and responses from civil society in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. In the region’s more populous countries of Egypt, Iraq, and Turkey, community transmission of the virus has been consistently high since the first outbreaks in February 2020, while in other, less populated countries, such as Tunisia, the coronavirus has spread significantly less.¹ Iran has had to deal with an especially severe outbreak, accounting for around half of the entire region’s cases as of June 2020.² Among the region’s Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia has been hit the hardest.

Governments across the region took decisive measures to restrict movement and slow the spread of the virus. Although these measures have gradually been lifted, the MENA region stands deeply changed as a result of the pandemic.³ In response, civil society has mobilized in many new, collaborative, and critical ways. Yet, this upgraded civic activism has not been strong enough to counter existing authoritarian dynamics, which were given a further boost by the pandemic.

Pandemic Repurposing

In Tunisia, national and local civil society organizations (CSOs) of all types, including those with little to no prior experience in public health, mobilized their members and resources to fight the coronavirus. Some groups staged campaigns to raise awareness about the virus and disinfect public spaces. Others imported medical equipment from abroad or distributed it to health centers across the country. Some CSOs became gatekeepers to public and private buildings, either by monitoring civilians in lines or by drawing signs on the ground to denote recommended physical distancing. Others supported hospitals and health administrations by responding to phone calls to avoid congestion on help lines. These CSOs also raised funds for charities and social services dedicated to families in need.

Many CSOs shifted their activities toward the crisis response. Among those working with foreign donors, some CSOs asked to reallocate funds from their initial purpose to serve crisis-response activities instead—and a few donors agreed.⁴ The Tunisian government was ambivalent toward these CSOs but accepted their cooperation, even with political organizations that are traditionally hostile to the government. But at the local level, elected authorities were eager to work with the groups and even assigned specific tasks to CSOs for collaboration with municipalities.⁵

In Turkey, after the government’s March 2020 call for people to stay at home, CSOs quickly mobilized to provide basic needs to furloughed workers, day laborers, and others who had lost their income and had no safety net under the lockdown. Local municipalities, mostly in cooperation with charities, were also quick to organize food banks and successfully mobilized the public in their areas. These forms of in-kind support and volunteerism became important tools, particularly after the government froze the donation campaigns of opposition-led municipalities and launched its own campaign with the slogan “We are self-sufficient, my Turkey.”⁶ At the same time, new civic initiatives emerged to connect those in need directly with potential donors. One group of activists launched the Citizen Solidarity Network, which lists and maps public support and volunteer networks, organizations, and initiatives across Turkey.

Egypt has always had a strong charitable network, despite recent crackdowns on civic engagement.⁷ Civic groups mobilized this network, particularly during Ramadan, and stepped up to support civilians affected by the government’s halting of all traditional support activities such as the provision of iftar meals. Egypt is one of the most difficult places in the world for civic activity because of highly restrictive laws governing CSOs; as a result, citizens found their own space and created their own discussions on social media. Unorganized and not led by any particular movement or civil society, ordinary citizens used online platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to voice their complaints and tell stories of engagement with the public health sector during the crisis. In Algeria, several local organizations worked to distribute food and support the health sector.⁸

In Iran, the context for civil society is more strained. Faced with the early and rampant spread of the virus at a time rife with antigovernment protests, Iranians were challenged by a lack of wide-scale access to information about the virus, the pandemic, and the government’s response. The country has seen not only the highest number of cases per capita in the region but also the highest number of deaths—all in a short period of time and much earlier than the rest of the region.⁹

Elsewhere across the region, the coronavirus has been a major test for civil society in countries in conflict. The full extent of the pandemic’s impact on communities in Libya, Syria, and Yemen is unknown due to a lack of transparency about ongoing conflicts and a severe lack of testing capabilities to officially record the spread of the virus.¹⁰ Iraq is ill equipped to manage the public health crisis due to fallout from the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State.¹¹ Over 1 million internally displaced people—according to official figures—are stuck in camps that have limited medical services; even the best camps are unprepared to deal with the community spread of the virus.¹²

Religious organizations in Iraq have become increasingly active in the country’s health response, with the Marjaiya, or senior Shia clergy, in Najaf directing significant funds and healthcare support toward the crisis.¹³ Armed nonstate actors led by the Popular Mobilization Forces have played a part in the coronavirus response by setting up awareness campaigns for their fighters and providing healthcare treatment in some parts of the country,¹⁴ although human rights activists have warned of the sectarian nature of this support.¹⁵ CSOs working in parts of Iraq that were liberated during the war against the Islamic State have shifted their focus to work primarily on the pandemic response by supporting displaced and host communities with much-needed aid from the international humanitarian sector.¹⁶

Criticism of Poor Governance

Alongside providing practical health support, civil society actors across the MENA region have become more critical and outspoken toward governments, whose inaction in response to the pandemic has yielded tragic consequences. In Egypt and Iraq, in particular, poor governance and weak public services have been the norm for some time. As a result, civil society has long been the stopgap to support civilians in local communities. These countries’ responses to the pandemic have been no different. Civil society has exposed the authorities’ bad decisionmaking and lack of preparation for the crisis. Although both countries have experienced a slow spread of the virus, there has been little attempt by the government of either state to prepare for the inevitable peak of infections.

As a consequence, despite being afforded time, the Iraqi and Egyptian public health sectors reached their limits. In Iraq, hospitals struggled to deal with the virus amid a sweltering summer, reduced access to electricity, and a shortage of ventilators.¹⁷ Egypt took weeks to expand its coronavirus treatment capabilities from thirty selected hospitals to all 320 public hospitals; in the meantime, Cairo ordered private-sector healthcare to step in and support the public response.¹⁸ The Egyptian healthcare system was quickly overwhelmed, and despite the severe closure of civic space, doctors spoke up and became the voices of citizens and fellow healthcare workers vis-à-vis the government.¹⁹

Throughout the pandemic, Egypt’s doctors’ syndicate has published scathing attacks on the government for its inadequate response to the crisis and decried the lack of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers. The protests and occasional strikes by doctors and healthcare workers have been justified: over one hundred doctors in Egypt had died from the virus as of June 2020.²⁰ The syndicate has become an increasingly influential and distinctive part of Egyptian civil society.

In Turkey, the coronavirus struck amid an economic crisis. Fearful of further economic losses and with inflation and unemployment rates already soaring, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan imposed only a partial lockdown to protect economic activity in key industries, such as construction and manufacturing. This interest-led response sparked reactions by various groups. The Turkish Medical Association criticized the government’s delay in closing Turkey’s border with Iran and its failure to extend quarantine restrictions to incoming travelers. The association made repeated calls on the government to restrict mobility further and provide more support for hospitals.

Factory and construction workers took action with strikes and protests against insufficient health measures in their workplaces and, in some cases, against being forced to work despite reported cases of the coronavirus on site. Trade unions were also active during this period. The two major civil society actors, the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects and the Turkish Medical Association, collected thousands of signatures for a joint statement that called on the government to halt all nonessential economic activity and provide financial support to small retailers, workers, and disadvantaged groups.²¹

Another reaction to the government’s handling of the outbreak came from students. The shifting dates of the university entrance exam frustrated students.²² They reacted first during a June 26, 2020, livestreamed videoconference with Erdoğan, which has received 428,000 dislikes on YouTube as of this writing.²³ This was followed by a hashtag campaign, #OyMoyYok (No Votes for You), which became a trending topic on Twitter in Turkey.

In Algeria, the pandemic sowed seeds of division among the organizers of an opposition protest movement dubbed the Hirak. Some protest leaders felt that the coronavirus pandemic was a looming catastrophe and called for an end to the weekly sit-ins and demonstrations, which have regularly gathered thousands of Algerians. But others kept up their protests against the authoritarian system, corruption, and bad infrastructure and urged the movement to continue. Some leaders were therefore willing to postpone their demands and focus on the pandemic, but others continued to protest for a change of regime.

Authoritarianism and the Pandemic

The MENA region has experienced differing levels of authoritarianism as a result of the coronavirus, depending mainly on how authoritarian each country was before the outbreak.

Egypt remains one of the most frequent jailers of journalists in the world, alongside China and Turkey. For years since coming to power, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has continuously cracked down on all forms of expression and severely restricted the space for civil society. The coronavirus pandemic has not changed this course of repressive action; rather, the crackdown has continued against journalists and social media users and even expanded to ensnare healthcare officials.²⁴ Several doctors have been arrested during the pandemic for publicly criticizing the government’s coronavirus response.²⁵ Even former grand mufti of Al-Azhar Ali Gomaa entered the debate, claiming doctors on strike were akin to “murderers.”²⁶ Young, female users of TikTok have also become targets for the regime: some were jailed for “inciting debauchery” even as a wave of activism on gender rights swept the country and the Egyptian diaspora.²⁷

The security apparatus has appeared more concerned with imposing its continued strict control over civil society actors, and over civic engagement more broadly, than with enforcing compliance with coronavirus measures in public.²⁸ Notably, Egypt is one of the few countries in the region that has not passed temporary release measures for prisoners to stem the spread of the virus in jails.²⁹

Even during the pandemic, Egypt has continued its assault on freedoms. The government has amended or extended several laws, including an emergency law related to the coronavirus, to give more administrative power to the presidency.³⁰ Cairo has also changed antiterrorism legislation to enable authorities to register political prisoners as terrorists.³¹ And the government has cited the pandemic as a reason to close public viewings of parliamentary sessions, including one in July 2020 in which the legislature voted to approve military action in Libya.³²

Government responses brought about renewed protests in Iran and Iraq, too. In Iran, U.S.-imposed sanctions have posed significant challenges to the country’s overall response to the coronavirus as Iranians have little access to outside support. As economic conditions have worsened during the pandemic, strikes and protests have been recorded across Iran, notably among factory, coal mine, and healthcare workers.³³ Anecdotal (and unverified) reports suggest that repressive measures by the state to quell demonstrations and strikes, seen in the pre-pandemic protest movement, continue.³⁴

In Iraq, a revolutionary movement had been active since October 2019 across the southern, heavily Shia-populated parts of the country. In the months before the coronavirus outbreak, governance had been effectively suspended while political elites jostled to form a new government. When the pandemic hit, protesters retreated from the streets, and marches came to a halt.³⁵ Yet, protest camps in the heart of major cities, such as Baghdad and Nasiriya, remained active as supporters continued to provide medical personal protective equipment for those who stayed.

The Iraqi government’s pandemic response has exposed a crumbling institutional infrastructure amid the public health crisis, and protests resumed in July 2020 only to be met again with state-sponsored violence.³⁶ In the weeks before, a prominent Iraqi security expert and writer was assassinated outside his home in Baghdad, causing uproar among civic actors.³⁷ Since then, several young Iraqi protesters have been assassinated—allegedly by militia groups—sparking outrage and resurrecting the initial anger in the protest movement. Despite a new prime minister and government and their promises for accountability and justice, the habits of Iraq’s security services and armed nonstate actors continue unchecked, hindering civil society’s ability to do its work and increasing the motivation of the protest movement.³⁸

In Turkey, state repression has been mounting since the 2013 Gezi Park protests and, especially, the 2016 failed coup attempt. The government’s intolerance of any dissent has continued throughout the pandemic. A pertinent example concerns the media. According to one account, judicial action was taken against thirty journalists between March 11—when the first coronavirus case in Turkey was announced—and May 1, 2020.³⁹ Ten of these journalists were taken into custody, and one was arrested. Some of this action was taken after news reports challenged official coronavirus figures. Journalists were often charged with provoking the public and inciting public fear and panic.

