A blow to the work of non-governmental organizations

Transparency International of Bosnia and Herzegovina strongly condemns the move of the ruling coalition in Republika Srpska to adopt the Draft Law on Publicity of Non-Profit Organizations, which seeks to label and discriminate foreign-funded NGOs, without any announcement or public debate.

Namely, the disputed draft only deals with organizations whose activities and projects are financed by foreign governments and organizations and does not deal at all with organizations financed from local sources and budgets of various levels of government, which do not even have to submit reports and justify funds allocated from the budget. .

The draft law also vaguely defines political activities and political activities, thus leaving a dangerous possibility for the competent institutions to, with a broad and inadequate interpretation of the law, ban the work of organizations whose activities do not help the RS authorities.

TI BiH does not consider the need for transparency of NGO work disputable, but in this case, under the guise of transparency, it actually wants to control and limit the work of only those organizations that are not under the control of the RS authorities.

This law sends a dangerous message to citizens that NGOs are enemies of the state and is just one step in a series of years of attempts by RS authorities to restrict freedom of speech, assembly and association and stifle criticism in all ways, including totalitarian regimes. It is also absurd that the Declaration on the Compliance of this Draft Law with the EU Acquis states that the sources of EU law governing this matter have not been identified, although it is clear that the draft is contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to freedom of assembly and assembly. organization, while this draft gives the Ministry of Justice the opportunity to determine which organization can operate freely and which cannot.

TI BiH, in cooperation with other civil society organizations, will use all available mechanisms to prevent the adoption of such a law or at least enable a public debate in order to eliminate its shortcomings.

Press rls – 11 May 2015 doc