An autonomous non-profit organization will be created in Russia to protect the rights of SVO participants – Kommersant

An autonomous non-profit organization (ANO) will appear in Russia to protect the rights of participants in a special military operation (SVO) and their families, Human Rights Commissioner in the Russian Federation Tatyana Moskalkova said at a meeting of the State Duma Committee for the Development of Civil Society on October 10. She motivated the need for a new structure by the fact that when working in this area, the ombudsman’s office is forced to act outside the framework of the current legislation.

“This is an area that is not spelled out in the law on human rights ombudsmen,” explained Ms. Moskalkova. “In accordance with the law, we must respond to violations of rights by authorities and officials. It’s a completely different picture here.” According to her, since the beginning of the SVO, the ombudsmen have received 35 thousand requests on the topic of special operations: “Four categories – return from captivity, missing persons, return of the bodies of the dead, assistance to families and social payments to those who were demobilized, killed or injured.” In working on these requests, the institute of commissioners successfully built “constructive relationships” with the Ministry of Defense, the FSB, the Ministry of Labor and the military prosecutor’s office, the ombudsman added.

Committee Chairman Olga Timofeeva (United Russia) proposed working on the law, but human rights activists decided to go a different route. “Even if you make (changes to the law.— “Kommersant”), we won’t be able to register all the help for people there,” Ms. Moskalkova pointed out. “It was decided to study the issue of creating an autonomous non-profit organization, everyone supported this proposal, today it is at the stage of legal and regulatory registration.” She did not provide details about the new structure, but drew attention to financial problems related to the staffing of regional offices and the digitalization of the work of commissioners.

The deputies responded promptly to the difficulties listed above. “We have an excellent state human rights institution (Ombudsman for Human Rights.— “Kommersant”), to which people turn when their problem is not solved – and we cannot expand the bottlenecks and give money? — asked Oleg Leonov (“New People”). In response, Ms. Timofeeva made it clear that the committee is ready to participate in solving these problems, because “you cannot work without people.”

Grigory Leiba