Also, various union leaders and members have been detained as a result of their protests, statements, and social media posts.⁴⁰ In July 2020, the government passed a law to change the structure and elections of bar associations to allow for multiple bar associations in large provinces where existing associations are critical of the government. The changes enable pro-government lawyers to form their own associations. In protest, several bar association presidents began what they called a defense march to Ankara after the government’s plans were announced in late May. The police intervened, and several lawyers participating in the march were detained.

In Algeria, authorities used the pandemic to suppress the opposition and end the Hirak protest movement.⁴¹ Several opposition activists were arrested and are still in jail as of this writing. When some of the Hirak organizers refused to stop the movement in March, fissures appeared in their ranks. The activists ended up halting the protests, but their initial hesitation made them prey to the propaganda of the authorities just as Algeria became a coronavirus epicenter in Africa: the activists were called chaos spreaders and foreign agents. But even as the Hirak dwindled, the authorities were unable to stop the coronavirus outbreak.

As in other reflections on civil society and democratization, Tunisia is the outlier in the region. At the start of the crisis, Tunis enacted emergency laws, which led to fears that either the government or the security services would exploit the pandemic to derail the democratic system.⁴² When the government established a fund to help coronavirus victims, it disregarded CSO calls to monitor its work, raising questions about transparency. However, as the curve of coronavirus infections flattened, the emergency powers given to the prime minister were revoked. It became clear that neither he nor the so-called securocrats fighting against him had used the prerogatives given to them by the parliament to expand their reach.

Conclusion

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the weak institutional infrastructures, ailing public health systems, and fragile economies of several countries across the Middle East and North Africa. No country—whatever its wealth or current state of conflict—has been immune to the outbreak or the economic and social fallout from the virus and the global economic downturn. Some states have responded by increasing crackdowns and pressure on civil society. But there have also been instances of welcome support from online and offline civic actors in the production of personal protective equipment, healthcare support, service delivery, and other, more traditional forms of charity work.

Nevertheless, the region has not seen significant challenges to regime power as an immediate result of the pandemic—even in countries such as Algeria, Iran, and Iraq that are experiencing active, wide-scale protests. However, this may change as the longer-term impacts of the pandemic and the uncertain regional and global recovery begin to hit citizens on a larger scale. The effects of lockdowns, curfews, and halted economic activity will take some time to manifest themselves as states balance the need for austerity measures to curb government spending with efforts to provide safety nets for those who are most vulnerable and disproportionately affected by the pandemic. As the probability of poverty and economic insecurity increases, the risk of social unrest and prolonged challenges to regime stability becomes more potent.

Notes

¹ “WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard,” World Health Organization, https://covid19.who.int/.

² Carlos Conde and Arthur Pataud, “COVID-19 Crisis Response in MENA Countries,” Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, June 9, 2020, http://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/COVID-19-crisis-response-in-mena-countries-4b366396/.

³ Karen Young, “The Long Road to Post-COVID Economic Recovery in the Middle East,” Al-Monitor, July 15, 2020, https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/07/post-coronavirus-covid19-economy-recover-mideast-oil.html.

⁴ Author interview with a Tunisian civil society leader, July 2020.

⁵ Alexander Reiffenstuel, “Tunisia’s Civil Society Supports Governmental Efforts of Slowing COVID-19 Transmission in Tunisia,” ResearchGate, April 2020, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340453824_Tunisia's_Civil_Society_Supports_Governmental_Efforts_of_Slowing_COVID-19_Transmission_in_Tunisia.

⁶ Can Selçuki, “COVID-19 Donations in Turkey Overshadowed by Politics,” Duvar English, April 18, 2020, https://www.duvarenglish.com/columns/2020/04/18/COVID-19-donations-in-turkey-overshadowed-by-politics/.

⁷ During the coronavirus period, charity has expanded with private-sector support: “HSBC Announces COVID-19 Charity Projects in Middle East,” Daily News Egypt, April 15, 2020, https://dailynewsegypt.com/2020/04/15/hsbc-announces-COVID-19-charity-projects-in-middle-east/.

⁸ Nourredine Bessadi, “Civil Society Thrives During Pandemic,” Goethe Institut, May 2020, https://www.goethe.de/prj/ruy/en/covid/21853154.html.

⁹ A resurgence of the virus in Iran points to a dangerous second wave at the time of writing: Patrick Wintour, “Iran Cases Hit Record High in Second Wave of Coronavirus,” Guardian, June 4, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/04/iran-faces-crisis-amid-record-number-of-daily-coronavirus-infections; Zulfiqar Ali, “Coronavirus: How Iran Is Battling a Surge in Cases,” BBC, August 20, 2020, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/52959756.

¹⁰ Mohammad Al-Kassim, “Despite Coronavirus, Mideast’s Wars Continue Unabated,” Medialine, March 26, 2020, https://themedialine.org/top-stories/despite-coronavirus-mideasts-wars-continue-unabated/; “COVID-19 and Conflict: Seven Trends to Watch,” International Crisis Group, March 24, 2020, https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/sb4-COVID-19-and-conflict-seven-trends-watch.

¹¹ John Davison, “In Iraq, Coronavirus Terrifies Even Doctors Hardened by Conflict,” Reuters, March 27, 2020, https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-iraq/in-iraq-coronavirus-terrifies-even-doctors-hardened-by-conflict-idUKKBN21E1U6.

¹² Hafsa Halawa, “The Forgotten Iraq,” Middle East Institute, March 16, 2020, https://www.mei.edu/publications/forgotten-iraq.

¹³ Hassan Ali Ahmed, “Iraqi Government Officials, Clerics Unite Against COVID-19,” Al-Monitor, March 25, 2020, https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/03/iraq-coronavirus-covid19-najaf-sistani-religion.html.

¹⁴ Jessica Watkins, “Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A New Raison d’Être?,” London School of Economics, April 29, 2020, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2020/04/29/iraqs-popular-mobilisation-forces-and-the-COVID-19-pandemic-a-new-raison-detre/.

¹⁵ Author interview with Iraqi rights activist via Skype, July 2020.

¹⁶ “UNHCR Iraq COVID-19 Support to IDPs Families for Procurement of Personal and Household Hygiene Items,” ReliefWeb, July 12, 2020, https://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/unhcr-iraq-COVID-19-support-idps-families-procurement-personal-and-household-hygiene-0.

¹⁷ Joanna Sampson, “Iraq Reports Rising Covid-19 Cases and ‘Severe’ Shortages of Oxygen,” GasWorld, July 3, 2020, https://www.gasworld.com/iraq-reports-severe-shortages-of-oxygen/2019454.article.

¹⁸ “Egypt Allocates 320 Public Hospitals to Examine Potential Coronavirus Cases,” Egypt Independent, May 21, 2020, https://egyptindependent.com/egypt-allocates-320-public-hospitals-to-examine-potential-coronavirus-cases/.

¹⁹ Mia Jankowicz, “Egypt Blamed ‘Negligence and Mismanagement’ by Doctors for Its Coronavirus Crisis, Then Started Arresting Them for Speaking Out,” Business Insider, July 8, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/egypt-criticizes-arrests-doctors-for-speaking-up-covid-19-crisis-2020-7.

²⁰ Fatma Lotfi, “About 100 Covid-19 Fatalities, Over 3000 Infections Among Doctors So Far: EMS,” Daily News Egypt, June 25, 2020, https://dailynewsegypt.com/2020/06/25/about-100-COVID-19-fatalities-over-3000-infections-among-doctors-so-far-ems/.

²¹ “7 Acil Önlem İmzacıları Hükümeti Bu Önlemleri Almaya Çağırıyor!” [Seven Emergency Measures: Signatories Call on the Government to Take These Measures!], DISK, April 4, 2020, http://disk.org.tr/2020/04/7-acil-onlem-imzacilari-hukumeti-bu-onlemleri-almaya-cagiriyor/.

²² Gonul Tol and Ayca Alemdaroglu, “Turkey’s Generation Z Turns Against Erdogan,” Foreign Policy, July 15, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/15/turkey-youth-education-erdogan/.

²³ Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, “Gençlerle Video Konferans Buluşması,” YouTube video, June 26, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhXz8783eOU.

²⁴ Maged Mandour, “Repression and Coronavirus Response in Egypt,” Sada blog, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, July 15, 2020, https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/82304.

²⁵ Frederik Deknatel, “Even in a Pandemic, Egypt’s Sisi Only Has One Gear: Repression,” World Politics Review, July 20, 2020, https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/28927/as-COVID-19-ravages-egypt-sisi-responds-with-more-repression.

²⁶ “Ali Jumaa: The Vector of Corona Virus to Others Is Deadly by Causing ... Video,” ElBalad News, June 7, 2020, https://www.elbalad.news/4351983.

²⁷ Alla Juma and Kersten Knipp, “Egypt Imprisons Female TikTok Influencers,” DW, July 29, 2020, https://www.dw.com/en/egyptian-tiktok-stars-jailed/a-54371869; “Egypt Serial Sex Attacks Prompt Law Change,” BBC, July 9, 2020, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-53353744.

²⁸ “Egyptian Journalist Jailed on Fake News Charges Dies of Covid-19,” Guardian, July 14, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/14/egyptian-journalist-jailed-on-fake-news-charges-dies-of-COVID-19-mohamed-monir.

²⁹ “At Least 14 Dead As Covid-19 Spreading in Egypt’s Prisons,” Al Jazeera, July 20, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/14-dead-COVID-19-spreading-egypt-prisons-hrw-200720090604606.html.

³⁰ “Egypt Amends Emergency Laws Amid Coronavirus Outbreak,” Reuters, April 22, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-egypt-lawmaking/egypt-amends-emergency-laws-amid-coronavirus-outbreak-idUSKCN22437A.

³¹ “Egypt’s Updated Terrorism Law Opens the Door to More Rights Abuses, UN Expert,” Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, April 9, 2020, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx.

³² “Egypt Parliament Approves Military Intervention in Libya,” Africanews, July 21, 2020, https://www.africanews.com/2020/07/21/egypt-parliament-approves-military-intervention-in-libya.

³³ Roozbeh Bolhari and Golnaz Esfandiari, “Iranian Workers Strike Amid Worsening Economy, Deadly Coronavirus Crisis,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, July 29, 2020, https://www.rferl.org/a/iranian-workers-strike-amid-worsening-economy-deadly-coronavirus-crisis/30755164.html.

