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Pamfilova hopes that the NGO bill will be completed by the second reading in the State Duma




Moscow. December 20, INTERFAX – The Chairman of the RF President Counsel on the Civil Society Institutes and Human Rights development, Ella Pamfilova, expects that the bill on NGOs will be elaborated before its submission for the second reading in the State Duma.

“We’ll see in which form this project will be submitted for consideration, there is still time”, - Ella Pamfilova said.

“Now the bill is being actively worked at. We hope a lot that the principle comments made by President and public organizations’ experts will be taken into consideration”, - she said.
“I hope that tomorrow, if the deputies will consider this bill, it will get the form that will not harm the civil society interests”.

At the same time she believes that this bill is one of the negative moments in the situation of the civil society development in 2005. “Advancing the civil society by this bill is an evident minus”, - Ella Pamfilova said, pointing out that “the plus is the reaction of the civil society to this bill”.

“There is a strong civil society – there are strong public organizations”, - she stressed.

Alexander Auzan, president of the national project “Public Agreement”, claimed that after the amendments made the NGO bill will hardly be any more liberal.

“I suppose that black god can not be cleaned white” – he said, stressing that the Public Chamber members’ reaction to this bill was not positive.

“The law should have been delayed forever”, - A.Azuan said, pointing out that there are bills which were adopted by the State Duma in the first reading and postponed in the second one.

“It feels as if the NGOs have committed a terrorist act and State Duma is urgent to take an anti-terrorism measures”,- Azuan said.

The public Chamber member, the head of the Russian department of the WWW, Igor Chestin said that the forming Public Chamber appealed to State Duma twice asking to postpone the consideration of the NGO bill.

Today’s amendments (to the NGO bill) are worse that those that were considered in the first reading”, -the ecologist said.

According to him, the NGO bill “discriminates public organizations and creates corruptive mechanisms for the officials”.

Pamfilova believes that the CivilG8 project will stimulate the civil society development in Russia.

“We are not aiming to build up a civil society in Russia for the coming G8 Summit in St. Petersburg in 2006. We want to use the unique opportunity of Russian presidency in the G8 to give a strong impulse to the civil society development in our country. We want to have a chance of qualitative development of our public organizations”, - Pamfilova said.

Explaining the essence of the CivilG8 formation, E. Pamfilova pointed out that in this way the representatives of the Russian public organizations intend to “provide for the civil accompaniment of the Summit, trying to establish cooperation with the G8 leaders, making the official decisions and influence the official G8 agenda.


E. Pamfilova pointed out the CIvilG8 project should not stop with the end of the Russian presidency in the G8. “We want to provide for the continuity, succession, transparency and openness of this initiative”, she explained. For that Russian civil society invited to cooperate a number of foreign authoritative organizations, including those from Great Britain, former G8 president, and Germany, the coming G8 president.

She also stressed that “the civil society has lots of problems, the more problems there are, the more we will be interested in the cooperation with foreign colleagues. We ask them to help as we are all interested in the democratic process development in our countries”.

According to Pamfilova “by initiating the CivilG8 project we wanted to rehabilitate the “democracy” notion in our country as it had been discriminated in our country”.

A.Azuan, the head of the national project “Public Agreement” pointed out that unlike anti-globalists, CivilG8 initiators are not appealing to the street demonstrations. “We will be influencing the G8 leaders without going out into the streets, like anti-globalists, but cooperating with Sherpas of the G8 countries”.

We are going to advance Russian interests at the coming G8 Summit. Our task is to influence its official agenda, so that this initiative will taken over by the colleagues from the other countries.

Sergei Tsyplenkov, the head of the Green Peace Counsel said that this initiative participants will seek after the “civil society voice is heard by the G8 leaders”. “For instance, we do not want the USA president convince the other to reject Kyoto Protocle. We also set a number of other concrete tasks”, - he said.

Tsyplenkov added: “We will use this initiative to help Russia to get rid of such phenomena like the preparing NGO bill”.

The conference participants criticized a lot the bill which is supposed to be read by State Duma in their second reading. A. Azuan called this project “merciless and senseless, serving no tasks and solving no problems”.

But the president of the Democracy and Human Rights Development Center, Yury Jhibladze claimed that this bill is aimed at the “improvement of the Russian civil society”.


Human Rights Advocates continue observing the situation in Belarus.

RF Counsel on Civil Institutes and Human Rights Development will continue looking after it that Belarus adhere to the human rights.

“If citizens’ appeals will concern violations of the human rights, we will appeal to Belarus Authorities”, E. Pamfilova said.

She marked Belarus out of the rest of the post Soviet countries. “Belarus plays a special role as we are forming a Union State with it, we have an agreement about it, so we cannot be indifferent to the fact how Belarus citizens are treated on our territory and how our citizens are treated there”.

At the same time she pointed out that the RF President Counsel activity does not express the official point of view. “This counsel expresses the view of the society which is not the view of the Kremlin or Authorities”, - she said.

She also mentioned the human rights situation worldwide has become worse. “Unfortunately, many countries that we considered the Democracy pattern, now set a bad example (in observing human rights)”, E. Pamfilova said at the press-conference in the ITARFAX central office. She reminded about a number of scandals in Europe caused by the secret jails discovery.

According to Pamfilova human rights violation in the “countries of developed democracy” strengthens the positions of the Officials’ machinery, making the situation of the human rights in Russia tougher.

Pamfilova mentioned that “It made our work and the work of the human rights advocates worldwide more difficult”.

The head of the Democracy and Human Rights Development Center, Yury Jhibladze, expressed his complicated point of view: “Lately, the tendencies of the human rights in were negative around the world. He believes tha those tendencies became worse after the September 11 tragedy in the USA.

Expert opinion

Halter Marek

02.12.06

Halter Marek
Le College de France
Olivier Giscard d’Estaing

02.12.06

Olivier Giscard d’Estaing
COPAM, France
Mika Ohbayashi

02.12.06

Mika Ohbayashi
Institute for Sustainable Energy Poliñy
Bill Pace

02.12.06

Bill Pace
World Federalist Movement - Institute for Global Policy
Peter I. Hajnal

01.12.06

Peter I. Hajnal
Toronto University, G8 Research Group


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