In accordance with Belarusian legislation, documents for registering NGOs must be handed in to the appropriate registry office within one month of the date of the conclusion of its first project. The Belarusian Justice Ministry and both Minsk-based and regional Justice Department Executive Committees (depending on where the organisation’s head offices are situated) hand these documents to the Republican Commission for Registration (Re-registration) of NGOs. The commission can only consider a certain number of applications at one sitting. Also, such sittings do not take place systematically. In this respect, the registration procedure can be delayed. In fact, NGO registration lasts from one month to one and a half years – the average wait being 6 months.

The decision to declare state registration to an NGO is taken by registry offices one month from the day of documentary submission to the Republican Commission for Registration (Re-registration) of NGOs.

As a result of the process, the following kinds of decisions can be made:

• on extensions of state registration;

• on denials of state registrations;

• on granting state registration.

Decisions to extend NGO state registration have to be taken in the space of 1 month.

Legal information on this issue can be found in: The rules for drawing up and the consideration of documents submitted for state registration of political parties, trade unions, other NGOs and also of the state registration of their departments: est. by decree of the Justice Ministry of Belarus from 1.12.2000, №22.

As it is known, the majority of NGOs undertake a multitude of tasks to fulfill their chartered aims. And, although the principal directions of NGOs are highly diverse in their nature, it is usually possible to isolate the fundamental focus of activity for each NGO. It is this more overarching NGO feature that we will use in representing new or simply re-registered NGOs.

According to information from the Justice Ministry of Belarus, on 1th January 2004, the following organisations had been registered: 18 political parties; 52 trade unions; 235 international NGOs; 743 national NGOs; 1245 local NGOs; 16 NGO unions .