³⁴ Shamsi Saadati, “Iran Regime Increases Oppressive Measures to Control Restive Society and Avoid New Iran Protests,” National Council of Resistance of Iran, June 23, 2020, https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/iran-protests/iran-regime-increases-oppressive-measures-to-control-restive-society-and-avoid-new-iran-protests/.

³⁵ Heather Murdock and Halan Akoiy, “Coronavirus Is ‘Break, not Defeat,’ Iraqi Activists Say,” Voice of America, April 17, 2020, https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/coronavirus-break-not-defeat-iraqi-activists-say.

³⁶ “Protests Against Power Cuts Turn Deadly in Baghdad,” Arab Weekly, July 27, 2020, https://thearabweekly.com/protests-against-power-cuts-turn-deadly-baghdad.

³⁷ “Hisham al-Hashimi: Leading Iraqi Security Expert Shot Dead in Baghdad,” BBC, July 7, 2020, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-53318803.

³⁸ Mina Al-Oraibi, “As Violence Spirals, Iraq Is Headed for Real Trouble,” National, July 28, 2020, https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/as-violence-spirals-iraq-is-headed-for-real-trouble-1.1055650.

³⁹ “CHP’den Koronavirüs Döneminde Basın Özgürlüğü Raporu: Çaykur’da 11 işçinin Koronavirüs’e yakalandığı haberi bile soruşturma konusu oldu,” T24, May 2, 2020, https://t24.com.tr/haber/chp-den-koronavirus-doneminde-basin-ozgurlugu-raporu-caykur-da-11-iscinin-koronavirus-e-yakalandigi-haberi-bile-sorusturma-konusu-oldu,876236.

⁴⁰ Nur Kaplan, “Workers Call Out: ‘Does Anyone Hear Our Voices?,’” Bianet, April 6, 2020, http://bianet.org/bianet/saglik/222530-isciler-sesleniyor-sesimizi-duyan-var-mi.

⁴¹ Heba Saleh, “Activists Accuse Algeria of Using Covid-19 to Clamp Down on Protests,” Financial Times, April 3, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/74643fe5-a90f-414e-a5dd-fb75cb30a71e.

⁴² Sarah Yerkes, “Coronavirus Threatens Freedom in North Africa,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 24, 2020, https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/04/24/coronavirus-threatens-freedom-in-north-africa-pub-81625.

Civil Society Versus Authoritarians in Eastern Europe and Central Asia

The public health response and emergency assistance in a pandemic are hardly roles for civil society, yet across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, it is civil society that has risen to the occasion by providing critical assistance where authorities have failed to act. Civic activists, university students, small businesses, and other groups refocused almost overnight to respond to new needs in their communities, filling the gaps in services their governments would not provide. Detached from the concerns of ordinary people, the region’s autocrats have handled the pandemic worse than some neighboring democracies, and this failure has significantly damaged their credibility. At the same time, the swift response and practical assistance provided by civic groups have boosted their reputation and given rise to a sense of solidarity in society that is proving troublesome for the autocrats.

Pandemic Responses

Decaying post-Soviet healthcare systems were woefully ill equipped for the coronavirus crisis after thirty years of neglect and corruption. Autocrats downplayed the severity of the virus or denied its existence in their countries even as cases continued to rise. In Central Asia, Turkmenistan was reporting zero cases of the coronavirus at the height of the pandemic, and President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov suggested inhaling the smoke from burning a native grass to ward off infection.¹ Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko famously recommended vodka, the fresh air of a tractor ride, and a steam in the sauna as coronavirus curatives.² His dismissive response to the virus proved a grave misstep and was among the factors that drew people to the streets in protest after the August 9, 2020, presidential election. Although Russian President Vladimir Putin did not dispense folk remedies, Russian hospitals were desperately short of equipment to treat those infected, and anyone who criticized the medical system risked retribution from authorities.

In the absence of sufficient official responses, civil society has stepped in to compensate for the shortfall with aid and volunteering. Civil society organizations (CSOs) sourced protective gear and medical equipment for overrun hospital staff. They also delivered food and other essentials to those most vulnerable to the disease and the immediate economic downturn that resulted from the lockdowns eventually put in place. In many cases, civil society took the lead in spreading public health information and fighting dangerous disinformation about the virus. CSOs used creative campaigning to crowdfund and cooperated with local businesses and the information technology (IT) sector to quickly set up platforms providing everything from distance learning to crisis interventions for victims of domestic violence.

In early April 2020, a group of Belarusian activists organized a crowdfunding campaign to buy, collect, and distribute medical and protective equipment for health professionals and other frontline workers fighting the coronavirus. The group, called ByCovid19, is led by experienced civil society activists but also attracted many volunteers who were new to this kind of civic engagement and were inspired to help in the crisis. The confidence that society gained from self-reliance during the pandemic contributed to an atmospheric shift in Belarus, where unprecedented mass demonstrations demanding the ouster of Lukashenko have since swept the country.

Like other civil society activists across the region, the leaders of ByCovid19 pivoted their focus and reached out to new sectors like IT and the business community to offer mutual aid in a time of crisis, filling the gaps where their governments had fallen disgracefully short. Civic groups quickly reorganized to deliver food and medicine to the elderly, support small businesses unable to operate during lockdowns, provide psychological counseling and other social services, ensure IT infrastructure and connectivity for children learning from home, and help hospitals in desperate need of equipment.

In Tajikistan, the Office of Civil Freedoms, a group normally focused on protecting the rights of military conscripts, launched Help Us Help, an initiative to provide food and other essentials to those in need. The group’s crowdfunding campaign attracted donations from at home and abroad, raising $2,000 in a matter of weeks—a sizable amount in Tajikistan, where the average monthly income is less than $150 and a culture of charity donations is not well established. With these funds, the activists bought and delivered food and hygiene products for several hundred people.

In Russia, human rights activists teamed up with IT specialists, creatives, psychologists, and journalists to create digital resources on community building and mutual aid for local, independent volunteers who want to help their neighbors. In the city of Perm, a consortium of civic groups united under the name SOSedi, a Russian portmanteau for “SOS neighbors,” to provide information and resources on how to safely help the elderly, single parents, and those who were sick or quarantined. Under the tagline “In Perm we are all neighbors,” the groups designed posters and leaflets with public health information that volunteers could print out and post in their neighborhoods and online. In partnership with an e-shop, SOSedi launched a platform that allowed people to donate toward grocery orders for those in need.

As the coronavirus crisis deepened, legal associations and human rights organizations that normally provided legal advocacy to victims of human rights abuses by government officials expanded their services to the broader public. Agora, a Russian human rights organization that usually focused on the legal defense of journalists, artists, activists, and other persecuted groups and on the state’s abuse of power in the court system, began offering legal and tax assistance to small businesses that were struggling during lockdowns.³ This gesture of solidarity with larger society has strengthened the organization’s support base in its community and boosted an already strong reputation.

Similarly, in Azerbaijan, where the government’s belated assistance for those who had lost their livelihoods as a result of the pandemic proved overwhelmingly bureaucratic, a group of human rights lawyers created an ad hoc organization to help people navigate the benefits system. The group was quickly inundated with requests for help, and this service for the broader public has laid a foundation for trust in the lawyers.

As CSOs have regrouped and joined different types of initiatives for the first time, a new dynamism has appeared in the sector. Experienced activists and first-time volunteers alike have grown their networks and deepened their experiences in civic engagement. When life increasingly moved online to accommodate physical distancing, civic groups began cooperating with the tech sector in new and interesting ways. Because of the need for private donations to fund mutual aid initiatives, the pandemic has been a catalyst for forging new connections between civil society and private businesses.

Despite the economic hardships that have hit businesses and individuals, civic groups in Russia have reported that their donations have grown during the pandemic as the crisis has helped foster solidarity and charitable giving. One media outlet that pairs its multimedia storytelling about social problems with a platform for collecting donations reported a significant increase in donations at the height of the pandemic.

Cracking Down and Co-opting

While some civic initiatives launched in response to the pandemic had a meaningful impact on both the civic sector and society as a whole, others, especially in Russia and Azerbaijan, were stopped in their tracks by authorities. In the initial stages of the pandemic, authorities reacted especially severely to initiatives related to the healthcare sector, which they perceived as challenges to the state’s authority. By contrast, self-help and horizontal aid cooperation—providing food to the elderly and the like—were generally allowed. As the pandemic developed, however, authorities used it as a pretext to crack down on civic activists generally.

In Russia, activists and health workers alike faced retaliation for drawing public attention to inadequate supplies of medical equipment. As the Human Rights Watch regional director documented, “instead of listening to health workers’ legitimate concerns about safety and trying to address them, employers and officials in some cases disciplined or even prosecuted them for speaking out.”⁴ Anastasia Vasilyeva, the head of a doctors’ union, who was critical of the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis, was arrested and convicted of violating lockdown orders while attempting to deliver medical equipment to hospitals in Russia’s regions.⁵ A well-known activist from the town of Kolomna, just south of Moscow, who began collecting money and equipment for a local hospital was threatened by security service officers, who accused him of spreading panic. The local hospital that would have benefited from his donation was similarly pressured by the security apparatus to refuse his help.

In Azerbaijan, where crackdowns on civic activism are even harsher than in other autocracies in the region, several decentralized communities formed on Facebook to provide mutual aid, but authorities were very sensitive to any overt campaigning or collective actions related to the coronavirus crisis. For example, a group of volunteers was detained and fined for trying to hang signs and distribute flyers with reliable information on how to prevent the spread of the disease. Early in the lockdown, authorities in Azerbaijan took advantage of the opportunity to arrest several opposition politicians for alleged quarantine violations.⁶

In Tajikistan, authorities accused activists who were providing public health information of spreading panic and threatened them with arrest. Independent journalists and vloggers attempting to report the facts about the pandemic have been arrested, beaten, and intimidated and had their credentials revoked.⁷ In Uzbekistan, the government issued a blanket ban on humanitarian activities, citing the potential for volunteerism to add to the spread of coronavirus, but later invited groups that wanted to help distribute food and supplies to join a government-run consortium whose activities could be closely monitored.

Long-Term Consequences

Beyond governments’ botched handling of the public health crisis, a lack of policies to soften the economic blow caused by the pandemic has further heightened mistrust of authorities and dented the legitimacy of the region’s autocrats. Conversely, as civil society continues to help those affected by the pandemic, grow its networks, and build its social capital, there is a clear potential for CSOs to expand their influence and credibility in society.

In Russia, Putin’s position has been significantly undermined by poor handling of the pandemic. When the Kremlin arrested the governor of the far-eastern Khabarovsk region in July 2020, thousands of people took to the streets against the move in protests that were unprecedented for the region in pre-pandemic times. The crucial question is whether the expanded networks that civil society has formed during the crisis will crystallize into a challenge that can take advantage of these cracks in the regime’s legitimacy.

The Khabarovsk demonstrations may be an early sign that the mixture of dissatisfaction with the authorities’ incompetence during the crisis and the sense of empowerment gained from the experience of mutual aid and self-reliance is translating into political action. If so, it would not be the first time that this phenomenon has occurred in Russia. Droves of volunteers mobilized and self-organized as wildfires raged in 2010, and the connections they made laid the groundwork for broader public support for the wave of protests that started in 2011 calling for fair elections.

