The Horn Center for Democracy (HCD) is a regional organization working to promote democratic governance, civic engagement, peacebuilding, and inclusive political participation across the Horn of Africa (HoA). As part of its regional democracy and governance initiatives, HCD seeks to establish the Horn Specific Civic Space and Pro-Democracy Actors Observatory, a regional platform dedicated to monitoring, documenting, analyzing, and disseminating information on civic space dynamics and pro-democracy actors in the region.This initiative is informed by and builds upon HCD’s earlier exploratory mapping study on civic society and pro-democracy actors in the region, which highlighted the need for continuous civic space monitoring, action-oriented research, stronger evidence generation, and deeper understanding of the evolving roles, capacities, resilience, and adaptive strategies of both formal and informal civic actors operating in restrictive political environments. You can read further into the study here: Exploratory-Mapping-FINAL.pdf.