The state of Civil Society in North Africa

Civil Society Restrictions in North Africa: The Impact on Climate-Focused Civil Society Organizations

For climate-focused civil society in western North Africa (defined here as Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) to be most effective, organizations should work together to develop networks that extend their reach beyond their local area and connect across borders to share best practices and amplify each other’s work. However, civil society organizations (CSOs) in western North Africa face a variety of restrictions that limit their ability to impact policy change. Climate-focused CSOs are, at times, able to navigate these restrictions when they are perceived as development- rather than activist-focused and when they complement rather than challenge their governments.

North African governments face serious governance challenges ranging from inadequate healthcare and education to poor air quality and water scarcity, which are directly tied to climate change. CSOs have traditionally attempted to fill the gaps left by government inadequacy. However, following the Arab Spring, when civil society groups and informal networks rose up in protest against their governments across the Middle East and North Africa, Arab leaders have been more thoughtful and thorough in their repression against civil society, forcing CSOs to adapt their tactics.

Climate-focused CSOs (in other words, organizations that work on addressing the causes and consequences of climate change) operate in a somewhat liminal space. They are not as overtly threatening as human rights–focused CSOs, but they often highlight government inadequacy in a way that is uncomfortable for incumbent regimes. Nevertheless, climate-focused CSOs and governments often share the same goals of addressing acute governance challenges such as water, energy, and food scarcity. CSOs can therefore market themselves to governments as partners rather than adversaries to both avoid repression and improve the lives of their fellow North Africans.

Civil society has been active in North Africa for decades across a variety of issue areas. Since the 1980s, the civil society landscape has grown dramatically in size, scope, and reach. Prior to the 2011 Arab uprisings, civil society organizations primarily focused on service delivery, development work, cultural preservation, and—where permitted—limited advocacy on issues like women’s rights, labor conditions, and environmental protections. Organizations working on sensitive political issues such as human rights, democratization, and government accountability, faced severe restrictions and operated primarily in exile or underground.

Tunisia underwent the most dramatic transformation, experiencing a rebirth of civil society during its short-lived democratic transition when civic space opened up and formal CSOs, informal networks, and individual activists were given relatively free rein to operate. Post-uprising, Tunisian civil society expanded beyond service delivery to embrace advocacy and human rights work, environmental justice campaigns, anti-corruption efforts, and direct policy engagement, which had all been impossible under Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s authoritarian rule.

In Morocco and Algeria, civil society did not experience such a dramatic opening, but the uprisings nevertheless forced significant changes in state-society relations. Morocco’s regime responded with constitutional reforms in 2011 and expanded space for certain types of civil society activity, particularly in environmental and development sectors, while maintaining tight control over explicitly political organizations. Civil society shifted toward more decentralized, community-based activism and increasingly used environmental and social issues as entry points for broader governance critiques. Algeria saw the rise of new social movements, particularly around unemployment and regional marginalization, though the regime maintained strict control through its restrictive 2012 associations law. The people in both countries realized they had power to force change, and governments became acutely aware of this potential, leading to a pattern of limited tactical concessions combined with continued repression of direct challenges to authority.

Across North Africa today, there are increased levels of repression against civil society, with regimes cognizant of the potential power of the people to mobilize and therefore more proactive in their attempts to prevent future uprisings. Thus, in the years since the Arab uprisings, civil society has evolved from primarily service-oriented organizations to increasingly sophisticated advocacy networks working on environmental justice, anti-corruption, and human rights—often using cross-sectoral approaches that blend environmental, social, and governance issues—while simultaneously facing escalating repression and prosecution. The result is a paradox: Civil society is more experienced, more networked, and more strategic than before 2011, yet it operates in environments that are in many ways more restrictive than the ones that sparked the uprisings.

Climate-focused CSOs fall under the category of development civil society as they are not advocating for democratic reform. In Morocco, the most prevalent types of organizations are climate and environmental, development and service delivery, and women’s rights. In Algeria, the most prevalent types are labor unions and workers’ organizations, climate and environmental organizations, and cultural organizations (usually Amazigh). In Tunisia, the most common organizations are climate and environmental, advocacy and human rights, women’s rights, and development and service delivery.