The consequences of inept handling of the pandemic are perhaps most apparent in Belarus, where Lukashenko’s ludicrous response to the public health crisis was one factor that led to the first real threat in his twenty-six-year reign. The official incompetence and apparent disregard for people’s suffering fueled broad popular discontent before the disputed presidential election, which is widely recognized to have been fraudulent. Lukashenko’s handling of the pandemic had dealt a serious blow to his legitimacy even before the election. But it was the brutality of the postelection crackdown and torture of detained demonstrators, photos of which spread rapidly on social media, that galvanized broader society to join calls for him to step down. Opposition to Lukashenko included factory and public transportation workers and even some members of the security apparatus and others who were traditionally loyal to the president. Multiple segments of society were emboldened by a confidence and a sense of unity that had been reinvigorated by the surge in civic engagement in response to the pandemic.

The coronavirus crisis has allowed CSOs to prove to communities that they are capable of rapidly mobilizing resources and alleviating suffering through collective action. Civic groups can now build on this trust through continued engagement in mutual aid initiatives. They can then leverage this bolstered confidence to push for more ambitious change on an ever more systemic level. As civil society matures, expands its horizontal networks, and becomes more self-assured, tensions will inevitably grow between populations and the paralyzed regimes of corrupt elites, which are increasingly out of touch and out of step. The pandemic has brought this conflict into focus and may well prove a factor in intensifying it.

How the confrontation plays out will depend on how harshly the elites are prepared to crack down on dissent, on the one hand, and how emancipated, skilled, and numerous the civic-minded part of society becomes, on the other. What will come of the revived civic engagement that has followed the global coronavirus pandemic will be a central question of this decade.

Notes

¹ Abdujalil Abdurasulov, “Coronavirus: Why Has Turkmenistan Reported No Cases?,” BBC, April 7, 2020, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-52186521.

² “Waving Slippers at the ‘Cockroach’ President of Belarus: Alexander Lukashenko, Who Touted Vodka for Covid-19, Faces Real Opposition,” Economist, June 20, 2020.

³ Agora, openinform.ru.

⁴ “Russia: Health Workers Face Retaliation for Speaking Out,” Human Rights Watch, June 15, 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/15/russia-health-workers-face-retaliation-speaking-out.

⁵ Matthew Luxmoore, “Russian Doctor Who Criticized Government’s COVID-19 Response Detained,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, April 3, 2020, https://www.rferl.org/a/head-of-russian-doctors-union-arrested-on-trip-to-equip-provincial-hospitals-battling-virus/30527912.html.

⁶ “Azerbaijan Arrests Opposition Activists During Covid-19 Outbreak,” OC Media, March 24, 2020, https://oc-media.org/azerbaijan-arrests-opposition-activists-during-covid-19-outbreak/.

⁷ Muhammad Tahir and Bruce Pannier, “Majlis Podcast: Media Freedom and the Coronavirus in Tajikistan,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, July 12, 2020, https://www.rferl.org/a/majlis-podcast-media-freedom-and-the-coronavirus-in-tajikistan/30721966.html.

The Coronavirus Crisis as an Opportunity in Ukraine

After Ukraine registered its first confirmed case of the coronavirus in early March 2020, the country’s government introduced quarantine measures; banned mass gatherings; restricted freedom of movement; closed educational institutions and sports, cultural, and entertainment venues; and limited the provision of healthcare, social, and administrative services. These measures were gradually lifted starting in May 2020. The government did not introduce a state of emergency, but many critical voices, including from civil society, questioned the constitutionality of the restrictions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was elected in April 2019 in a landslide victory, has continued to lose popularity. Public trust in him fell from 62 percent in December 2019 to 44 percent in July 2020, according to surveys by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a nongovernmental organization.¹ This trend is only partly related to the government’s crisis response, however, and stems more from a persistent pattern of stalled reforms and corruption.

Responding to the Crisis

The coronavirus pandemic has mobilized Ukrainian civil society, which has redirected its focus and resources to deal with the new crisis. To a large extent, civil society organizations (CSOs) have replicated the experience of volunteerism, crowdsourcing, and cooperation with business that they gained during the 2013 Euromaidan antigovernment protests and the 2014–2015 security crisis, in which civil society self-organized to protect civic space, democracy, and statehood and filled gaps left by the state.² Much of this activism has been local, fluid, and flexible.³

In addition, surveys suggest that most established CSOs have changed their activities during the pandemic to become the backbone of civil society’s response to the emergency.⁴ The coronavirus crisis has modified the ways in which CSOs operate; most importantly, many civic groups have switched to an emergency mode and quickly reoriented their activities to respond to emerging needs in the healthcare sector. Many CSOs have joined efforts with businesses and local authorities to fight the virus. Several new civic initiatives have been established to respond to new needs.

In a survey of seventy-five representatives of CSOs conducted by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation in April 2020, half of the respondents agreed that the pandemic had multiplied social capital, including people-to-people connections, solidarity, and mutual trust, and helped develop skills and technologies of self-organization.⁵ The survey shows that civil society has recognized new opportunities for fostering community development through the use of digital technologies, helping vulnerable groups, offering counseling, and combating fake news.

During the 2014–2015 security crisis, Ukrainian civil society substituted itself for the state by providing the security and defense sectors with essential supplies of military equipment.⁶ In much the same way, in 2020, civil society has provided hospitals with critical equipment, such as ventilators, oxygen, and personal protective equipment, as well as various services for healthcare staff, like transportation and free meals.⁷ Civil society has also given a voice to medical workers who blew the whistle about the low preparedness of their healthcare institutions and ineffective public spending on the coronavirus response.

This strategy of helping Ukraine’s weak healthcare system to deal with the pandemic was crucial to boost the country’s resilience during the first weeks and months of the crisis. A crucial issue is whether civil society actors can apply the social capital they have built up during the emergency response to influence Ukraine’s broader reform process. There, the question is whether CSOs can engage in implementing and monitoring ongoing healthcare reforms and strengthen, rather than replace, the state.

Similarly, civil society efforts have emerged or been reinvigorated to help the most vulnerable, such as the elderly, the homeless, people with disabilities, minority groups, and conflict-affected populations, by providing them with essential goods and services during the pandemic. Ukraine’s coronavirus crisis has also revealed the weakness of the country’s social protection system, including social services. It remains to be seen whether service providers that work with vulnerable groups can seize the moment to advocate more radical change of the social protection system.

An important dimension of civil society activity has consisted of raising awareness about the pandemic and disputing disinformation. Providing reliable information on the pandemic has become the main activity of many Ukrainian CSOs.⁸ This trend puts Ukraine in line with many other countries around the globe in which civil society has played a key role in providing timely and reliable information about the virus and response measures.

At the same time, many civil society watchdogs have continued their activities by closely monitoring how the state has responded to the crisis and advocating changes when the watchdogs have deemed a state response to be disproportionate or not based on a law. CSOs have also closely tracked the ways in which the government has redirected public spending to emergent needs.⁹ Despite restrictions on the freedom of movement, citizens have organized protests to protect their interests or respond to perceived injustices in coronavirus-related assistance measures.

Filling Gaps Left by the Government

Ukrainian civil society has mobilized to respond to the coronavirus crisis to compensate for the government’s failure to prepare for a health emergency and a subsequent socioeconomic crisis. CSOs have provided services and supplies for the healthcare system and vulnerable groups, filling a gap left by the government across Ukraine. In doing so, many civil society actors have cooperated closely with businesses and coordinated their activities with authorities. National, regional, and local authorities have recognized the power of civil society by working with it to channel private and corporate resources to plug the gaps.

From within the president’s office, Ukraine’s Anticrisis Headquarters selected Odesa charity Monsters Corporation, which had helped healthcare institutions and vulnerable people before the pandemic, to distribute corporate donations to hospitals and clinics. In less than a month, the charity had accumulated 349 million hryvnia ($12.3 million), of which 302 million hryvnia ($10.6 million) was spent on medical equipment, protective gear, and medicines.¹⁰ In cooperation with local businesses and authorities, the charity continued to raise funds to supply healthcare institutions in the Odesa region.¹¹

Many existing CSOs seized the moment and redirected their efforts to provide coronavirus-related support by establishing broad coalitions, including with businesses. In the city of Poltava, four CSOs, among them a charity and a local business association, established the Poltava Volunteer Group to support local hospitals, healthcare workers, the elderly, and people with disabilities who live alone.¹² The group mobilized volunteers and crowdfunded to pursue their goals.¹³

In Kyiv, volunteers who had known each other since 2013–2014 united into the Kyiv Volunteer Headquarters.¹⁴ The group was initiated by a businessman and an adviser to the city’s mayor.¹⁵ The volunteers collaborated closely with local authorities and businesses and crowdsourced to provide hospital supplies, protective equipment, transportation, food, and other services for healthcare workers and those in need.

CSOs in Lviv joined forces with local businesses and authorities to create the platform STOP COVID-19, which collected data and supplied local hospitals with the most urgent protective clothing and equipment.¹⁶ Local volunteer initiatives built broad networks with healthcare institutions, based on some insider knowledge of the healthcare system. This may serve as a building block for civic actors to engage as watchdogs in Ukraine’s ongoing healthcare reform.

CSOs representing patients extended their work to support healthcare workers and institutions.¹⁷ Because of the pandemic, some groups used crowdsourcing strategies to collect contributions, making their work more recognizable in the community. By establishing contacts with businesses and healthcare institutions, CSOs also expanded their social capital networks, enabling them to advance their missions in the future.

One of the most popular volunteer initiatives at the community level across Ukraine was Give a Medic a Lift. This helped healthcare workers get to their workplaces when public transportation was suspended. Volunteers coordinated their efforts on social media.¹⁸ Taxi services provided free transportation for healthcare workers in various cities in partnership with CSOs.

Companies swiftly increased the scope of their corporate social responsibility programs to respond to new needs. As of early May 2020, Ukrainian business actors had dedicated an estimated 2 billion hryvnia ($71 million) to fighting the virus. Large and small businesses contributed, often in cooperation with civil society.¹⁹ Working with local social services, a retail network provided food packages for the elderly across Ukraine. A Kharkiv information technology (IT) cluster whose mission is to promote a favorable business environment for IT companies launched a project to gather donations and provide medical supplies for local hospitals and help the elderly in cooperation with local charities.²⁰ Trade unions and associations also allocated resources to emergency assistance; for example, trade unions of penitentiary workers offered funds to supply prison staff with personal protective equipment.

Many CSOs and volunteers focused on supporting older people. Civic initiatives emerged online to organize food and medicine deliveries to older people living alone and others in vulnerable situations. Activists created an online platform called Solidarity, which connected volunteers and people in need.²¹ Many existing CSOs and civic activists used social media, mostly Facebook, to crowdsource to deliver food packages and medicines to the elderly.

