About 300 nongovernmental organizations officially voicing against changes in the Armenian law on NGOs demand that the author of the law, the Ministry of Justice, should recall the draft legislation from the National Assembly.

A special initiative group set up to this effect has been collecting signatures against the government bill in the past two months.

Representatives of NGOs insist that the proposed amendments immediately violate the principle of sovereignty of NGOs, creates possibilities for unnecessary administrative procrastinations and enables the government to interfere with the activities of independent organizations.

“It is already several years that our authorities seek to establish control over legally independent nongovernmental organizations. If amendments envisaged by the bill are adopted, they will achieve their goal,” says director of the Ecolur environmental NGO Inga Zarafyan.

She and her other colleagues protest the provisions of the government bill that they insist will only double the amount of work done by NGOs. Under the draft amendments, for example, it is required that NGOs publish their financial reports, the list of implemented projects, deals and dozens of materials of this nature in a press outlet printed in no less than 1,000 copies. Zarafyan is baffled at why they should publish information that they already submit to tax bodies every year.

“Even in their own accounts they [government bodies] present general figures that often say nothing and they demand that we present detailed accounts, meanwhile it is government bodies that should be accountable to us, and we should have the right to oversee them,” stresses Zarafyan.

Government representatives, meanwhile, have brushed aside these accusations and argue that the bill is in line with democratic norms and is only aimed at ensuring a greater transparency of NGOs’ operations.

Last month the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) passed judgment on the government bill in response to a request from the Ministry. In particular, it said that “some of the changes could possibly be interpreted as improvements of the workings of public organizations in Armenia, but others impose additional burdens.”

“The bill is heavily tilted in favor of the burdens and attempts to strengthen the control of the State over public organizations,” it said in a written report. “Some of the provisions are therefore difficult to justify, and are in tension with international standards and practices which even further buttresses the need for additional deliberations with the participation of the affected parties.”

Justice Minister Gevorg Danielyan, meanwhile, still insisted that the bill contained nothing that would amount to tightening government oversight over NGOs. Debate on the bill in parliament by then had already been postponed and the minister said that changes would be made in it before it was re-submitted to the legislature.

Originally, changes in the law had been proposed at the suggestion of seven so-called creative unions that wanted that the word ‘union’ should acquire a legal formulation and that they hold their conventions, now held biannually, every fourth year, “because of shortage of means.”

Shogher NGO chairwoman Hasmik Aslanyan insists that the rest of the controversial provisions were drafted without their knowledge and without public discussions and thus the views of more than 3,500 officially registered NGOs have been disregarded.

“We simply demand that the bill be withdrawn and that it be decided only after discussions with us whether it should be changed or not,” she says.

It is not clear yet what will be the fate of the proposed legislation. The Ministry of Justice promises to provide the initiative group of NGOs with clear information on Friday. Meanwhile, many NGOs say if they get a negative response they are ready to resort to demonstrations as the next step in their struggle.