On March 25, the Armenian parliament adopted the amendments to CSO legislation addressing CSO reporting requirements. The amendments do not pose a risk to the right of privacy of donors and have been developed in collaboration with CSOs, but a number of issues have yet to be solved to ensure smooth reporting process and prevent any related risks.
The 2016 Law on public organisations introduced annual reporting requirements for organisations that have used public resources. In October 2018, the State Revenue Committee of Armenia (SRC) developed draft amendments to the law requiring all public organisations to report on an annual basis, in the same way as other type of CSOs – foundations do. In addition, the draft amendments included a requirement to disclose the names of all donors contributed to the organisation, as well as names of organisations’ members, persons included in the governing bodies, staff and volunteers in case they have used organisation resources. Amendments to the law on foundations were also proposed to include the requirement of reporting on donors. Authorities argued that these amendments were needed to improve CSO transparency and oversight of their activities to prevent possible abuses.
CSOs heavily criticised the draft: the sector considered the proposed requirements as an unreasonable burden for CSOs and a violation of the right to privacy for CSO donors, members and staff. Following discussions, SRC set up a working group of CSOs and relevant governmental agencies to finalise the drafts. The new draft amendments to the law “On Public Organisations”, posted online for a 15-day public discussion in August 2019, did not include the requirements to disclose personal information on donors and beneficiaries, and reduced the reporting items to general information on implemented projects, total annual income and expenses. In addition, the draft amendments to the law “On Foundations” were also published: these did not include any requirement on disclosing donor information anymore, and aimed to facilitate the reporting procedure for foundations. Up to present, foundations have been publishing the reports online on paid basis, while the amendments will allow them to publish reports free of charge on a special reporting platform.
The draft was included on the parliament’s agenda in February 2020. Some CSOs expressed their disagreement with reporting requirements, alarming that the state can use this requirement to intervene in CSO activities. The state representatives ensured, however, that the content of the report does not include any private information and serves as a source of information on general CSO activities for the public.
The amendments to both laws were adopted by Armenian parliament on March 25 and are expected to enter into force on April 24. According to the law, public organisations are required to publish an annual activity report by May 30 of the year following the reporting year, thus, it is expected that they will have to report on 2019 activities by May 30, 2020. The reports are to be submitted via Electronic Reporting System of the SRC, where each organisation will be able to open its personal page. In case organisations have an official website, it is required that the reports are available on the website as well.
Involvement of CSOs in development of the updated drafts was an example of successful state-CSO cooperation experience. The revised draft does not intervene with the right to privacy for donors and other CSO stakeholders, while the reporting articles include very general information on CSO annual budget and activities. The reporting requirement relates to all public organisations, which might improve the transparency of public organisations and equalise the reporting requirements towards public organisations and foundations.
At the same time, it is important to ensure large awareness-raising campaign to inform CSOs on the amendments. Some CSOs, especially small and grassroots organisations, and organisations that do not have any accounting system, might need technical assistance in filling in the report. Organisations focused on CSO capacity building already discuss some steps that could be taken to facilitate the reporting process for CSOs.