Russian Institute of Democracy and Cooperation opens offices in the United States and France to study the state of affairs with human rights and civil freedoms in the West.
"There are hundreds and thousands organizations throughout the world dedicated to examination of the situation with human rights in foreign countries and not in their own," Natalia Narochnitskaya, Director of the French division, said.
Andranik Migranjan, Professor of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations who will run the New York division, believes that the structure should become a center where alternative views on political processes in Russia will be presented.
"Some sovereign states are trying to monopolize the right to interpret democracy. They regard other countries from the standpoint of their own interpretations and wishes," Migranjan said. "We want participation in this discussion."
Anatoly Kucherena, Chairman of the Board, said the idea of the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation had been fomented by consultations with American and European colleagues.
Kucherena is convinced that reports on the state of affairs with human rights published by organizations like Freedom House "are always ideological." The Institute of Democracy and Cooperation intends to do better.
Human Rights Watch in the meantime advises the new Russian structure to expect vicious competition. "I wish them luck but chances that they will discover anything new in terms of human rights violations are small," to quote Andrei Petrov, Assistant Head of the Human Rights Watch Russian division.