Civil society also mobilized to support vulnerable and marginalized groups that had suffered from exclusion and discrimination before the pandemic and were then left behind in the state’s response to it, such as the homeless, Romani communities, people with disabilities, and vulnerable children. In Kyiv, where there are tens of thousands of homeless people, including those who became homeless when they lost their jobs or when intercity transportation was suspended, charities and volunteers coordinated their efforts to supply food, water, information, and shelter.²² In the city of Vinnytsia, a CSO partnered with local authorities to provide food and health information for people living on the street.²³ Other CSOs offered food, personal protective equipment, hygiene items, and health information to Romani communities.²⁴

When movement across the contact line between government-controlled Ukraine and separatist-held territory in the country’s east was suspended, humanitarian organizations were the only ones to help conflict-affected populations stuck at crossing points.²⁵ These organizations provided people with food, medicines, shelter, and information and advocated on their behalf to ease movement through the areas affected by the conflict.

CSOs launched coronavirus-specific fact-checking initiatives to debunk false information and conspiracy theories about the virus and monitor the media. The group Detector Media created entertaining video content with the hashtag #сидивдома (stay at home) to raise awareness about the coronavirus, teach critical thinking, and distinguish reputable from fake news.²⁶ VoxCheck, a CSO initiative that fact-checked the speeches of Ukrainian politicians, identified incorrect information and provided verified briefings about the pandemic in cooperation with Facebook’s International Fact-Checking Network.²⁷ A CSO that aims to popularize science in Ukraine launched a project called Scientific Method to promote science-based information about the coronavirus.²⁸

Some CSOs focused on delivering timely and reliable information to vulnerable groups. Romani organizations translated information into the Romani language and spread it to Romani communities through social media.²⁹ A CSO coalition that protects the rights of people with learning disabilities launched a project to produce distilled information about the coronavirus.³⁰

Watching the State

Although the bulk of Ukraine’s civic activism has focused on filling gaps left by the government, many CSOs have continued to perform their function as watchdogs and advocate policy change. Human rights organizations have monitored the impact of the coronavirus and the government’s response and called for modifications. The government adopted many measures in an emergency mode without prior consultation with stakeholders such as civil society, which has contested several of the measures. CSOs have monitored how restrictions on the freedom of movement have affected the human rights of conflict-affected populations and the residents of occupied Crimea. Civic groups have also fought strategic cases in the courts and lobbied the authorities to change course. This led the government to introduce humanitarian exceptions for crossings between government-controlled and occupied parts of Ukraine and modify its overly restrictive approach.

Despite quarantine measures in detention facilities, human rights CSOs have managed to remotely monitor the situation of detainees and the preparedness of Ukraine’s prison system to deal with the pandemic. Several CSOs have continued to provide legal consultations for citizens, including on labor rights issues, which have become more acute during the coronavirus crisis. When schools were closed to prevent the spread of the virus, organizations for people with disabilities called for children with disabilities to be included in distance learning and for the education process to be adapted to their needs.³¹

Ukraine’s anticorruption watchdogs have extended their activities to monitor coronavirus-related policy developments and spending at the national and local levels. In Kharkiv, for example, CSOs and volunteers highlighted the ineffective use of coronavirus funds for hospitals, purchases of supplies at high prices, and increased spending on non-coronavirus-related construction projects under the city’s budget.³² Patients’ rights CSOs warned about the delayed public procurement of life-saving medicines by the Ministry of Health.³³

Protests have continued during the pandemic despite a ban on mass gatherings. Nationalist groups demonstrated against government initiatives to negotiate peace in Ukraine’s war-torn eastern Donbas region. Small businesses such as market vendors and farmers protested against strict stay-at-home orders. Such protests were peaceful and, as a rule, faced no sanctions from the authorities.

Organizational Change or Changing Civic Space?

The global pandemic and physical isolation have pushed CSOs to change their ways of operating, with many shifting to work remotely and predominantly online. In a survey of 250 CSOs conducted by the Civic Space and Ukrainian Philanthropists Forum in late March 2020, nearly 70 percent of organizations were working remotely, and 40 percent had been ready for such a change.³⁴ Many organizations moved their events online to meet the requirements of physical distancing. In March, most CSOs did not register reduced funding, but this may change in light of the economic downturn.

Some CSOs also say that the coronavirus crisis has freed up time and space to think more strategically about their priorities and opened new niches. The Ukrainian Volunteer Service, which promotes a culture of volunteering in Ukraine, realized that volunteers often face barriers to engage with CSOs, which, in turn, often lack knowledge of how to work with volunteers.³⁵ The service worked to help CSOs that are seeking volunteers to cooperate better with those who want to help. Some organizations say that the coronavirus restrictions have pushed them to digitize their services and their ways of working, increase transparency and accountability, find new ways to stay in touch with their beneficiaries, reach out to new donors, and deepen transnational links to share experiences.³⁶ Yet, other groups have voiced concerns that the ban on mass gatherings has removed street protest from the CSO tool kit.³⁷

Ukraine’s case shows that the coronavirus crisis has provided an opportunity for civil society to innovate, build social capital, gain public trust, expand partnerships with authorities and businesses, and enter new niches. The crisis has also changed the environment in which CSOs operate by pushing them to work even more online, digitize their services, and improve their communication skills. At the same time, the pandemic raises several challenges for civil society, from hasty policy decisions to potential limits on private funding for activities not related to the coronavirus.

Notes

¹ Ilko Kucheriv, “Six Months of the Pandemic: What Happened to the Moods and Electoral Preferences of Ukrainians?,” Democratic Initiatives Foundation, July 24, 2020, https://dif.org.ua/article/six-months-of-the-pandemic-what-happened-to-the-moods-and-electoral-preferences-of-ukrainians; and “Підсумки-2019 й прогнози на 2020-й: громадська думка” [The conclusions of 2019 and forecast for 2020: public opinion], Democratic Initiatives Foundation, December 26, 2019, https://dif.org.ua/article/pidsumki-2019-gromadska-dumka.

² Natalia Shapovalova, “Ukraine: Civic Volunteerism and the Legacy of Euromaidan,” in “Global Civic Activism in Flux,” ed. Richard Youngs, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2017, 47–51.

³ “Civil Society Rises Again to Fight COVID-19,” Engage Ukraine, May 18, 2020, https://engage.org.ua/civil-society-rises-again-to-fight-covid-19-2/.

⁴ “В Україні до протидії COVID-19 долучені майже половина ГО, — дослідження” [Nearly half of CSOs are engaged in combating COVID-19 in Ukraine], Reanimation Reform Package, May 12, 2020, https://rpr.org.ua/news/v-ukraini-do-protydii-covid-19-dolucheni-mayzhe-polovyna-ho-doslidzhennia/; Ilko Kucheriv, “Громадянське суспільство в період пандемії: як вона вплинула на громадську активність” [Civil society in times of the pandemic: how the coronavirus affects civic engagement], Democratic Initiatives Foundation, May 12, 2020, https://dif.org.ua/uploads/doc/7682477285ebab736e89f19.90272399.doc.

⁵ Kucheriv, “Громадянське суспільство в період пандемії.”

⁶ Kateryna Zarembo, “Substituting for the State: The Role of Volunteers in Defense Reform in Post-Euromaidan Ukraine,” Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal 3, no. 3 (December 2017), 47–70, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322149777_Substituting_for_the_State_The_Role_of_Volunteers_in_Defense_Reform_in_Post-Euromaidan_Ukraine.

⁷ Mykhaylo Shtekel, “Чому апарати штучної вентиляції легень в одеські лікарні возять волонтери” [Why volunteers bring lung ventilators to Odesa hospitals], Radio Liberty, April 7, 2020, https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/odesa-shtuchna-ventyliacija-lehen-volontery/30538142.html; Liliya Rzheutska, “Боротьба з COVID-19 в Україні: сподівання на волонтерський рух” [Fight with COVID-19: hope for the volunteer movement], DW, April 14, 2020, https://www.dw.com/uk/боротьба-з-covid-19-в-україні-сподівання-на-волонтерський-рух/a-53115778; “CF ‘Patients of Ukraine’ Helped 218 Hospitals to Fight Against Coronavirus in Five Months of the Initiative,” Patients of Ukraine, September 8, 2020, http://patients.org.ua/en/2020/09/08/bf-patsiyenty-ukrayiny-dopomig-218-likarnyam-u-borotbi-z-koronavirusom-za-p-yat-misyatsiv-initsiatyvy/.

⁸ Kucheriv, “Громадянське суспільство в період пандемії.”

⁹ Oleksandr Humeniuk, “‘We’ve Earned Them Together.’ Anti-Coronavirus Fund Used for Needs of Various Agencies,” StateWatch, July 3, 2020, https://statewatch.org.ua/en/publications/we-ve-earned-them-together-anti-coronavirus-fund-used-for-needs-of-various-agencies/; Oleksandr Humeniuk, “Як витрачають кошти з Covid-фонду?” [How is the money from the COVID fund spent?], StateWatch, September 4, 2020, https://statewatch.org.ua/publications/yak-vytrachaiut-koshty-z-covid19-fondu/.

¹⁰ “Одеський фонд виходить із проєкту Офісу президента щодо боротьби з COVID-19” [An Odesa foundation leaves the president’s office’s project on fighting COVID-19], Ukrainska Pravda, April 17, 2020, https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2020/04/17/7248299/.

¹¹ “COVID-19 Подопечные фонда Корпорация Монстров” [COVID-19 beneficiaries of the Monsters Corporation foundation], Monsters Corporation, http://monstrov.org/izmeni-bolnitsu/.

¹² Poltava Volunteer Group, https://covid19.pl.ua/.

¹³ Maryna Antonyuk, “Коронавірус стосується кожного. Досвід Полтавської волонтерської групи” [The coronovirus concerns everyone. The experience of the Poltava Volunteer Group], Zmist, June 29, 2020, https://zmist.pl.ua/analytics/koronavirus-stosujetsya-kozhnogo-dosvid-poltavskoji-volonterskoji-grupi.

¹⁴ Rzheutska, “Боротьба з COVID-19 в Україні.”

¹⁵ Vira Stadnyk, “Я хочу допомогти лікарням під час карантину. Як це можна зробити?” [I want to help hospitals during the quarantine. How can I do it?], Village Ukraine, April 1, 2020, https://www.the-village.com.ua/village/city/asking-question/295991-ya-hochu-dopomogti-likarnyam-pid-chas-karantinu-yak-tse-mozhna-zrobiti.

¹⁶ STOP COVID-19, https://stopcovid.loda.gov.ua/.

¹⁷ Lyudmyla Tyahnyryadno, “Як пацієнтські громадські організації захищають людей під час пандемії коронавірусу” [How patients’ civic organizations protect people during the coronovirus pandemic], Detector Media, June 22, 2020, https://detector.media/community/article/178159/2020-06-22-yak-patsientski-gromadski-organizatsii-zakhishchayut-lyudei-pid-chas-pandemii-koronavirusu/.

¹⁸ Olha Komarova, “Знову на передову: волонтери проти коронавірусу” [Again to the front line: volunteers against the coronavirus], Radio Liberty, March 19, 2020, https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/coronavirus-covid-volontery-ukraina/30497602.html.

