Supreme Court done away with Good Will

The Supreme Court took the decision to eliminate the international public association Good Will.

The director of the organization Leanid Skarabahaty reported to BelaPAN about that.

Good Will has been active since 1998 and specializes in the protection of children rights, particularly the one of orphans.

According to Skarabahaty, the organization’s activities will proceed since official registration does not influence the implementation of most projects.

“We are now thinking in which status to continue our activities. There are three options: to join a similar registered institution; registration abroad; activities in the status of a civic initiative”, - he said.

We would remind that in 2011-2012 the activists of Good Will revealed abuses and violations on the part of Education Ministry officials in regards to foster families and orphans. The Ministry’s administration was informed about the violations. In its turn the Education Ministry filed a complaint to the Ministry of Justice, after which a court proceedings started on the issue of Good Will’s liquidation.

The activities of Good Will were suspended on 26 November 2012 according to the decision of the Supreme Court based on two Ministry of Justice’s claims. The association was required to destroy a circulation of envelopes with advertisements printed on them and also to change the capital W letter in the name for a small one. These claims were satisfied by the association and the Ministry of Justice was informed about that on 28 January. Good Will resumed its activities.

According to Skarabahaty, in the course of the court proceedings in November 2012 representatives of the Ministry of Justice claimed that they intended to achieve the liquidation of the public association even if formal claims were to be satisfied. Before resuming its activities on 25 January at 15.00 the members of Good Will received a letter from the Ministry of Justice It prescribed the Council of Good Will to prepare and hold a session before the end of the working day (actually within 3 hours) and also prepare and submit to the Ministry of Justice a selection of documents from 1999 – for the 14 years of the public association’s activities. In the meanwhile part of the documents required translation from foreign to the official state languages of Belarus. The Ministry of Justice also required the copies of the documents from the organization that provided the office for Good Will.

Skarabahaty is sure that the impossible requirements of the Ministry of Justice were caused by the fact that the association had previously pointed out the shortcomings in the work of state agencies.