They come with different names – “Foreign Agent Laws” or “NGO Laws” – and from governments across the political spectrum, but watchdog groups say they have a similar outcome: stifling the work of civil society organizations.
Proposals for laws that target civil society are proliferating in Latin America. With the justification of increasing transparency in the third sector and protecting national sovereignty from the influence of foreign actors, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela are currently discussing laws that interfere in the activities of these organizations. Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico have already approved or debated similar initiatives.
These laws have the potential to directly affect journalism. The economic crisis in the media industry has led to an increase in journalistic organizations funded by foundations and international philanthropy. That’s particularly true in the case of public interest journalism and independent media organizations. When civil society activities are restricted as a whole, journalists and media outlets are potential targets.
"Many journalism initiatives have adopted structuring models as non-profit organizations, especially with the sector's financial precariousness. They depend on sources of international financing and external cooperation to survive," Artur Romeu, executive director for Latin America of Reporters Without Borders (RSF, for its initials in French), told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR). "These laws are created precisely to make this type of fundraising difficult, which leads many of these organizations to face enormous barriers to continue operating.”
Nicaragua is one of the most advanced countries in terms of authoritarian measures to limit civil society. In October 2020, the National Assembly, controlled by supporters of dictators Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, approved the so-called “Gag Law” to inhibit the activities of foreign agents in the country.
As a result, each person, organization or institution, including the media and non-governmental organizations, must be registered with the Ministry of the Interior to operate in the country, subjecting them to strict surveillance and prohibiting them from engaging in matters, activities or issues of national politics.
The Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation, which worked for an independent and free press in Nicaragua, closed due to the law. The Nicaraguan chapter of PEN International, which works to defend freedom of expression, also shut down as a consequence.
As was discussed at the last Ibero-American Colloquium on Digital Journalism, there are no longer any independent newspapers operating within Nicaragua, and professionals who risk reporting independently face exile and prison. Nicaraguan authoritarian laws have not stopped: in September, the country approved a Cybercrime Law, which limits the activities of organizations that operate from exile.
In Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro has also increasingly closed spaces for dissent. Three weeks after the contested July 28 elections, the National Assembly passed, in the first discussion, the bill for the “Law on supervision, regularization, performance and financing of non-governmental and related organizations.”
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) warned that such legislation, which still needs to go through a final vote to be approved, restricts the right to association, freedom of expression and public participation, deepening the siege on civil society. The IACHR criticized the “climate of hostility against individuals and organizations that defend human rights or practice journalism in Venezuela.”
Independent media in Venezuela are highly dependent on international donations, as they do not have access to resources from the government or private companies.
“The law would primarily affect independent media first. Today many survive, thanks to these donations and these collaborations," Marivi Marín Vázquez, executive director of exiled Venezuelan organization ProBoX VE, told LJR. “What they seek is precisely to limit the livelihood and growth of independent media, which are like an additional layer that contains authoritarianism.”
In Paraguay – a country that, according to Freedom House, remains a democracy, unlike the two previous authoritarian regimes, – the Senate approved a law in July with the supposed purpose of regulating non-profit organizations that receive public and private funds from national or international sources. Organizations must be included in a national registry, provide details of the activities they carry out and submit detailed reports on how they use funds. The law still needs to pass the Chamber of Deputies.
According to Ana Piquer, Americas director at Amnesty International, “this bill could lead to the silencing of civil society and the dismantling of an environment that enables society to speak out and organize in the face of arbitrary acts or omissions by the authorities.”
Peru, in turn, has discussed six bills in recent months to control civil society, alleging a lack of supervision and threats against the rule of law in the sector. Elsewhere in the region, a foreign agents law came close to being approved in El Salvador in 2021. Guatemala approved an “NGO Law” in 2020 that gives the government the power to deregister non-profit organizations. In 2022, Mexico also considered a law that would restrict civil society.
This type of law often seeks to give an appearance of legality to measures that, in reality, aim to restrict democracy and the participation of civil society, said Artur Romeu, from RSF. He added that the impact of restrictive legislation on civic space and journalism cannot be considered in isolation, but needs to be analyzed within each national context.
"To understand where these laws are most dangerous and where they are least, we have to look at the whole. Not just their isolated existence as a tool of control, but as part of a larger structure of deterioration of the democratic environment," Romeu said.
The cases of greatest deterioration in the region are Nicaragua, where the regime of Ortega and Murillo increasingly resembles a dynastic dictatorship; Venezuela, where Maduro controls all powers with the support of the military; and El Salvador, where Nayib Bukele has full control of the legislature.
“In these cases, the laws are symptoms of advanced processes of democratic deterioration. These are situations of total hermeticism and absolute closure of all types of spaces involving civil society participation, including the church,” Romeu said.
In other situations, however, laws may be initiatives by minority groups within congress, Romeu added. In these cases, bills may end up passing and becoming laws on paper, but without supervision in practice. They end up being less harmful in practice, serving to fuel conspiracy theories of certain political groups, such as the narrative that they prevent “globalism.”
“This responds to the demands of an electorate, but has little impact,” Romeu said.
In Latin America there is a tendency to reduce civic spaces and freedoms of expression and the press regardless of the place those in power have on the political spectrum, whether left or right, said Carlos Cárdenas Angel, regional manager of the Swedish NGO ForumCiv.
"I believe that what is seen across the region, unfortunately, is the reduction of civic spaces regardless of the current party’s position on the political spectrum," he told LJR.
Those who are in favor of the laws generally argue that they are acting in defense of national sovereignty or in protecting the country against corruption, said Armando Chaguaceda, professor of political science at Veracruz College and researcher at the NGO Gobierno Y Análisis Político AC, both in Mexico City.
“All these laws, to a greater or lesser extent, are based on the argument that these NGOs or these social organizations have become spaces for laundering money or spaces of foreign influence in political systems, and therefore, they need to be restricted,” Chaguaceda told LJR.
The laws generally restrict three main areas: access to funding, organizational capacity and advocacy, Chaguaceda said. There is a circulation of authoritarian practices, with governments learning from each other how to control the press and civil society, he said.
The researcher points to several influences on legislation: firstly, Russia, a country that adopted a law on foreign agents in 2012 and has dozens of laws against civil society; but also in Cuba, in the cases of the left-wing governments of Nicaragua and Venezuela, and Hungary, of the conservative premier Viktor Orbán.
A crucial difference separates the laws from legitimate initiatives to regulate the third sector and inhibit threats to national sovereignty: the governments and parties that promote the laws do not act with concerns about strengthening the plurality inherent to democracy, but rather seek to advance a single vision of society, Chaguaceda said.
“In a democratic regime, the State and the Government can and must protect themselves from, for example, actions of misinformation or the influence of authoritarian regimes that in their own country prohibit the autonomy of civil society.
On the other hand, an authoritarian regime prohibits everything, because everything that is autonomous or different is generally adverse to it.”
Romeu, from RSF, said that “it is very simple” to realize that, in the case of these laws, the strategic vision advanced “is not happening as a legitimate attempt by the State to preserve pluralism, diversity and sovereignty of the communication space.”
If they want to advance these agendas, governments must not inhibit the financing of civil society actors, but rather encourage the promotion of pluralism through public notices and seek ways to strengthen local journalism, he said.
“This includes creating regulatory mechanisms that strengthen national and regionalized expression within a national body, guaranteeing discussion on the symbolic representation of the country,” Romeu said. “If a government wants to talk seriously about this, there is a lot to discuss before thinking about closing public space.”
