New Tax Legislation Stimulating Projects to Promote Human Rights

In the latter half of 2005, the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, the Podgorica-based Human Rights Action and the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Zagreb began implementing the project Tax Reform to Support NGOs in Promoting Human Rights, Civil Society Development and Democracy. This project aimed at finding and suggesting potential mechanisms to create a system in which the funding of NGOs, notably those advocating the promotion of human rights, development of civil society and democracy, would be partly based on lasting and sustainable in-country sources of funding.The project goal was to introduce tax exemption for those business enterprises who chose to support human rights based projects primarily focusing on the improvement of the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights of those in particular need, i.e. children, self-supporting mothers, refugees/IDPs, Roma, elderly, physically challenged.

Publication gives an overview of the current tax legislation, examines and presents comparative experiences that may be of use, and presents regional approaches, which are functioning in this part of the world more or less successfully. Neither the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights nor our friends and partners in other organisations aspired to draft final and definitive solutions. All the texts, including the proposals of the directions the legislative reforms should take are meant to provoke deliberation of the issue and, hopefully, a serious and effective public debate, which will result in improving the present inauspicious situation.