Civic Space Lab Leaders' Group

The Leaders’ Group is a platform for governments with proven track records in civic space protection. It helps develop strategic approaches to strengthen civic freedoms, democratic participation, and civil society resilience, ultimately ensuring democracy’s long-term health and sustainability.

In a world of rapid technological and geopolitical change, vibrant civic space provides the foundation that lets democracies adapt, renew legitimacy, reduce polarization, and deliver for citizens into the future.

The Leaders’ Group is a collaborative platform within the Civic Space Lab for governments demonstrating leadership on civic space issues. It aims to support them in identifying and addressing civic space vulnerabilities, tackling frontier civic space issues, and mainstreaming civic space across their whole administration.

The Leaders’ Group aims to:

• Support joint problem solving to address civic space vulnerabilities in countries
• Facilitate targeted interventions on key civic space issues (e.g. NGO laws, protest laws, etc).
• Increase the capacity of member governments to implement effective civic space strategies and/or to mainstream civic space across their administration.
• Develop a positive narrative for civic space that encourages governmental leadership

The Leaders’ Group is specifically aimed at:

• Governments with demonstrated positive track records on protecting civic freedoms
• Senior government officials responsible for civic space reforms through policies, legislation and initiatives
• Reformist administrations willing to share and learn from international best practices
• Countries that can serve as regional or global exemplars in civic space protection

The Leaders’ Group is intended to focus on enabling individual and collective action on civic space as a complement to other fora focused on peer exchange. It employs a three-pronged approach to achieving its objectives:

• Collaborative Policy Development: Joint definition of recommendations and practical pathways forward on critical civic space issues, potentially resulting in shared frameworks, principles and/or norms.
• Strategic Implementation Support: Mechanisms to instigate and provide peer support for country-developed strategies and action plans, offering constructive feedback and support.
• Peer Mentorship: Opportunities for peer-to-peer support to inspire action, identify challenges and develop solutions in protecting and expanding civic space.

European Civil Society Action Group

Europe has not been immune to the global trend of declining civic space. In response, in November 2025, the EU Commission adopted a Strategy for Civil Society, containing three pillars of 1) strengthening an effective engagement with CSOs as partners in governance; 2) supporting and protecting CSOs; and 3) ensuring adequate, sustainable, predictable and sufficient financing. As well as outlining steps that the EU Commission will take, the strategy invites member states to take various actions themselves, including:

• Strengthening engagement mechanisms and policies in accordance with the principles identified in the Strategy, including by taking further steps to fully implement Commission Recommendation (EU) 2023/2836, as regards the effective participation of civil society organisations.
• Developing or updating dedicated national strategies or action plans to support, protect and empower civil society organisations and foster a safe and enabling civic space, in line with Commission Recommendation (EU) 2023/2836.

Several countries within the EU and beyond have already established practices on civic space strategies (e.g. Ireland’s Community and Voluntary Sector Strategy; Finland’s CSO Strategy; Dominican Republic’s National Civic Space Strategy) and/or institutionalised government-civil society engagement mechanisms (e.g. France’s Economic, Social and Environmental Council; Sweden’s National Body for Dialogue and Consultation; Lithuania’s NGO Council). This creates an opportunity to learn from implementation to date, co-create practical tools and recommendations to support their future implementation, and encourage and support further countries to adopt these practices.

Between September 2026 and August 2027, supported by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and in collaboration with partners, OGP will:

1. Convene a member-led coalition of countries working on (i) civic space or civil society strategies and/or (ii) institutionalised government-civil society engagement mechanisms, with a particular focus on Europe, and to **collect, document, and share effective practices.
2. Co-create practical tools and recommendations for countries to establish robust civic space or civil society strategies and institutionalised government-civil society engagement mechanisms, based on learning from country practice to-date.
3. Encourage and support implementation of civic space or civil society strategies and institutionalised government-civil society engagement mechanisms via OGP’s action framework, sharing inspirational cases and facilitating peer-to-peer country engagement.

Contact [email protected] for more information.