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New Constitution: Human rights defenders send appeal to President

Representatives of 18 NGOs appealed to the President, Parliament, members of the Constitutional Convention and the Ombudsman of Kyrgyzstan with a demand to heed their comments on the draft of new version of the Constitution.

Civil activists are calling for removal of some of the wording in the Paragraph 4 of Article 8 of the proposed Basic Law. It states that «political parties, trade unions and other public associations ensure transparency of their financial and economic activities.»

According to human rights activists, it is necessary to exclude the phrase «other public associations», since it also includes NGOs, and this contradicts the standards of regulation of activities of non-profit organizations.

Authors of the appeal remind that in democratic countries, transparency is required only from those associations that are engaged in charity, since they receive tax and other benefits from the state. Prohibition on requiring of reporting from NGOs, in addition to which these organizations already provide within the framework of the law, is spelled out in the opinion of the Venice Commission and the regulation of the UN Human Rights Committee.

Human rights activists also demand to keep the norm on peaceful assemblies from the current Constitution. According to the current version, no one has the right to hinder or prohibit peaceful rallies.

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