The Conference of International NGOs (CINGO) held its General Assembly on 7-9 April and adopted a series of texts. Among these, a Recommendation on the shrinking civic space and actual political developments calls on the Council of Europe and its member states to take determined measures to counter the effects of the democracy backsliding on civil society, including:
- to ensure that the New Democratic Pact is about people’s participation and the expansion of civic space
- to mainstream the protection of civic space in all the CoE processes and to ensure an easy access for civil society actors to bringing complaints and seeking support
- to prepare a legal instrument on national measures to create incentives for financial and other support to civil society organisations and human rights defenders
- to set up a mechanism to receive and follow-up on complaints regarding civil society and human rights defenders received from the Conference of INGOs, including a process to deal with urgent requests for action to ensure protection of persons and organisations concerned, and to halt worrisome national legal developments
- to react vigorously to civic space infringements in member states.
The Conference further issued the following statements:
- for the immediate liberation of the Mayor of Istanbul, and a return to the prevalence of human rights and rule of law in Türkiye (proposed by the European Young Bar Association)
- on the announced EU anti-poverty strategy (proposed by the Committee for the European Social Charter and its monitoring mechanisms);
- a statement under the title “Internal security and border management in the context of migration: Respect for human rights is essential”.
CINGO also decided to establish a new Committee for the International Volunteer Year 2026, which will also mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of CINGO.
The documents adopted and the abridged report of the session are all published as soon as they become available on the webpage of the Spring session.
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.