Oldest Russian NGO facing financial troubles – head

(Interfax – Moscow, September 28, 2014) The oldest Russian noncommercial organization [the usual Russian phrase for what is referred to elsewhere as NGOs], the Moscow Helsinki Group, had to scrap the majority of its human rights projects due to a shortage of funds, Moscow Helsinki Group head Lyudmila Alekseyeva told Interfax on Monday [28 September].

“We have limited our activities. We have curtailed our projects and our existence is now minimal, one can say, we are simply surviving,” Alekseyeva said.

According to her, it was a consequence of the Moscow Helsinki Group waiving foreign funding and Western donors leaving Russia after the law on NGOs – foreign agents came into force.

“Those seven people out of the original 17 who have stayed with us are working as usual. We have reduced their salaries somewhat, to which they agreed,” Alekseyeva said.

She also said that the Moscow Helsinki Group has been doing many things for free, relying on the help of volunteers.

Alekseyeva said that the group is using the R4.5m presidential grant, which it received in 2014, to implement a project linked to the public control over the work of the police.

She said that foreign grants were used to finance a number of educational programmes, specifically the Moscow Helsinki Group school. “Now we have to give it up, the educational programme is quite expensive,” Alekseyeva said.

“In the Soviet era we survived without money. It there is no money, we will fully rely on volunteers, but will continue our work. All that is happening is the direct consequence of the authorities’ efforts to strangle civil society. And the main strangling tool is to leave it without funding,” Alekseyeva added.