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| Belarus | Over the past year the working conditions of Youth NGO’s has deteriorated. Their sphere of activity has become narrower. They are overburdened by administrative workloads and the field of youth policy has been monopolized by the state. Some organisations have tried to ignore the changes, some have tried to adapt to the new environment, and some just withdraw from their activities and left the field of youth policy and youth work. Weak efforts to object the changes have been met with indifference and absolute inability and unwillingness by the government officials to involve in a dialogue.
Today, associations eager to save their independence and autonomy are being closed on various pretexts. State structures that used to engage in dialogue with different Youth NGO’s are being disbanded. The field of youth policy is completely controlled by the state.
The current situation resembles a restoration of the Soviet model of youth policy. It is necessary to mention that in such model there is no place for any independent Youth NGO’s and initiatives.
Within this model Youth NGO’s are given the following pseudo possibilities for existing in society:
1)Providing social and/or ideological services for young people within state structures.
2)Performing the function of decorative representative structures, with the purpose of showing international observers “diversity”. The play the role of constituent and controlled “channels” for international contacts, attracting foreign recourses, etc.
3)Act as local clubs of interests with an unconditional agreement to work under the state supported youth organisation, BRUY (Belarusian Republican Youth Union, an assignee of Komsomol), and state structures.
A lot of Youth NGO’s that were created in the period of formation of the independency in Belarus, do not fit in the suggested order. They refuse it because of moral and value-based reasons. For some time Youth NGO's existed in parallel, funded by the non-state financial sources for youth projects. But today, there are almost no niches for implementation of such projects – any possibility faces artificially created administrative obstacles.
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