What are the Civil Society Days?

The Civil Society Days is a biennial forum organized for civil society and governments to explore how to effectively address current challenges facing civil society on the one hand and build bridges and multi-stakeholder partnerships toward SDGs 16 and 17 on the other. The aim is to identify strategies and practices to promote an enabling environment where civil society can make full use of their potential to contribute to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and other international commitments.

About the Civil Society Days

On 4-7 June 2019, OECD and the Task Team on CSO Development Effectiveness and Enabling Environment hosted the first Civil Society Days. CSOs, DAC members, partner country governments, multilateral institutions and academia came together around the theme of shrinking civil society space and to build partnerships for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Highlights included: the International Conference on Civil Society Space; a DAC-CSO Dialogue Meeting in which CSOs and DAC Delegates held policy discussions and exchanged updates on their respective agendas and priorities in line with the DAC-CSO Dialogue Framework; a brownbag lunch  on the role of CSOs in South-South and triangular co-operation; and a half-day workshop with the DAC Community of Practice on civil society, which gathered feedback from experts on initial findings and recommendations of the OECD-DAC Study on how DAC members work with civil society. 

Read the Working Paper on OECD’s Study: How DAC Members work with Civil Society

Highlights of the 2019 International Conference on Civil Society Space

Civil society is changing, and civic space is shrinking: what will be the impact on development? How are development co-operation providers addressing the urgent need to defend and expand civil society space, improve donors’ support to CSOs, and strengthen CSOs’ effectiveness, departing in the notion that an enabling environment for CSOs is a shared responsibility? From INGOs efforts to shift power to the local level, Sida’s new guiding principles for engagement with CSOs, to the OECD DAC reforms to increase transparency, and the new law governing CSOs in Ethiopia – a number of good practices and recommendations have been identified at the International Conference on Civil Society Space (6 June 2019). 

Read the Highlights of the 2019 Conference

The event is jointly hosted by:

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