Human rights defenders in crisis. Changing space for Human Right Defenders amid the COVID-19 "Crisis" in the Former-Soviet region

Abstract

COVID-19 has unearthed and exacerbated the underlying flaws of our society. Among many other things, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased pressures on civil society actors, including human rights defenders. This research is therefore intended to contribute to a better understanding of the processes of shrinking civil society space and how ‘crises’, such as the global COVID-19 outbreak, aggravate this phenomenon. Attention is given to the role crisis discourse plays in the measures taken by governments during the pandemic. The stories of human rights defenders from the former-Soviet region, analysed using a grounded theory approach, show that COVID-19 has made the work of defenders more difficult in a direct sense, as well as by serving as a pretext for governments to justify the shrinkage of civil society space. Nevertheless, through the creative implementation of strategies, civil society actors are able to make use of new avenues to achieve positive social change