On April 15, two weeks after Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov signed the “foreign representatives” bill into law, the Open Society Foundations cited the law in its announcement that it would close its Kyrgyzstan foundation after 31 years. The Open Society Foundations, formerly the Open Society Institute, is a grantmaking network founded by George Soros. According … Read more
On April 2, Kyrgyzstan’s President Sadyr Japarov signed a bill on foreign funding for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) into law. NGOs that receive funding from abroad will be registered as “foreign representatives,” and they will be subject to costly reporting and auditing requirements. In the many months it took for this piece of legislation to pass … Read more
Following a third and final reading, on March 14 the Kyrgyz parliament adopted without further debate the “foreign representatives” law, which has drawn consistent criticism from domestic civil society activists and international partners. In the wake of its passage – and amid the void between passage and signature into law – the chorus of opposition … Read more
Kyrgyzstan’s controversial “foreign representatives” bill is on the cusp of becoming law, even though opposition to the draft law has been loud and consistent since the idea was resurrected from the ashes of a 2016 effort in 2023 by Nadira Narmatova. The latest to voice concern are the director of the OSCE Office for Democratic … Read more
Advertisement Discussions have resumed in Kyrgyzstan’s parliament over a proposed bill that would introduce additional reporting requirements for non-governmental organizations in the country, as well as add criminal liability for a failure to register as a “foreign representative.” The bill passed its first reading on October 3, amid dwindling support and sharp domestic and international … Read more
Advertisement Last week, the State Revenue Committee of the Kazakh Ministry of Finance published a spreadsheet with 240 rows, a “register of persons receiving money and (or) other property from foreign states, international and foreign organizations, foreigners, and stateless persons.” What media and human rights organizations call a “foreign agent” register, Kazakh authorities say is … Read more
Advertisement A decade after lawmakers in Kyrgyzstan first introduced an effort to force nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) receiving funding from abroad to register as “foreign agents,” late last month more than third of the 90-member Kyrgyz parliament backed a draft law proposing just that. This effort comes after the idea was resurrected in November 2022, to … Read more