U.S. State Department Offers Grants to Russian NGOs
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – July 17, 2013) The U.S. State Department has announced a grant competition for Russian organizations to create programs improving relations between the two countries.
The U.S. announcement about the competition, called the U.S.-Russia Peer-to-Peer Dialogue Program, comes amid what is perceived to be a crackdown by Russian authorities on nongovernmental organizations that detect and publicize human rights abuses, especially those receiving foreign funding.
Grants up to $100,000 will be awarded to non-commercial organizations, including those in academia, for creating meetings, virtual interactions, exchanges, and internships between Americans and Russians, a U.S. government website for the program said.
The closing date for applications is indicated as Aug. 12 on the grants website, but the U.S. Embassy in Moscow is asking on its website for applicants to send in their proposal by July 26.
In November, a federal law took effect in Russia that obliges nongovernmental organizations involved in broadly defined “political activity” and receiving foreign funding to register as “foreign agents” under threat of fines or suspension of their activities.
The U.S. State Department program said that the grant proposals do not need to be political, though it makes no mention of the new Russian laws governing any political project that would receive its funds.
Some vocal NGOs have refused to comply with the law, saying it humiliates them or denying that they are involved in political activities.
Since November, of 2,000 NGOs across the country, 36 groups have had legal action brought against them, according to Agora, a group that provides legal assistance to other NGOs and is itself one of the 36. Last week, Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika told President Vladimir Putin that 215 nongovernmental organizations had bypassed the law by refusing to register as foreign agents.
Independent elections watchdog Golos, which played a prominent role in reporting voting violations in the disputed December 2011 parliamentary elections, was in June ordered by the Justice Ministry to cease all activities for six months. Golos was the first to be fined under the law, receiving a bill of 300,000 rubles ($10,000) in April.