The Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation recognizes civil society’s importance in policy formulation, development programming and implementation (including service delivery) as well as promoting and protecting human rights. At Busan, states committed to, “Implement fully our respective commitments to enable CSOs to exercise their roles as independent development actors, with a particular focus on an enabling environment, consistent with agreed international rights, that maximizes the contributions of CSOs to development.” The freedoms of association, assembly and expression are integral to the nature and operations of civil society as key players and partners in any development agenda. The state thus has positive and negative obligations to, respectively, implement measures that create an enabling environment (including making engagement spaces and opportunities for engagement available) and to refrain from conduct that interferes with these rights.
