The seemingly legal curtailment of civic space: from Russia to Latin America

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Authoritarian governments have expanded their repertoire. They no longer rely solely on threats, disappearances, or violence to silence critical voices. Today, they can also do so with a carefully drafted law—one that speaks of “transparency”, “national sovereignty”, or “accountability”. A law that, on paper, seems reasonable and even necessary, but which in practice ends up tearing apart, piece by piece, the fabric of civil society.

These laws are part of a phenomenon now known as the “shrinking of civic space”, and the statistics are alarming: according to the CIVICUS Monitor, 73% of the world’s population now lives in countries with closed or repressed civic spaces. More than 66 countries impose legal restrictions on organizations that defend rights. This is no coincidence: it is a global pattern with a clear origin, a shared playbook, and a spread that is now hitting Latin America with particular force.

The Russian Model

It all began in Russia in 2012. Vladimir Putin enacted Federal Law No. 121-FZ, known as the “foreign agents” law. Its mechanism was forceful: any organization receiving foreign funding and engaging in “political activities” was required to register under the stigmatizing designation of “foreign agent”, display that label on all its materials in letters twice as large as the rest, and submit to inspections without a court order and grueling quarterly reports.

The effect was immediate and calculated. Iconic organizations such as Memorial and international groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were forced to shut down. But what mattered most was not just what the law did in Russia, but what it taught the world.

The Export of the Russian Model

Since 2012, more than 66 countries have adopted similar legislation. The chain of transmission is well-documented. Hungary passed its “Soros Law” in 2017, requiring foreign-funded NGOs to publicly label themselves as such; the Court of Justice of the European Union declared it unconstitutional in 2020, but the Orbán government took months to comply and introduced new versions in 2022 and 2025. In 2020, India amended its FCRA, prohibiting large organizations from transferring funds to smaller ones and requiring all organizations to operate through a single bank account supervised by the state.

In Latin America, Nicaragua kicked off the regional wave in 2020. Its own lawmakers dubbed the law the “Putin Law,” as its text outlined, point by point, the elements of the Russian model: registration as a foreign agent, a ban on participating in domestic politics, monthly reports, and discretionary closure. Venezuela passed its NGO oversight law in August 2024, and Paraguay followed suit in November 2024. El Salvador, in May 2025, added a 30% tax on all funds received from abroad. Peru enacted its reform of the APCI Law in April 2025, making it a “very serious offense” to use international cooperation to litigate against the state.

The Shared Playbook

What unites laws from such disparate contexts is not necessarily the ideology of their proponents, but rather the repertoire of tools. It is possible to identify at least four models that can be combined: the “foreign agent” model (stigmatization and registration, Russian model); the model of controlling international funding (blocking financial flows, Indian model); criminalization on grounds of national security (the Egyptian model); and “bureaucratic death”, suffocation through administrative requirements that are impossible to meet (the Indian model).

The official justifications for all these laws are also almost identical. “Transparency”, “national sovereignty”, “accountability”, “public interest”: this vocabulary appears in every law, from Nicaragua to Peru, from Russia to El Salvador. But none of the governments that pass these laws apply them to their own political parties, their affiliated organizations, or the funds they receive from allied governments. This selectivity is the clearest evidence of the real objective: there is no interest in transparency; there is an interest in silencing civil society.

What We Lose

In India, 21,933 organizations lost their licenses to receive foreign funding, and resources from abroad earmarked for civil society organizations fell by 40% between 2015 and 2018. In Nicaragua, the impact has been equally devastating: since 2018, the government has revoked the legal status of more than 5,600 organizations, including universities, medical associations, religious organizations, and numerous entities dedicated to education, social assistance, and the defense of human rights. These are just a few examples of the impact that such laws have had on human rights organizations and, more broadly, on civil society.

Without organizations to hold those in power accountable, corruption runs rampant. Without women human rights defenders, violations go undocumented. Without an independent press, citizens make electoral decisions without information. The shrinking of civic space is not merely a sector-specific problem for NGOs; it is the silent erosion of the conditions that make democracy possible.

Legal resistance is not enough

Organizations have not stood idly by. In Russia and Nicaragua, activists operate from exile while maintaining internal networks. In Egypt, NGOs reorganized as “law firms, research centers, and consulting firms” to circumvent the ban. In Paraguay and Peru, coalitions filed constitutional challenges and secured rulings from UN rapporteurs. In Georgia, mass protests forced the government to withdraw an initial version of the law in 2023, although it was ultimately passed in 2024.

Legal resistance is necessary but not sufficient. Courts and tribunals can declare specific laws or provisions unenforceable, but they cannot rebuild the fabric of civil society. What complements litigation is sustained international visibility, diversified funding, communications campaigns, and coalitions that extend beyond the traditional human rights sector.

We lack regional coordination

There is something deeply paradoxical about anti-NGO laws: they use the language of the law to destroy the rule of law. They call for transparency to conceal power. They invoke popular sovereignty to silence those who speak on behalf of the most vulnerable.

For countries undergoing political transitions or seeking to rebuild trust in their institutions, the main lesson is clear: protecting civic space is not a concession to civil society organizations, but a prerequisite for democratic stability. Societies that preserve a free, critical, and independent civil society are better equipped to correct abuses of power before they turn into authoritarianism.

Latin America is not facing a new phenomenon. It is facing the regional version of a playbook that has been tested in other countries for more than a decade. That playbook already offers some documented solutions. What is lacking is regional coordination to implement them with the urgency that the moment demands.