DUSHANBE, April 23, 2009, Asia-Plus — Speaking at a news conference in Dushanbe, Deputy Justice Minister, Rustam Mengliyev, reported on April 23 that 1,860 public associations, including political parties, NGOs, ethnic communities, sports organizations and cultural foundations, have been registered in Tajikistan to this date.
Of them, only 201 organizations have submitted appropriate documents on their activities to the Ministry of Justice so far. “Meanwhile, by law, public associations should inform the registering body of their activities every year,” said the deputy minister, “Therefore, 912 public associations that have not submitted appropriate documents have actually broken the law.”
In 1991, only 53 public associations were registered within the Ministry of Justice.
We will recall that practically no new group had been approved by the ministry over the same period of last year. The Justice Ministry official Davlat Sulaymonov reported on April 22, 2008 that since the introduction in February 2008 of a new, more restrictive registration law on international and nongovernmental organizations and public associations, no new group had been approved by the ministry. There was a sharp decrease in the number of registration applications since the new laws took effect. According to statistics, the total number of reregistered public associations declined by two-thirds, from 3,130 to 1,400 over the first quarter of 2008.
