No impact expected  from ECHR ruling on Russia’s ‘undesirable’ organizations

The judgment will have ‘zero consequences’, according to the applicants’ lawyer

Batıkan Erkoç

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on 18 June that Russian legislation allowing authorities to declare organizations as “undesirable” and suspend their activities infringes on the right to freedom of expression and the right to organize.

The ruling concerns a 2015 law which creates the concept of “undesirable organizations” and effectively bans foreign organizations deemed a threat to Russia’s national security. 

In the “Andrey Rylkov Foundation and others v. Russia” case, the Court found that the “undesirable organization” legislation was unforeseeable and lacked the criteria to determine what constitutes an undesirable organization.

Kirill Koroteev, the lawyer for two of the applicants, commented on the decision, stating that while the judgment is minimalistic, it is correct. He noted that the Court avoided making a bold general statement, instead ruling that routine human rights activities cannot be considered a threat to national security.

Since the enactment of the Law on Undesirable Organizations, 170 organizations have been declared “undesirable” and have had to suspend their operations in Russia.

In 2017, the Moscow-based Andrey Rylkov Foundation was penalized under the law for hyperlinking content from the Open Society Institute, declared undesirable in Russia,  in a research paper on their website.

According to Koroteev, “The judgment will have zero consequences. The problem is that the Council of Europe remains an idle bystander to Russia’s gross violations of its obligations under the Convention.”

Russia left the Council of Europe on March 15, 2022, however under Article 58 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the ECHR continues to hear cases relating to infringements that occurred before that date.