(Source: http://peunam.net/?p=224)

The amendments to the law on NGOs establishing specific criteria for socially oriented and socially important organizations will be made to the State Duma in the autumn session.

This initiative was proposed by the Council for Human Rights under the Russian President and the Public Chamber, as the newspaper “Izvestia” writes. As it is explained, the need to avoid ambiguity of socially oriented and important NGOs arose after the story with the “Dynasty” Foundation which was included into the register of “foreign agents”, after which its founder Dmitry Zimin announced the termination of financing of the organization.

Human rights defenders and social activists are going to clearly define the term “social NGO” in the bill. “The law now has a term “socially-oriented NGOs”, but it is incomplete. The amendments will only be written now, in the autumn they will be considered in the State Duma. And they are to be adopted before the end of the current year” - the HRC clarified. 52 non-profit organizations were recognized foreign agents in Russia, at that, thousands of them receive foreign grants. According to the data of the Ministry of Justice and the Public Chamber, 4108 foreign NGOs received financing totaling more than 70 billion roubles for 2014.

On May 25 the Ministry of Justice of Russia included “Dynasty” into the list of foreign agents following the inspection results. Zimin said he was not going to appeal against the decision in court and expressed doubt that the foundation would be able to exist without his help.

The President of Russia Vladimir Putin signed a law on undesirable foreign and international organizations. The text of the document was published on Saturday, May 23, at the official web-portal of legal information.

The law allows to recognize undesirable the activities of international or foreign non-governmental organization presenting a threat to the fundamentals of the constitutional order of Russia, its defense capacity or security.

The procedure of inclusion of companies into the list of undesirable ones will be performed by the Prosecutor General or his deputies in coordination with the Foreign Ministry of the RF. In addition, according to this law, financial institutions are not allowed to conduct transactions with money or other property from undesirable NGOs. The possibility of exclusion of such organizations from this list is also considered. The activities of organizations such as Human Rights Watch may be prohibited in Russia.