¹⁹ “Ось бизнеса: кто наиболее вложился в борьбу с коронавирусом” [The business axis: who invested most in the fight with COVID-19], Delo, May 5, 2020, https://delo.ua/business/os-biznesa-kompanii-kotorye-pomogajut-vyzhit-s-367721/.

²⁰ “IT4Life,” Kharkiv IT Cluster, https://it-kharkiv.com/projects/it4life/.

²¹ Solidarity, https://v2020.org.ua/.

²² Roman Huba, “Сам на сам із порожньою вулицею. Волонтери про допомогу бездомним під час карантину” [Alone on an empty street. Volunteers tell about aid to homeless people during the quarantine], Commons, April 6, 2020, https://commons.com.ua/uk/volonteri-pro-dopomogu-bezdomnim-pid-chas-karantinu/.

²³ “Impact of COVID-19 and Its Prevention Measures on Homeless People in Ukraine,” United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, June 16, 2020, http://un.org.ua/images/documents/4970/Briefing_Note_Homeless_People_ENG.pdf.

²⁴ “В Ужгороді благодійний фонд «Благо» допомагає ромам під час карантину” [In Uzhhorod, charity foundation ‘Blaho’ helps Roma during the quarantine], Karpatskyi Obiektyv, April 21, 2020, http://life.ko.net.ua/?p=101423; Tv21 Унгвар, “Товариство Червоного Хреста передало допомогу ромам у Підвиноградові” [Red Cross Society provided aid to Roma in Pidvynohradiv], YouTube video, June 26, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QwY3bLbZjk.

²⁵ Peace Direct, “When Civil Society Responds: COVID-19 in Ukraine,” ReliefWeb, July 17, 2020, https://reliefweb.int/report/ukraine/when-civil-society-responds-covid-19-ukraine.

²⁶ Detector Media, https://ms.detector.media/tag/18151/.

²⁷ “VoxCheck F.A.Q.,” vox ukraine, https://voxukraine.org/uk/voxcheck-f-a-q.

²⁸ INSCIENCE, “No fakes, no drama. В Україні запустили платформу «Науковий метод»” [No fakes, no drama. The ‘Scientific Method’ platform was launched in Ukraine], Hromadskyi Prostir, August 6, 2020, https://www.prostir.ua/?news=no-fakes-no-drama-v-ukrajini-zapustyly-platformu-naukovyj-metod.

²⁹ “The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Human Rights of Roma in Ukraine,” United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, June 3, 2020, http://www.un.org.ua/images/documents/4932/BN%20C19%20Roma%20ENG.pdf.

³⁰ VGO Coalition, “Коаліція захисту прав осіб з інвалідністю внаслідок інтелектуальних порушень,” Facebook, July 31, 2020, https://www.facebook.com/vgocoalition/posts/2987086291419561.

³¹ Lyudmyla Tyahnyryadno, “Захист прав дітей в умовах карантину: роль громадських активістів та держави” [Protection of children rights during the quarantine: the role of civic activists and the state], Ukrainian Radio, June 30, 2020, http://www.nrcu.gov.ua/schedule/play-archive.html?periodItemID=2507510.

³² See, for example, Igor Cherniak’s July 2, 2020, Facebook post, https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=694222287805382&set=a.106150719945878&type=3, and the Kharkiv Anticorruption Center Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/anticor.kharkiv.

³³ “Appeal of the Patient Community Regarding the Failure of the Medicine Procurement for the Severely Ill Patients,” Patients of Ukraine, May 20, 2020, http://patients.org.ua/en/2020/05/20/zvernennya-do-ministra-ohorony-zdorov-ya-maksyma-stepanova/.

³⁴ “Громадянське суспільство і криза: підсумки опитування” [Civil society and the crisis: survey results], Hromadskyi Prostir, March 24, 2020, https://www.prostir.ua/?focus=hromadyanske-suspilstvo-i-kryza-pidsumky-opytuvannya.

³⁵ Lyudmyla Tyahnyryadno, “У кризах волонтери та благодійники стають більш ефективними” [Volunteers and benefactors become more effective in crises], Detector Media, June 8, 2020, https://detector.media/community/article/177803/2020-06-08-u-krizakh-volonteri-ta-blagodiiniki-stayut-bilsh-efektivnimi/.

³⁶ Tyahnyryadno, “Як пацієнтські громадські організації захищають людей.”

³⁷ “‘HomoCOVIDus’ – як громадянське суспільство працюватиме після карантину?,” Engage Ukraine, May 21, 2020, https://engage.org.ua/homocovidus-iak-hromadianske-suspilstvo-pratsiuvatyme-pislia-karantynu/.

Georgia’s Fight Against the Coronavirus: Fusing State and Societal Resilience

While the global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic continues to rise, Georgia has distinguished itself with its relatively low numbers of infections and deaths since the country registered its first coronavirus case at the end of February 2020. An explanation for Georgia’s flatter curve lies, at least partly, in the authorities’ swift response.¹ Well before declaring a state of emergency, the Georgian government closed education institutions, advised all public and private sector employees to work remotely, and suspended public transportation. All shops, except grocery stores, pharmacies, gas stations, post offices, and banks, were closed.²

Georgia’s crisis management efforts entailed an effective fusion of state and societal resilience: the government responded swiftly, and society showed commendable responsibility in observing coronavirus measures. Georgia’s civil society quickly adapted to the altered context of the pandemic, assuming new identities and roles during the crisis. Civil society’s response has been shaped largely by the humanitarian needs of the population and an increased demand for government accountability. While Georgia has been reasonably effective in terms of managing the pandemic at the levels of both state and society, the government’s emergency measures have sat uneasily with democratic principles. Although no harsh human rights violations or pressure on civil society has taken place, the government’s actions have weakened democratic checks and balances.

The Unparliamentary Republic of Georgia

On March 21, 2020, Georgia declared a state of emergency, which granted the president—with the agreement of the prime minister—the right to restrict constitutional civil rights. The presidential edict failed to define clearly the scope of restrictions on human rights and freedoms and instead mandated the government to decide on the breadth and purpose of its interventions.³ Criticisms of this shortcoming have apparently been outweighed by the fear and confusion emanating from the pandemic.

Despite a highly polarized political environment, the opposition voted in favor of the state of emergency—even though it had been boycotting the country’s parliament in protest against a U-turn by the ruling Georgian Dream party over electoral reforms.⁴ Most importantly, the public has overwhelmingly supported the policies implemented by the government, particularly at the beginning of the outbreak.⁵ However, the government’s strict and prolonged regulations, some of which have never been explained to the public, and the decision to extend the state of emergency by a month without detailed healthcare and economic plans have more recently ended the consensus witnessed on March 21.⁶

The presidential edict gave the executive the authority to restrict civil rights, but without clear guidance from the legislature, this new power left the government beyond parliamentary control in the first two months of the state of emergency. On top of that, the parliament did not use its mechanisms of parliamentary oversight in this period. The paucity of parliamentary scrutiny has been a challenge for Georgia since the country fully transitioned to a parliamentary model of governance in 2017 and has been further aggravated during the pandemic.⁷

Some of the restrictions introduced during the state of emergency raised public concerns about their proportionality. Fines of around $1,000 for individuals and $5,000 for legal persons for violating the state of emergency went beyond reasonable penalties, according to watchdog organizations. For example, a citizen protesting alone in front of the chancellery was fined for breaking emergency restrictions.⁸

In addition, the government’s response to violations has fallen short of applying to all citizens equally. The Georgian Orthodox Church (GOC), one of the most trusted institutions in Georgia, has largely refused to comply with emergency laws and restrictions.⁹ The church has conducted its liturgies almost as usual, and dozens of parishioners have gathered at ceremonies and received the Communion with a shared spoon, despite many pleas to halt the practice. However, the church’s defiance of the state of emergency has not prompted an effective response from the government.¹⁰ This comes as no surprise in Georgian politics, where the GOC has been courted by political parties thanks to its influence over public opinion, including in elections.

In times of crisis, people turn to their governments, and the coronavirus pandemic seems no different. In Georgia, the state’s relatively fast efforts have translated into strong public approval of the performance of medical and governmental institutions in responding to the coronavirus, especially from March to May 2020.¹¹ The largest increase in approval was for Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia, whose rating in one poll rose from 21 percent before the pandemic to 66 percent during it, equaling the score of the GOC, which has traditionally topped the list.

This popularity surge tempted the Georgian Dream party to try to go back on a deal to which it reluctantly agreed in early March to modify the country’s electoral system.¹² The deal was intended to make the electoral system more—although not completely—proportional and would likely prejudice Georgian Dream. Under increased pressure from partners like the United States and the European Union, Georgian Dream eventually voted in favor of constitutional changes to implement the electoral reform.

Georgia’s ruling party used the coronavirus crisis as a convenient pretext to adopt a controversial law after the end of the state of emergency. An amendment to the country’s public health law allowed the government to impose restrictions on travel, assembly, economic activities, and property rights until 2021 without parliamentary approval. Granting such authority to the executive with no legislative control violates the constitution and puts Georgia’s already poor democratic credentials at risk.¹³ Despite harsh criticism from civil society, the amendment still entered into force.¹⁴

A New Identity for Civil Society

As elsewhere in the world, the coronavirus pandemic has posed an extraordinary challenge to the functioning of civil society in Georgia. However, the altered environment has also unlocked opportunities for a largely digitized but efficient civic response. The changing context has given rise to new civil society identities, with more grassroots activism responding to citizens’ basic needs. The coronavirus context, with its widespread humanitarian requirements, has incentivized a crowdfunding culture and bottom-up movements that can galvanize citizens, the private sector, and the public sector for joint action. Civil society has managed to fill the gap between the government’s pandemic response and the needs of citizens. These novel ways of functioning have raised the hope for both increased civil society legitimacy and the emergence of new civil society identities after the pandemic.

Civil society activities during the pandemic have mostly targeted vulnerable groups in society, the elderly, children with limited access to sustained education, single mothers, and women who experienced violence in the lockdown. The civic initiative Help Elders, a Facebook platform, gathered about $30,000 to provide food, medicine, and other necessities and supported up to 1,000 seniors who were left without care.¹⁵

The founders of the social enterprise Knowledge Café played a crucial role in mobilizing resources and providing for the needs of elderly people across Georgia. In addition to the humanitarian scope of its activities, Knowledge Café launched various initiatives to help seniors cope with the stress caused by the pandemic.¹⁶ Some inspiring examples of community solidarity initiatives, such as Give Internet together with the Knowledge Café raised funds to provide internet access and laptops to underprivileged high school students in rural areas.¹⁷ The Knowledge Café additionally initiated personal educational mentoring programs to support digital studying processes for students.

