The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights has answered Russian NGO leaders

On January 31, 2006, Mr. Alvaro Hill-Robles, the head of the Council of Europe's (CE) Commission for Human Rights, replied to the leaders of the several leading Russian nongovernmental organizations (NGO). They sent him a letter on December 23, 2005, asking to undertake definite efforts to prevent adoption of the Russian Federal law that would toughen the state control over the NGOs.

Caucasian Knot has received the text of the letter. The CE commissioner for human rights says that he has been concerned from the very beginning by plans to reconsider legislative structure for the nongovernmental organizations in Russia. Being a commissioner for six years he had been able to witness the effectiveness of the Russian human rights organizations and considered existed legislation working well enough.

Moreover, the draft of a new law on NGO appeared to have significant drawbacks, Mr. Alvaro Hill-Robles states. Nevertheless he was optimistic after he had personally expressed his concerns to the Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation Jury Chajka. Many remarks of the Council of Europe were considered in the final variant of the accepted document; though not all the problems are solved yet. Mr. Alvaro Hill-Robles is especially concerned by some uncertain statements in the newly adopted Russian law that appears to enable arbitrary applications of the law.

In this context, the CE commissioner underlines the importance of supervision of how the new law on NPO will be implemented. He asked the Russian authorities to do their best to protect civil society and promised to follow the situation within remaining months of his mandate as the CE commissioner. In conclusion the Commissioner expresses his respect to the addressees for their efforts and his gratitude for the cooperation within past six years.

In his comments to the CK correspondent human rights expert Jury Dzhibladze characterized the letter as very general one speaking more about common elements rather than about the details of the law itself. Environmental expert Svjatoslav Zabelin expressed the same opinion, having named the letter a "diplomatic do-nothing".