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This issue includes:
- Brazil’s 2026 Election: Protecting the Ballot Box
- Sounding the Alarm: The Ugandan LGBTQ+ Community Is Under Siege
- African Commission Takes Action Against Lawsuits Used to Silence Public Voices
- Democratic Resilience: Why Citizen Engagement Matters More Than Ever
- Democracy & Delivery: Reimagining What We’re Fighting For
- From garden minds to garden practice: Supporting organizational regeneration while the ground is still shaking
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Brazil’s 2026 Election: Protecting the Ballot Box | |
As Brazil heads into another pivotal election, Pacto pela Democracia Executive Director
Flávia Pellegrino warns that disinformation, political violence, and potential foreign
interference could undermine trust in the country’s voting system. In a new op-ed for
Poder360, Pellegrino examines the threats facing electoral integrity and argues that
protecting Brazil’s democracy will require collective commitments to defend the
sovereignty of the ballot box.
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Sounding the Alarm: The Ugandan LGBTQ+ Community Is Under Siege | |
Three years after Uganda enacted its sweeping Anti-Homosexuality Act, LGBTQ+
Ugandans face escalating discrimination, violence, arrests, and exclusion. In a powerful
reflection, 2026 CFK Global Fellow Clare Byarugaba documents the law’s devastating
human cost and the climate of fear it has created, while drawing a direct connection between the erosion of LGBTQ+ rights and Uganda’s broader democratic decline. Yet
amid repression, the community continues to organize, resist, and hope.
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African Commission Takes Action Against Lawsuits Used to Silence Public Voices | |
The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has adopted a landmark
resolution calling for a study on Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation
(SLAPPs) in Africa. Welcomed by the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Human Rights, the resolution recognizes how abusive litigation can target journalists, human rights defenders, whistleblowers, lawyers, and activists. It also urges states to investigate such abuses, strengthen legal safeguards, and expand access to legal assistance.
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Democratic Resilience: Why Citizen Engagement Matters More Than Ever | |
As trust in public institutions declines and political polarization grows, The Hague
Academy for Local Governance examines how citizens can have a more meaningful
role in shaping public policy. In the article, Tess Schijvenaars, an advisor at EMMA
Experts in Media and Society and a citizen participation expert, argues that citizens’
assemblies can strengthen democratic resilience by giving people a meaningful voice in decision-making, building trust, and bringing perspectives often missing from traditional political processes.
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Democracy & Delivery: Reimagining What We’re Fighting For | |
For decades, elections, courts, and a free press have been the standard measures of a
healthy democracy. But what happens when democracy fails to deliver dignity, equality,
justice, and a livable planet? Join feminist thinkers and practitioners from South Africa,
Tunisia, Egypt, and Chile for a global conversation on reimagining what democracy should deliver—and what happens when it doesn’t.
September 3, 2026
3 PM Cairo | 2 PM Johannesburg | 1 PM Tunis | 8 AM Santiago
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From garden minds to garden practice: Supporting organizational regeneration while the ground is still shaking | |
What if organizations are not machines to be fixed, but gardens to be tended? In a new
essay, Olga Bentz, founder of ODeSA – Organisational Development Support Agency, explores what regenerative organizational development can look like when the ground is still shaking. Drawing on her work with Ukrainian civil society, Bentz examines how organizations can survive, recover, and transform simultaneously—and what it takes to create the conditions for healthier ways of working, leading, and growing.
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