Furthermore, civil society encompasses a wide variety of organizations and networks of varying sizes and structures. While there are hundreds of thousands of registered CSOs in North Africa, there are also many unregistered organizations, informal networks, online-based communities, and other nontraditional types of civil society organizing. Civil society in North Africa faces a variety of de facto and de jure restrictions including strict NGO laws, bureaucratic hurdles, censorship, intimidation, and arrests and prosecutions of CSO members. Furthermore, CSOs struggle with insufficient funding, public apathy, and poor communication and coordination with other CSOs, which all limit their reach.

While independent media were common in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia up until a few years ago, today nearly every independent media outlet has disappeared, and few independent journalists remain in the region. In each of the three countries, governments have increased their crackdowns on journalists and other voices critical of the government over the past few years.

North African governments also employ strict CSO registration procedures that make it challenging and expensive to register an organization. Governments in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia use legal loopholes to hold up registration processes and prevent CSOs from accessing their funds. A dependence on external donors also complicates the work of CSOs, as governments impose restrictions on foreign funding of civil society. While in Morocco there are few restrictions on foreign funding, in Algeria, foreign funds require prior government approval. In Tunisia CSOs are legally allowed to receive foreign funds, though such organizations must notify the government of the source, value, and purpose of any foreign funds and publish this information both on their website and in a print media outlet within a month of the decision to accept the funds.

There has been an increase in harassment against associations that receive foreign funds. Activists working with these organizations are often accused of being agents for foreign countries. Several CSOs report harassment, public accusations of "foreign agendas,” and pressure during financial audits or administrative inspections. Generally, if CSOs avoid Morocco’s redlines (the monarchy, Islam, and the territorial integrity of Western Sahara), they can navigate at least some space to operate. However, Morocco has used a creative technique—accusing critics of sexual crimes such as rape and human trafficking in order to silence and humiliate them, rather than accusing them of a political offense. Furthermore, Morocco’s well-known, sophisticated online surveillance systems act as a constraint on freedom of expression.

In Algeria, civic space is tightly controlled with what the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law calls "legislation restricting the exercise of civil and political rights.” One of the outcomes of the 2019 Hirak movement, a popular uprising against a fifth mandate for then president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, was the institutionalization of even more restrictive laws than in the past, which further shrank civic space ahead of the 2020 presidential elections. As a result, today the Algerian government has a wide variety of tools at its disposal to silence critics. These include travel bans and the use of anti-terrorism laws to target activists who criticize the government. Additionally, a highly restricted media environment directly impacts the ability of civil society to operate, preventing reporting on civil society activity and hampering CSOs from raising awareness around the different issues they work on. While in Morocco and Tunisia the media can help CSOs reach a wider audience by publicizing their work, this is far more challenging in Algeria.

Tunisia, on paper, is the best performing of the Arab states in the civil society sphere, with a liberal NGO law (Decree No. 88 of 2011) that was put in place during the decade of democracy. The law does provide government oversight of foreign funding, in line with the way democratic governments police their civil society spheres, but it generally gives CSOs and individual activists the space for operational capacity—whether as government watchdogs or as charitable organizations that help fill in governance gaps. However, following President Kais Saied’s self-coup in 2021, CSOs have faced increasing restrictions including regular arrests of government critics, bans on demonstrations, and a 2022 law punishing anyone who "deliberately uses communication networks and information systems to produce, promote, publish, or transmit false information or false rumors” with five years in prison (or ten years if the target is a public servant).

Because of the level of repression against civil society across the region, CSOs have traditionally adopted one of three strategies to achieve their goals, which I have previously outlined: "allowing themselves to be fully captured by the regime, choosing to confront the state, or choosing to be partially co-opted, while maintaining some level of autonomy.”³ The choice a CSO makes is shaped by the interaction of three main factors: the level of perceived threat the CSO presents to the regime, the amount of foreign funding the CSO has access to, and the level of non-domestic rhetorical support the CSO receives.⁴

Informally organized civil society activity can be an effective tactic to avoid some government repression against activism that is seen as threatening to the state, as it allows CSOs to circumvent funding rules and cumbersome official registration.

The leaderless nature of the GenZ 212 movement in Morocco fall 2025, was an intentional choice by youth both to democratize the movement and to prevent the Moroccan security services from targeting any one or group of individuals, as they had done in the Rif protests in 2017 with the arrest of protest leader Nasser Zefzafi, who remains in prison today.

