A report released by CIVICUS and Innpactia explores the dynamics and characteristics of the landscape of access to resources for Civil Society Organizations (CSO) in Latin America, in order to help close the knowledge gaps and provide reliable information, capable of producing comparative studies on the availability and accessibility of resources for civil society actors in Latin America.
The research is based on an analysis of 6,657 open calls offering different development resources, published between 2014 and 2017 on Innpactia’s platform, which amount to about USD 5,900 million, stemming from 2,000 donors. The findings from the study indicate that CSO in Latin America, especially those that are locally-based and/or promote social change, are facing significant barriers to obtain funds and other valuable resources from key donors to development aid, those who support their impact and sustainability.
These CSO not only have restricted access to exclusive resources provided by these donors, but they also are subject to an alarming “projectization” of the funds, and they struggle to receive sufficient support to work in areas tied to their intrinsic purposes, like the protection of human rights or challenging the status quo.
The low donor investment in Latin America’s strong, diverse, independent and transformative civil society is especially concerning because CSO are already experiencing reductions in the radical flows and transformations of traditional financing methods. In some countries, Latin American CSO are also facing increasing state restrictions to obtain financial, material, and human resources as part of a regressive attack on their field of work.
For more information, you can access the full article here.