In 2003 the NGO Department of the Belarus Ministry of Justice registered 94 NGOs, including 23 international, 10 national, 12 regional, 44 district/ city and 5 local organizations. The Ministry of Justice also registered 2 national NGO unions and 1 national trade union (the Belarusian Trade Union of Industry Workers). On January 1, 2004 the total number of registered organizations included 18 political parties, 52 trade unions, 2214 NGO (235 international, 734 national and 1245 local organizations) and 16 NGO unions.

During the year, justice agencies and local executive committees registered 115 new political party organizational structures, 913 trade union organizational structures and 867 organizational structures of other NGOs. The total number of registered party organizational structures is 1946 (including 49 regional, 510 district and municipal, 1387 initial), 22034 trade union organizational structures (109 regional, 1015 district and municipal, 20865 initial and 45 united) and 6507 organizational structures of other NGOs (511 regional, 2385 district and municipal, 3611 other organizations).

During the year, the regulation amendments and appendixes of 384 NGOs were registered (122 of them were registered by justice authorities, 262 were registered by the Ministry itself). These figures have increased by 4 in comparison with the previous year. Within the reported period 341 NGO stamp designs were approved, including 107 stamps of organizations, that have international and national status.

In 2003, ministry personnel consulted 4950 citizens on establishing an NGO and its activities.

During the year 2003 the Justice agencies ensured that the statutory activities of 801 NGOs were in line with current legislation. The investigation showed, that numerous NGOs had infringed the legislation to a greater or lesser extent. Some of the organizations have offend because they don’t know the law, while others do realize the illegality of their actions. Knowing infringement of the legislation can be proved by warning messages previously sent to such organizations with regard to the same offences. However, they commit violations knowingly in pursuit of their political, financial or other interests.

Some political parties have broken the law as well. The Ministry of Justice carried out the statutory check-up of the Liberal-Democratic Party (Gajdukevich S.V.), that showed a number of procedural infringements in enrollment and membership registration. Also there was a discrepancy between the number of the members, declared by the leaders of the party, and its real quantity. A warning message has already been sent by The Ministry of Justice (on August 11, 2003) to the governing body of the Liberal-Democratic Party about these and other violations.

In 2003, the Belarusian Social-Democratic Party (Statkevich N.V.), the Social-Democratic party of Popular Concord (Ermak S.V.) and the Belarusian Communist Party (Kaliakin S.I.) were all issued written messages as well. In 2003, as a result of the Justice authorities’ examination of NGO governing bodies, 810 written warnings were pronounced (141 by the Ministry of Justice and 669 by the Administrations of Justice).

In a number of cases the repeated and serious nature of the offences committed by some of the NGOs has served as grounds to bring legal proceedings against them in order to liquidize them. According to the court orders, based on the documents tendered by Justice authorities, 51 NGOs (including 10 national and international and 41 local organizations) are to be liquidized in 2003. There decisions were unanimous.

78 NGO closed of their own accord in 2003.