In the digitized coronavirus era, various platforms have been established to provide accurate information about the pandemic and necessary preventive measures. These platforms have played a crucial role in spreading relevant information and making it available in the languages of ethnic minorities that have been severely affected by the outbreak.¹⁸ Several well-established nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) supported government-led coronavirus awareness-raising campaigns by producing eye-catching information posters and videos. Another civic initiative provided support for animals that had been abandoned without food or shelter.¹⁹

Significantly, the civic response has led to new initiatives that appear to be strongly rooted and set to endure. It has also given rise to a crowdfunding culture, which will remain relevant after the crisis abates. The challenges of the pandemic have also promoted community solidarity, which is likewise set to remain highly pertinent after the pandemic.

Contentious Coronavirus Activism

At a more political level than efforts to address social and humanitarian needs, civil society in Georgia has also played the crucial role of holding the government accountable and reining it back from undemocratic actions. Swiftly adapting to the coronavirus context, the civic movement Shame held an online demonstration, which attracted over 150,000 views, to protest against Georgian Dream’s backtracking on constitutional amendments and call for a fairer and more proportional electoral system.²⁰

This new type of protest provides an important example of digital activism in Georgia and an innovative solution for voicing citizens’ concerns over the government’s performance during the pandemic—and afterward if the government continues to restrict the right of assembly. Shame offered another example of social and political responsibility by holding a physically distanced protest in front of the Georgian parliament to mark the first anniversary of the June 2019 anti-government protests.²¹

In the same vein as the emergent civic activism, traditional NGOs actively monitored the proportionality of the government’s coronavirus measures. These organizations also played important roles in observing Georgia’s political processes and urging the country’s foreign partners to persuade the government to commit to an independent judicial system and release jailed opposition party representatives.²²

Transparency International Georgia exercised an effective function in overseeing public spending and making recommendations to prevent corruption during the pandemic.²³ The Institute for Development of Freedom of Information, an NGO, explored alternative, online ways of monitoring the government’s procurement activities, including by offering training for journalists and activists on the use of open-source data to oversee government activities.²⁴

The watchdog Factcheck.ge, run by the independent think tank Georgia’s Reforms Associates, and the Myth Detector platform, managed by the Media Development Foundation, an NGO, increased awareness of coronavirus-related disinformation, which has had prejudicial effects on public health.²⁵ For example, some people were hospitalized after burning their esophagus as a result of being told that drinking hot water would protect them from catching the virus. Since September 2020, these two organizations have partnered with Facebook as third-party fact-checkers to tackle the dissemination of fake news on the social media platform. This initiative was especially important in the run-up to the 2020 election, because the electoral campaign was largely held online amid the coronavirus restrictions.²⁶

Civic activism in Georgia during the pandemic has demonstrated commendable flexibility in adapting to a changing environment. Both traditional watchdog organizations and new civic activists have been influential in holding the government to account and providing effective lessons of digital oversight in an emergency.

Conclusion

The ability of civil society to adapt to the pandemic environment and the roles activists have played during the crisis have shown the importance of a vibrant civic sector in terms of both addressing the needs of society and providing effective oversight of government actions, especially in an unconsolidated democracy like Georgia. The pandemic has proved that decades-long Western assistance to Georgia’s resilience-building efforts has produced results, particularly for civil society. Besides, civic groups have managed to bridge the gap between the government’s response to the pandemic and the needs of society. New initiatives to bring civic actors closer to citizens and the important roles civil society have played during the crisis raise hopes for increased civil society legitimacy after the pandemic.

For its part, the Georgian government deserves credit for its early and fast response to the pandemic, but questions remain about its undemocratic leanings. Although there have been no harsh violations of human rights or pressure on civil society, Georgia’s response to the pandemic has been accompanied by some worrying signs. The coronavirus crisis has exposed a lack of democratic checks and balances—something that was a challenge even before the pandemic. The ruling party used the coronavirus as a pretext to adopt controversial amendments to the law on public health that allow the government to restrict fundamental rights and freedoms without the need for a state of emergency and, therefore, without the consent of the parliament. Conversely, examples of civil society’s oversight of the government’s management of the pandemic showed the importance of activism in shoring up democratic processes and accountability.

Notes

¹ Vlagyiszlav Makszimov, “Georgia’s Furious Fight Against COVID-19,” Euractiv, March 24, 2020, https://www.euractiv.com/section/eastern-europe/news/georgias-furious-fight-against-COVID-19/.

² Teona Absandze, “Chronology and Preventive Measures Against the Spread of the Coronavirus in Georgia,” FactCheck Georgia, April 4, 2020, https://bit.ly/2ZuNgaz.

³ Giorgi Chitidze, “Georgia’s Coronation of an Orwellian Doublethink,” Verfassungsblog, May 11, 2020, https://verfassungsblog.de/georgias-coronation-of-an-orwellian-doublethink/.

⁴ “United National Movement Opposition Boycotts Parliament Despite Making Election Deal,” Agenda.ge, March 11, 2020, https://agenda.ge/en/news/2020/748.

⁵ “Covid-19 Monitor 2020, Wave 1,” Caucasus Research Resource Center, May 2020, https://caucasusbarometer.org/en/cv2020w1/CVPRFPM/.

⁶ “Georgian Parliament Authorizes to Extend State of Emergency,” Civil Georgia, April 22, 2020, https://civil.ge/archives/348024.

⁷ “Parliamentary Control in Georgia,” Transparency International Georgia, April 13, 2020, https://transparency.ge/sites/default/files/parliament-2019-en-web.pdf.

⁸ “Managing the Challenges of COVID-19 Government Actions Evaluation Report,” Transparency International Georgia, July 14, 2020, https://www.transparency.ge/en/post/managing-challenges-COVID-19-government-actions-evaluation-report.

⁹ “Knowledge of and Attitudes Toward the EU in Georgia, 2019,” Caucasus Research Resource Center, 2019, https://caucasusbarometer.org/en/eu2019ge/RELGION-by-TRURELI/.

¹⁰ “Relations Between the Government and the Patriarchate Might Imperil Human Health,” FactCheck Georgia, April 17, 2020, https://bit.ly/3eEb3ZV.

¹¹ “Covid-19 Monitor 2020,” Caucasus Research Resource Center.

¹² “Political Dialogue Facilitators Release Joint Statement Over March 8 Agreement,” Civil Georgia, May 11, 2020, https://civil.ge/archives/351332.

¹³ “GYLA Makes an Appeal on the Amendments to the Law of Georgia on Public Health to the Constitutional Court,” Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association, May 22, 2020, https://gyla.ge/en/post/saia-sazogadoebrivi-jandacvis-shesakheb-kanonshi-shetanil-cvlilebebs-sakonstitucio-sasamartloshi-asachivrebs.

¹⁴ “GYLA Criticizes the New Law on Public Health,” Civil Georgia, May 15, 2020, https://civil.ge/ka/archives/348645.

¹⁵ Author interview with Mariam Tsertsvadze, co-founder of the Help Elders initiative, by email, July 17, 2020.

¹⁶ Author interview with the co-founder of the social enterprise Knowledge Café, by email, July 17, 2020.

¹⁷ “Pandemic Civic Response Bulletin: Republic of Georgia,” Prague Civil Society Center, retrieved July 15, 2020, https://praguecivilsociety.org/pandemic-civic-response-bulletin-republic-of-georgia/.

¹⁸ The NGO Salam produced posters in the Azeri language with information about the coronavirus. Salam, official Facebook page, retrieved July 15, 2020, https://www.facebook.com/SalamGeorgia/.

¹⁹ Author interview with Mariam Tsertsvadze, participant in the initiative For Animals Left Alone, by email, July 17, 2020.

²⁰ “Thousands Stage Anti-Government Protest in Tbilisi,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, September 20, 2019, https://www.rferl.org/a/thousands-stage-anti-government-protest-in-tbilisi/30175687.html.

²¹ “Protesters Mark ‘Gavrilov’s Night’ Anniversary in Tbilisi,” OC Media, June 20, 2020, https://oc-media.org/protesters-mark-gavrilovs-night-anniversary-in-tbilisi/.

²² “President Zurabishvili Pardons Gigi Ugulava, Irakli Okruashvili,” Civil Georgia, May 15, 2020, https://civil.ge/archives/352010.

²³ “Preventing Corruption During the Pandemic: Challenges and Recommendations,” Transparency International Georgia, May 20, 2020, https://transparency.ge/en/post/preventing-corruption-during-pandemic-challenges-and-recommendations.

²⁴ Author interview with a representative of the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information, August 28, 2020.

²⁵ “COVID-19,” FactCheck Georgia, retrieved September 20, 2020, https://factcheck.ge/en/covid-19.

²⁶ “Facebook Expands Fact-Checking Program to Georgia,” Civil Georgia, September 17, 2020, https://civil.ge/archives/368246.

Confrontation Versus Cooperation in Polish and Romanian Civil Society

Two European Union (EU) member states, Poland and Romania, show not only the importance of the civil society dimension of the coronavirus pandemic but also the ways in which civic responses have differed markedly across countries. In Poland, the pandemic has sharpened tensions and hostilities between the government and civil society organizations (CSOs). Polish CSOs have mobilized around the pandemic, but the government has failed to channel this energy into coordinated efforts, exacerbating social conflicts and deepening an existing rift with civil society. In contrast, in Romania the government and CSOs have worked together in a more cooperative fashion to mitigate the impacts of the coronavirus.

The pandemic has had equally important but contrasting effects on civil society in these two countries. In turn, CSO actions have differed, becoming more partnership oriented in Romania but more critical in Poland.

Poland: Sharpened Confrontation

The coronavirus has deepened mistrust between the Polish government and CSOs. Instead of treating civic actors as partners and allies, the government in Warsaw has aggravated existing tensions and created new ones. The pandemic seems to have made the right-wing Law and Justice government more determined to deepen the rift that separates it from large segments of civil society. While in some countries the pandemic has been an impulse to enhance cooperation between state and civic actors, the Polish government has not only escalated tensions with civil society but also, in some cases, deliberately started new conflicts to consolidate its power.

The pandemic has been a catalyst for a great deal of new civic activism. According to a survey by the Klon/Jawor Association, a nongovernmental organization, 32 percent of Polish CSOs started new activities in response to the pandemic and another 17 percent were planning such activities.¹ New forms of assistance and activism have ranged from organizing social and information campaigns and helping people in high-risk groups to assisting medical workers and producing face masks. Only 4 percent of organizations that took on new and creative ways of dealing with the health crisis have partnered with the government or other state institutions.

Given the unprecedented nature of the challenge, the state and civil society might have been expected to form national and local cooperative networks to deal with the crisis. But such partnerships have been few and far between. The situation is slightly different, however, at the local level. There, many of the CSOs that actively seek to help vulnerable citizens or exposed professionals have worked with local authorities. This difference between the national and the local level is deeply political, as it reflects mistrust between CSOs and the central government that predates the pandemic.

When Law and Justice came to power in 2015 after eight years in opposition, reshaping the landscape of Polish civil society quickly became part of its agenda. The government did not openly say it was intent on suppressing civic activities but claimed it wanted a balance between different types of CSOs. The main proponent of this rebalancing was Piotr Gliński, who, as newly appointed minister of culture, initiated the creation of the National Freedom Institute—Center for the Development of Civil Society (NIW-CSO). This new institution was tasked with taking over the financing of existing civic activities in various ministries and developing new activities. The institution received a significantly larger budget than those of earlier, separate programs, benefiting Polish civic organizations.

