There is a view in the North Caucasus expert circles that in the context of activity of destructive terrorist forces in the region the role of civil society institutes became bigger than the role of federal and regional political elites. It is suggested to form a pro-Russian civil net of nonprofit organizations in the North Caucasus, which would encourage civil society’s development. According to experts, the system of grants and target contests has also proved its effectiveness and reasonability. But it not also used in full by regional and local authorities.
Chechnya underwent the process of development of the non-governmental sector of social organizations in difficult conditions. Since the early 1990s the instable socio-political situation and military campaigns prevented establishing civil society. First non-governmental organizations of the republic began to appear only in 2002. Activists tried to fight absence of law. The referendum of 2003 encouraged organization of the political system, providing social security, and development of state institutes. The number of nonprofit organizations began to grow.
Representatives of nonprofit organizations and local state institutes told Vestnik Kavkaza about civil societies in Chechnya and their tasks.
Luisa Alyubova, president of the fund of support of non-governmental organizations of Chechnya
Non-governmental organizations of Chechnya are motivated organizations. Social organizations began their working because they had a motivation to change the situation for the best. Actually all arrangements which we organize are financed by projects which are provided by non-governmental organizations. For example, the dispute of demarcation of lands between Chechnya and Ingushetia: we are asked why social organizations do not express their position. In Ingushetia they made a statement, even those who are in the opposition. It appeared social organizations create a social opinion. The authorities ask where the social opinion is. But what did they so for support them? It is difficult to work without allocated spaces, without meetings with top officials, without mass media covering.
We conduct inter-regional programs, but in other regions our work is more popular than in our own home. State support is poor today. According to the presidential order on measures of state support of law-enforcement movement, in 2007 189 applications were sent from the NCFD; 70 of them were supported. In 2009 210 applications were sent and 31 were supported. Last year 179 were sent and only 20 were supported. And sums are being cut. Moscow is given 1.5 million for organization. We have requested 1 million, but got only 300 thousand for the whole republic.
The same situation is in the whole NCFD. When people say that all troubles come from the NCFD, why they don’t allocate money for settlement of inter-ethnic and inter-confessional problems, for we could explain our students who leave the republic how to behave. From time to time we had such projects. It is not true that we didn’t send applications. All international organizations situated in the Caucasus noted high effectiveness of sent applications. I set this question in Moscow. I was privately told that it is not beneficial if Chechnya would have its own information resource center and if our organizations would develop.
Today we have no person who would stand for our projects. This year we wanted to replace a representative of Chechnya in the Public Chamber of Russia. Recently we boycotted elections of our current member and wrote a letter of protest to President.
To be continued
