Civil society

This topic explains what civil society means, how does it work and how we can valorise it

Do you know civil society?

Look at the following photographs and try to connect them with the names of people or related events.

Correct answer: Suffragettes
Suffragettes - women fighting for their right to vote.
Correct answer: Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. - an American pastor, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs.
Correct answer: Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela - South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist who served as the President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was South Africa's first black chief executive, and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election.
Correct answer: Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948. The Declaration represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled.
Correct answer: Amnesty International
Amnesty International - non-governmental organisation focusing on human rights with over 3 million members and supporters around the world.
© Veronika Strelcova
Correct answer: Occupy movement
Occupy movement - an international protest movement against perceived social and economic inequality, its primary goal being to make the economic and political relations in all societies less vertically hierarchical and more flatly distributed.

Questions to reflect on

  • From your own experience, experience of your family or friends or information from social media, what do you know about the non-democratic regimes existing in the past or presence?
  • Do you know about any human rights violations around you nowadays? If yes, does civil society deal with them?