Briefer: One year of COVID-19 and civic freedoms in the Eastern Partnership region

19-04-2021
A summary of legal responses and how they affected civic freedoms in the past year in six EaP countries.

To slow the spread of COVID-19, governments all over the world have adopted and applied restrictive responses. This was no different in the Eastern Partnership (EaP) region, where the measures had troubling impacts on civic freedoms. 

This briefer is based on several ECNL sources and provides regional overview to the governmental legal responses throughout the pandemic and their enforcement in practice since March 2020. It breaks down the restrictions by the types of freedoms affected and brings attention to the ways thriving civic space have been threatened as a result. Moreover, it gives examples of how the measures were successfully challenged before court.