Similarly, in Tunisia, the protests that have targeted the Saied government remain leaderless and largely decentralized. The shift toward more informal civil society activity also reflects a growing disinterest among youth, who often dominate the civil society sphere, in formal politics and civic engagement more broadly.

Climate-focused CSOs as a more recent phenomenon have chosen a less confrontational path than other types of CSOs. One reason is that climate-focused CSOs are often local, community-based movements involved in targeted campaigns to address a localized problem.

While these types of movements can operate more nimbly than larger, more formalized organizations, they face the same legal and security barriers as other CSOs and, if they draw the attention of the government, can be confronted with surveillance and repression. In both Morocco and Tunisia, the Trump administration has made 100 percent cuts to prior nonmilitary assistance, under which funding for civil society falls. North African governments traditionally scrutinize foreign funding of civil society and can enact bureaucratic hurdles that make it difficult for organizations, particularly smaller ones, to access their funding. Such hurdles can include prior approval requirements, lengthy registration processes, vague criteria for approval or denial of registration or funding, and complex reporting and monitoring requirements.

In Algeria, the Ministry of Interior must preapprove all foreign donations, and there are no clear criteria under which the government can deny approval. Additionally, CSOs have no legal recourse to contest such a denial. In all three countries, organizations must preregister with the government in order to conduct financial transactions, open bank accounts, access government funds, legally accept contributions, hire staff, or rent offices in their organization’s name. In both Algeria and Tunisia, the governments operate with wide discretion as to the criteria to approve or deny both CSO registration and funding access. And in all three countries, governments have legal oversight and supervision over CSOs, which are subject to monitoring and auditing requirements as well as surveillance. This can include several layers of mandatory registration and authorization requirements for funding and for holding meetings and events outside of the organization’s headquarters. Furthermore, CSOs in Morocco have reported that the government uses administrative delays to suppress their activities.

The climate CSO landscape is also hampered in its effectiveness by its lack of inclusion in the policy process. CSOs in general, and climate-focused CSOs in particular, are rarely involved in policymaking discussions, limiting the reach of their voices. The exception to this is Tunisia, which has emerged as a model for other North African countries in its commitment to engaging youth voices, in particular, in the climate policy conversation. Tunisia, which saw an explosion of CSO creation in the wake of the 2011 revolution, also saw more than 1,000 environmental organizations formed, but only around fifty remain today. Individuals close to the monarchy form quasi-independent organizations that are protected by their affiliation with the monarchy and are not seen as confrontational or threatening.

Civil society organizations in North Africa—including climate-focused CSOs—have developed a series of tactics to allow them to operate under what have become increasingly challenging circumstances. First, organizations tend to be more successful when they complement the government’s existing agenda. Meanwhile, organizations that challenge the government or intentionally shed light on governance failures (such as human rights organizations) represent a direct threat to the government and often face harsher pushback and pressure, including violence. Climate-focused CSOs can fall in a variety of places along the spectrum of complementing or challenging the government, depending on their tactics and issue areas. Additionally, climate-focused CSOs benefit from access to large amounts of foreign funding. This, however, is a double-edged sword,

A third tactic is the use of informal networks or other alternative legal structures rather than formally organized CSOs. Some CSOs have changed their registration status to operate as a law firm, research center, or commercial company, where the bureaucratic procedures are more friendly than they are for CSOs.

For climate-focused civil society in North Africa to be most effective, organizations should work together to develop networks that both extend their reach beyond their local area and connect across borders to share best practices and amplify each other’s work.

An additional way that climate-focused CSOs can be more effective is in their marketing. The policy changes climate-focused CSOs advocate for benefit the public and the government. Thus, climate CSOs in North Africa can do a better job of selling themselves to their governments—whether local or national—as important players in addressing myriad governance challenges. Governments for their part should ease some of the restrictions—particularly the bureaucratic hurdles—facing climate (and other) CSOs. Governments should consider climate-focused CSOs as partners, rather than adversaries. While climate-focused CSOs can shed unwanted light on governance failures, they can also better identify local problems. When climate-focused CSOs and governments see each other as beneficial partners, they can forge a path forward that benefits all of the people of North Africa.

Sarah Yerkes, Senior Fellow, Middle East Program, Kathryn Selfe for her research assistance with this article.