NIW-CSO’s main goal was to enhance the capacities of organizations that worked outside large urban centers and lacked sufficient funds to secure their long-term activities. The aim was allegedly a de-oligarchization of the Polish third sector, even though the percentage of funds administered by large Polish CSOs is very similar to that in other countries with a robust civic life: in Poland in 2018, 74 percent of funds were governed by 4 percent of the biggest CSOs, while in the United Kingdom, 74 percent of funds were managed by 3 percent of the largest organizations.²

The Polish government’s somewhat misguided justification for reforming the third sector would not have been so detrimental to its pre-pandemic image in the eyes of many CSOs if it had not been accompanied by a smear campaign in state-controlled public media. This campaign targeted some organizations that criticized Law and Justice’s reforms for undermining the independence of the judiciary or cutting public funds for organizations that help groups deemed by the government to be unwelcome or potentially dangerous, such as refugees or LGBTQ individuals. Moreover, in some cases, public funds were provided to organizations that lacked necessary experience but were ideologically close to the government; such practices did not go unnoticed by Polish civil society and exacerbated mistrust toward central authorities.

When the coronavirus broke out in Europe, after some initial foot-dragging, in mid-March the Polish government imposed a lockdown and physical distancing measures. Trust in the Polish healthcare system is very low in comparison with other EU countries. According to the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound), an EU agency, the average level of trust in the Polish healthcare system, on a seven-point scale in which 7 is the highest, is 4.1. That is below the EU average of 6.4 and places Poland among three EU countries whose citizens are the most distrustful of their healthcare systems.³

Given this widespread belief that Poland’s medical services are inadequate, it did not come as a surprise that most Poles accepted a severe lockdown and physical distancing measures. A fear of becoming infected with the coronavirus was accompanied by a well-grounded belief that if the number of infections exceeded a certain level, the healthcare system would not be able to cope and might collapse.

CSOs were aware of the dire situation and started new initiatives to compensate for this lack of trust in government-run medical responses. They repurposed many of their activities to help medical professionals in their daily efforts to contain the pandemic. These new activities took many different forms, from delivering hot meals to hospitals to crowdfunding for protective gear. These actions were usually spontaneous and were rarely coordinated with the central government.

The government responded with further attacks on civil liberties. Tensions reflected not only an existing legacy of mistrust but also the harsh way in which the government treated medics who had pointed out the unpreparedness of the Polish healthcare system to deal with the pandemic. There were disciplinary dismissals of healthcare workers who had spoken out about bad conditions in their institutions; hospital directors forbade doctors from talking to the media; and the health ministry officially obliged its regional consultants not to comment in public on the epidemiological situation.⁴ Instead of treating whistleblowers as allies who were working to close loopholes in healthcare systems and effectively contain the coronavirus, the government treated them as disloyal, further discouraging civil society from cooperating with the authorities.

Building on these tensions, the government sought to tighten its control over the civic sector on the back of the pandemic. The ministers of justice and the environment proposed a new register of CSOs that benefit from foreign funding.⁵ The official justification for the register was that it would enhance transparency, but most organizations are already obliged to submit financial reports to governmental institutions, and those that are well respected publish extensive information about their financing on their websites. The government also proposed that CSOs whose foreign financing exceeds a certain level must label all their materials accordingly. Neither proposal seemed to serve any practical purpose apart from stigmatizing CSOs and presenting them as alien or even hostile to Polish national interests.

Mistrust between civic actors and the government was also deepened by the way in which Warsaw handled the political crisis caused by the timing of the May 10, 2020, presidential election. Before the vote, the government failed to announce a state of emergency, which would have allowed the election to be pushed back because of the coronavirus in accordance with the constitution. There followed heavy criticism from the opposition, internal strife with a coalition partner, and a series of innovative civic protests, which were conducted despite the lockdown and involved honking car horns and playing an alarm signal from balconies. The government did not want to risk a record low turnout in the election and decided to postpone it simply by announcing the fact and presenting the country’s electoral commission with a fait accompli. The turmoil, and the fact that approximately 70 million zloty ($18 million) was wasted on postal ballots that became useless after the vote was postponed, created another point of contention between the government and civil society.⁶

The coronavirus fed into other instances of ongoing tension, too. The central authorities further stoked polarization by holding the reading of a bill that would effectively make it illegal to terminate a pregnancy under any circumstances and ban sexual education in schools. The bill had been proposed by radical antiabortion organizations during the previous term of the parliament and was signed by the required number of citizens, so the ruling majority was legally obliged to hold the reading. But by keeping this obligation (and ignoring others), despite the health crisis and without any indication that it would distance itself from the new law, the government provoked a series of creative, physically distanced street protests in many Polish cities. The bill was later buried in a parliamentary committee, but the tension with civic organizations that were critical of the government escalated further. The pandemic has accentuated Poland’s culture wars, rather than encouraging actors to set their differences aside.

Romania: Refocused Partnerships

The situation has been different in Romania. There, the government has managed to avoid a major political and economic crisis and worked constructively with civil society, the private sector, and other relevant stakeholders to contain the negative effects of the coronavirus. Romanian civil society has been proactive in contributing to solving the medical and socioeconomic problems generated by the pandemic and adopted a fairly collaborative attitude toward the government, rather than the zero-sum approach prevalent in some other countries in the region. In this regard, there has been a noticeable shift from the confrontational relationship between Romania’s previous social democratic government and civil society, which focused during much of the 2010s on fighting corruption and upholding the rule of law and the independence of the justice system.

Some watchdog organizations have drawn attention to the corruption that lies at the root of the poor functioning of the medical system and insufficient sanitary supplies and hospital staff in the context of the pandemic; but this is generally regarded as the nefarious legacy of three decades of poor governance in the country.⁷ CSOs’ main priority has been to help with service provision and emergency relief, complementing the state’s capacity in those areas. As such, civil society in Romania has gone through a slight change of focus during the coronavirus pandemic but has not taken on a new identity or undergone structural change.

Many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), including those that focus on democracy and governance issues, have redirected their activities to service delivery to help provide medical supplies and a wide variety of social services, particularly for disadvantaged and vulnerable people. In this context, CSOs have formed several coalitions and partnered with public institutions and private companies to join the fight against the virus. For instance, several prominent CSOs have started fundraising campaigns to buy medical equipment and supplies, mainly protective gear for doctors and nurses.⁸

One of the most proactive CSOs has been Red Cross Romania, which has substantive expertise in preventing and combating diseases, working in permanent collaboration with central and local authorities, and offering logistical support in the fight against the coronavirus.⁹ Red Cross Romania signed a memorandum with the government and launched a national fundraising campaign. In partnership with public authorities, Red Cross Romania also conducted a national campaign to raise awareness of the coronavirus among the population and combat fake news.

Another well-known CSO, Give Life, which launched the construction of Romania’s first oncology and radiotherapy hospital for children with money donated by private citizens and companies, started an online crowdfunding campaign. The initiative was joined by other associations, such as Day of Good and Save the Children.¹⁰ The funds collected have been used to equip hospitals and staff working directly with coronavirus patients with protective and medical equipment and to help build a modular hospital to supplement the number of beds for severe coronavirus cases. According to one of the founders of Give Life, Carmen Uscatu, “for Romania to be able to face the coronavirus epidemic, collaboration between authorities, doctors, and civil society is necessary.”¹¹

There are hundreds of examples that showcase the strong impact of CSOs on the local communities in which they work. According to data collected by the Association for Community Relations from over eighty organizations, CSOs have provided hospitals with medical equipment worth over $16 million. The groups raised money to buy more than 115 ventilators, twenty-one polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing devices, 30,000 PCR tests, seventy monitors, and another 60,000 medical devices. More than 1.5 million surgical masks and almost 500,000 filter masks have reached medical units throughout Romania.¹²

Hundreds of other local organizations and informal civic groups not captured by the official numbers have been actively working to protect doctors, support vulnerable people, and do their utmost to fulfill their civic missions. These efforts, which are based on informal CSOs’ extensive links with local communities and those communities’ trust in them, mark a boost in the importance of these civic groups vis-à-vis the more professional organizations that operate at the national level. It is yet to be seen, however, whether these local CSOs and networks will be sustainable in the long term.

On the government’s side, there has been an important shift in citizen and civil society engagement from a reactive approach to more proactive arrangements through modernized tools of engagement. Since March 2020, the government has organized several public consultations with professional associations and CSOs. The aim has been to integrate civil society’s input into the creation of socioeconomic measures and a comprehensive plan to relaunch economic growth and development after the crisis.

During the consultations, senior officials have committed to develop an institutional mechanism to collaborate with NGOs, enable a permanent and systematic dialogue with CSOs on issues of interest, and devise tools for monitoring, evaluation, and reconfiguration by both sides.¹³ This mechanism has so far translated into several sectoral meetings with line ministries and other relevant public authorities. As a result, the government included many of the CSOs’ views and much of their expertise in the preparation of its crisis response and recovery measures, to tailor these better to the needs of citizens and local communities, as voiced by civic groups. CSOs also welcomed the government’s reestablishment of the Department for Cooperation with the Associative Environment as an important contact point for CSOs at the governmental level.¹⁴

There has been some criticism from Romanian CSOs, too. Organizations have called for increased transparency in the political decisionmaking process. In an open letter to the Romanian parliament and the parliamentary political parties, almost forty professional and civil society organizations called for participation in the online public meetings of parliamentary committees not to be restricted. These organizations complained that they had been prevented from expressing their points of view and that parliamentarians had ignored civil society during the pandemic.¹⁵ CSOs legitimately expected to find solutions for greater transparency in policymaking with public authorities, including through the use of new technologies. The government itself provided an example of the openness of other public authorities, and the 2020–2022 Open Government Partnership National Action Plan, due to be adopted later in 2020, aims to make transparency a priority.¹⁶

In addition, several CSOs have drawn attention to the fact that civil society, and the third sector in general, requires more support. The Civil Society Development Foundation drew up a position paper that shows that civil society needs to be included among the sectors deeply affected by the pandemic. The paper, supported by almost 600 CSOs, argues for active measures to support the activities of NGOs and ensure the continuity of the services they provide, including by serving vulnerable groups in critical need during the pandemic.

CSOs have also warned against possible harm to democratic processes. After local elections planned for June 2020 were delayed because of the coronavirus, CSOs made concrete proposals to improve the electoral process in the context of the pandemic. Suggestions included increasing the number of days for voting, introducing additional hygiene measures, and reorganizing polling stations.¹⁷ The government took on board many of these suggestions in its organization of the postponed elections, which took place on September 27, 2020.

In general, CSOs have not supported the criticisms from some prominent opposition party members of the government’s quarantine and isolation rules; these opposition figures have publicly encouraged citizens to disobey health and safety measures and accused the government of “instating a police state” run by