Shrinking Civic Space and Women’s Human Rights: A Case Study of Egypt and Tanzania

CODESRIA, Dakar, 2021, ISBN: 978-2-38234-063-9

This work examines the closure of civic space for women human rights defenders (WHRDs) in Africa. Closing civic space is used to describe the growing phenomenon of governments, political elite and non-state actors using a range of legal and extra-judicial tactics to control dissent. These actions include but are not limited to arbitrary arrests, indefinite pre-trial detention, enforced disappearances and expanding the ability of the police to arrest people on terrorism charges. This work begins by examining the key features of closing civic space to determine the major trends across the continent and focus on how regime tactics collide with the erosion of human rights and broader civil liberties.