Digital Media & Comms 4 Civic Inclusion Mobilizing the power of people to overcome poverty and injustice is at the heart of Oxfam's mission and vision. To realize this vision, people need space to speak out and organize against injustice and the root causes of poverty, without fear of repercussions. Yet civic space, as the oxygen for people's voices, and vital prerequisite for a rights based approach to development, is currently shrinking on a global scale.
People in many countries around the world face serious restrictions and repression when exercising their basic rights. This includes citizens who raise their voices against corruption and political dysfunction, organizations that save lives and provide basic services to people in need, communities that defend their sustainable livelihoods and demand a fair share of natural resources, and activists who fight for gender justice. In Nigeria civic space is closed, repressed or obstructed and only 4% of the world's population live in countries with open civic space.
Oxfam works together with allies and partners around the world toprotect and expand the space for all people, and especially for marginalised groups, to speak out, assemble and organise on issues that matter to them, without fear of repercussions, intimidation or censorship. We are determined to reverse the global trend of shrinking civic space and to create new, more inclusive, spaces in which people can freely express their identities, negotiate common solutions and hold power-holders accountable for the realization of people's rights. We believe that it is the diversity and vibrancyof civil society that has the potential to create a future that benefits everybody, and not just the privileged few.
This intervention will focus on advancing advocacy and programming using digitalmedia and traditional media towards the following key transformative changes to combat drivers of shrinking civic space in Nigeria:
• More engaged and active citizenry with positive attitudes towards the role and value of civil society and civic space
•Increased resilience and effectiveness of civil society partners
• Strengthening and making effective use of media agencies.
• More vocal champions and more prominence for civic space in discourses from regional and global institutions and actors.

Avibrant and active civic space is a critical component of Oxfam's work and we recognize five  fundamental issues that will guide our strategy in influencing shrinking civic space. First, there is a need to understand the trends affecting civic spaces inNigeria. Second, we are not the only players interested in protecting civic space and as such will work collaboratively with stakeholders (partners, government, donors and development partners) to achieve our goal. Third, recognizing the broad spectrum of drivers of shrinking civic space and limited expertise and resources, we will focus on strengthening the capacity of journalists and civil society organizations to improve  free media space, cut out media censorship and protect the digital space. Through our work in Nigeria Oxfam aims that, Women's rights are mainstreamed, socio-economic and political rights of all citizens are prioritized, interventions continuously promote transparency and accountability among partners. All of this will be done through programs with civil society, international institutions, and the private sector framework and shape narrative and by implicationimprove the legitimacy of civil society organizations among its constituents. Fourth, to ensure synergy between proposed interventions and existing national and global campaigns. Finally, our strategy is to ensure government and policy makers do not enact laws that further restrict and shrink the civic space. Consequently, our activities will work towards increasing opportunities for engagement among media practitioners, civil society, government, partners and citizens. Our approach therefore will combine a standalone intervention/program while mainstreaming civic spaces strengthening in existing Programs.

Some of the issues this intervention seeks to address include the following:
• Censorship of media content by regulators
• Ban on peaceful demonstration
• Attack on the media both traditional and new media (e.g. twitter ban).
• Disruption of protest by the police
• Harassment of citizens
• Journalists beingdetained among others.

Key Changes
Civil society remain relevant among the citizenry and are empowered to positively influence government to provide social, economic and human rights for all.

Oxfam NigeriaApproach
Oxfam Nigeria will continue to monitor the civic space trend with a focus on protecting the space as much as possible, strengthening civic space capacity working with journalists,civil society organizations and adapting our programs to providethemuch-needed support among sub-national, national, regional, sub-regional partners working on shrinking civic space.

We want to see the following changes across these levels of results:
1. Strong civil society space actors/organizations
2. Vibrant mediacommunity
3. Engaged and active citizenry
4. Improved coordination

Activities
• Dialogue series among media practitioners and the National Orientation Agency-a government parastatal to support expansion of civic spaces.

• Media Advocacy on civicinclusion


• Capacity building of CSOs in those states to advocate and engage with government on existing restrictive  laws/policies around civil society and strategies for influencing.


• Provide digital security trainingfor organized media andpartners/organizations working as frontline defenders.


• Training of Investigative Journalists, e.g. On the need to follow up corrupt rooted procurement related cases and develop content for writing their stories.

• Design an accountability framework for monitoring the status of civic space in Nigeria.

Oxfam recognizes that peer organizations possess specialized knowledge and experience and access to key spaces and stakeholders. Rather than replicate these strengths, our added value inheresin ourability to make links across global institutions, spaces, and issue contexts. We believe that Oxfam can help catalyze joint work toraise the political temperature needed to sustain pressure for positive action on civic space, similar to what Oxfam has done with respect to inequality. In advocacy and policy conversations regarding the importance of civic space to broader domestic and foreign policy objectives. As a result, we are often able to situate civic space within a holistic rights framework, inclusive of economic and social rights, in addition to civil and political rights.  We will use the civic space influencing strategy as a guide to supporthe implementation of this intervention.