This article has been extracted from a toolkit for advocacy organizations to assess their legitimacy within communities by Maaike Matelski, Assistant Professor at The Vrije Universiteit in …
A poem by Sugarbird:
When all the acronyms fade away and the jargon moves to the periphery
All that remains true are the strands we call community.
Decades of debate and research of the factors that enable communities to act.
In 2018 when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came into power, there seemed to be renewed hope for the country when he set off a transitional period in Ethiopia, promising to reform the country’s authoritarian state, holding elections, and implementing some liberalization policies. His predecessor, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, had resigned in the face of mass protests. However, today Ethiopia remains beset by civil war and intercommunal violence, abuses by security forces and violations of due process are still common, and many restrictive laws remain in force.
Working in civil society in Mozambique is a challenge. Not only is the country classed as repressed by the Civicus Monitor, but the northern province of Cabo Delgado has been subject to an armed insurgency since October 2017, claiming thousands of lives and displacing an estimated half of the province’s population.
