Annual report 2021

The year started with a warm welcome to our new Secretary General, Geir Hønneland. It was an unusual start for Geir to lead our committee from home in covid lockdown, in the second year of restrictions. Our organization had grown from five to 25 employees in the course of 25 years and was ready for an organizational overhaul. That was soon carried out, and in cooperation with Ernst & Young, we also went through a process of establishing new routines for the management of our project portfolio. This took a lot of time and effort from the staff, but that impressive work is now finished and seems to be positive both for our staff and our donors.

Sadly 2021 continued the negative trend of increasing authoritarianism in most of the countries where we work, making cooperation with our partners and friends in the field increasingly complicated.

Alexey Navalny’s spectacular return to Russia and subsequent surreal arrest for having broken the rules of his conditional sentence while being unconscious from poisoning made an impression on everyone. The use of the law on extremism to ban his anti-corruption organization FBK has made life even harder for civil society and dissenting people. The law on extremism and the new use of the foreign agent law, now also branding individuals as well as organizations as foreign agents is further limiting the possibilities for dissent. Still, it is difficult to believe that the Russian authorities actually decided to shut down both branches of the venerable human rights organization Memorial, based on the law on extremism, both the historical organization that documented Stalin’s terror, and the human rights organization. Perhaps it was a warning for what was to follow in 2022.

The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was a welcome encouragement and recognition of the brave work of the work for freedom of expression and human rights done by independent journalists all over the world, and not least in Russia, where being such a journalist seems more dangerous every day. We were proud to welcome the journalist Elena Milashina of Novaya Gazeta in connection with the prize being given to its editor Dmitry Muratov.

Writing these words, the unthinkable has happened - Russia has launched a war on Ukraine in the most barbaric way, war crimes being committed every day, civilians are targeted, and the concepts of freedom of expression and civil society are now virtually dead in Russia.

However difficult, though - we will never give up in our work to support our friends, the dissident voices and human rights.