On New Year’s Eve, the government of Belarus introduced the draft law on amending the laws on public associations and on political parties in the parliament.
The draft law has been in the making since 2019. It was tabled for official public discussion and was even introduced in the parliament and then withdrawn from it in 2020. However, this 2022 draft law version presented by the government is significantly worse compared to the previous versions, especially for political parties and large national-level associations.
It appears that the results of the constitutional reform carried out in Belarus in February 2022 became an incentive to speed up the long-running work on this draft. The current version of this draft law contains references to the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly introduced into the Constitution as a representative body of civil society. There is a chance that this draft law goes in the same package with other bills related to the constitutional reform, including the new edition of the Electoral Code, draft laws On Essentials of Civil Society and on All-Belarusian People’s Assembly.
The draft law would introduce stricter requirements on the number and address of public association branches, and the place where they can be established is only in office buildings. It gives broadly phrased obligations, as well as new ground for forced liquidation. The draft law also includes few positive norms, such as the clarification of ambiguities or possibilities of dual interpretation resulting from law enforcement practices and eases some burdensome administrative requirements.
Political parties are also affected by these changes, and they will face additional severe restrictions such as: an increase in the required number of local branches, founders or members; bans on the receipt of funding and political party membership for citizens permanently reside outside the country. Political parties will be required to re-register in a very short period of time, and only a few pro-government parties meet the requirements of the new criteria.
All public associations will have to bring their charters in compliance with the new norms within a year after the law comes into force. Some of the new requirements will likely make it difficult for public associations to comply and keep up their operation.
The number of public associations has been constantly decreasing over the past two years in Belarus. Among more than 1173 CSOs subject to liquidation as of the end of 2022, there were 515 public associations against which forced liquidation was initiated and 280 associations that made a decision on self-liquidation due to unfavorable conditions for activity. Thus, 795 public associations have either been liquidated or are in the liquidation process now, which makes up 26% of the total number of public associations (as of January 1, 2021 the number of registered public associations reached the maximum number of 3021 public associations and has steadily declined since then).
To read the details on the negative changes, and the positive ones related to clarification of ambiguities and dual interpretation, read more here.