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Wake Up Madagascar and Razan'ny Vohibola resist corruption and deforestation, 2017

Summary

Since 2017 Malagasy activists have run Wake Up Madagascar, training citizens in nonviolent civil resistance, organising direct actions and ‘Citizens’ Wall’ expressions against corruption, while forest communities organised Razan’ny Vohibola to defend the Vohibola forest from illegal deforestation and poaching through ritual-based community organising. [source: icnc-vohibola]

Tactics used

Background

Madagascar’s post-2002 democratic opening was followed by recurrent waves of corruption and authoritarian drift that pushed younger lawyers and activists into civil-resistance organising in the capital Antananarivo and beyond [source: icnc-vohibola]. In 2017, activists including the lawyer and political scientist Ketakandriana Rafitoson organised the movement Wake Up Madagascar, based in Antananarivo but oriented toward the whole country, with the explicit goal of awakening people power and ending injustice and corruption through nonviolent means inspired by the civil-resistance movement that had brought unexpected change in Malagasy politics in 2002 [source: icnc-vohibola]. Outside Antananarivo, traditional communities around the Vohibola forest faced illegal deforestation and poaching and responded by forming the community association Razan’ny Vohibola, which grew out of a 2017 ritual in which about 4,000 indigenous people performed a traditional zebu sacrifice, one per village, to symbolically entrust the forest to their ancestors [source: icnc-vohibola]. [source: icnc-vohibola]

What happened

Wake Up Madagascar activists organised direct actions, demonstrations and recurring training on nonviolent civil resistance targeting sources of corruption, bad governance and injustice, in partnership with international organisations including ICNC, and used tools such as the ‘Citizens’ Wall’ to give people in the streets a place to write their thoughts about the country and political situation [source: icnc-vohibola]. In the rural Vohibola forest, Razan’ny Vohibola conducted traditional anlu-style ritual gatherings, evicted illegal loggers, supported families affected by arrests for defending the forest, and functioned as a parallel community-protection structure that the central government had no easy legal handle on [source: icnc-vohibola]. Both campaigns foregrounded defection by individual civil servants, judges and security officers as a way to weaken the regime’s pillars of support, and explicitly compared the contemporary situation to the 2002 civil-resistance movement that forced President Ratsiraka from office [source: icnc-vohibola]. Razan’ny Vohibola gatherings centred on collective care, continuity and local legitimacy, anchoring the defence of the forest in customary roots rather than in conventional NGO tactics [source: icnc-vohibola]. [source: icnc-vohibola]

Key people & organizations

  • Wake Up Madagascar movement [source: icnc-vohibola]
  • Ketakandriana Rafitoson [source: icnc-vohibola]
  • Razan’ny Vohibola community association [source: icnc-vohibola]
  • Indigenous peoples of the Vohibola forest [source: icnc-vohibola]
  • International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) Learning Initiatives Network [source: icnc-vohibola]

Outcome

Verdict: open.

Official figures reported 22 people killed, nearly 200 injured and more than 1,200 arrested during the protests [source: icnc-vohibola]. Human-rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticised the security forces’ use of live ammunition and called for independent investigations [source: icnc-vohibola]. [source: icnc-vohibola]

Lessons

  • Personal acts of defection by individual civil servants, judges and security officers can be reframed as small but cumulative nonviolent acts. [source: icnc-vohibola]
  • Environmental defence that is rooted in customary ritual and community legitimacy is much harder for the state to suppress than conventional protest tactics. [source: icnc-vohibola]
  • International training partnerships can scale local nonviolent organising in places where formal civil society is constrained. [source: icnc-vohibola]

Sources

Disclaimer: Included as a teaching example of campaign craft, not as endorsement.

Sources & verification

  • icnc-vohibola — grounding: primary — license: cc-attribution
  • Verified 2026-07-04 against RAW/wake-up-madagascar-and-vohibola-civil-resistance-2017.md.

Last verified: 2026-07-09