New Bill threat to volunteering?
Communal representatives are to request the
council of the Russian Federation to take consideration of the bill on
volunteering off the agenda
The
Committee for Civil Initiatives (CCI) has given the Federal Bill on Volunteering
professional consideration and taken a negative view of it.
In
its submission the committee made the point that the provisions in the bill
would impede the development of volunteering and could lead to a diminution of
the volunteering movement in Russia. The bill would create mechanisms whereby
government agencies could control and suppress volunteer activity and enactment
would facilitate the growth of corruption and so on.
The
submission was signed by members of the CCI and communal representatives who
are occupied with volunteering issues. They include: Dmitry Aleshkovsky, chief
executive of the charity Nuzhnapomoshch.ru; Elena Alshanskaya, director of the
charity Children’s Aid; Galina Bodrenkova, president of the Russian Centre for
the Development of Volunteering and a member of the Russian branch of the
International Association for Volunteering; Darya Miloslavskaya, chair of
the council of the not-for-profit
partnership Lawyers for Civil Society, director of the Russian branch of the
International Centre for Non-commercial Law and a member of the RF Public
Chamber, and others.
The
signatories consider that the council should reject the bill and refrain from
passing it on to the Duma. The CCI’s opinion may be seen and a petition against
the bill may be signed on its site at http://komitetgi.ru/publications/376/ or on Nuzhnapomoshch’s site at http://nuzhnapomosh.ru/fz-volonter/.
