The year of 2021 has shown that we live in a world of new challenges and renewed old threats. The protracted fight against the coronavirus infection has “reset” the debate in Russian society on a number of vital economic and social issues directly affecting the social wellbeing.169

Proactive action by state authorities to implement comprehensive support measures for citizens, nongovernment organizations and small and mediumsized businesses in the context of the ongoing pandemic has been an important factor in maintaining stability in the country.

At the end of 2020, the Civic Chamber, underlined the high level of solidarity shown by society and the state in the fight against coronavirus infection, anticipated at the start of the vaccination campaign that the pandemic would still affect the lives of our citizens in the coming year, but that we would fight against its consequences. This year has shown that the coronavirus infection will stay with us for months and possibly years to come.

Despite the ordeal, global organizations and national governments were able to mobilize their resources and take emergency measures to avoid the most serious consequences of the spread of coronavirus infection. Today we are witnessing a pandemic habituation effect: society has adapted and learned to coexist with the virus as an unavoidable evil.

During this year, a great deal of experience has also been gained in combating the disease: effective treatment protocols and principles of hospital care have been developed, some of the world’s best vaccines are available in Russia, and the number of hospital beds has been significantly increased.

The Civic Chamber has repeatedly drawn the attention of the state and the entire international community to assess the challenges posed by the pandemic not only from a social and economic perspective, but also from an ethical one.

One of the key ethical issues in the fight against the coronavirus is still the vaccination issue. Although Russia was the first country in the world to register a vaccine against the coronavirus and launch an immunization campaign, collective immunity, including those who had been sick for at least six months, stood at 55.7%170at the end of this year but to effectively combat the spread of the coronavirus, immunization needs to cover at least 80% of population.171

By the end of 2021, Russia was in the top five countries for morbidity and mortality from the coronavirus infection172 with the vast majority of patients in hospitals being unvaccinated patients.173

One of the main tasks of civil society in the emerging context is to agree on further joint action to make the most obvious measures against the spread of infection a success. Motivating our citizens to adopt safe and socially responsible behaviors that reduce the risks of infection is only possible by involving all parties — government, society, business, media, medical and patient communities. Today, the Civic Chamber, together with regional civic chambers, implements projects to educate nongovernment organizations, conducts extensive promotional work on vaccination and prevention of COVID-19, summarizing best practices in this area and replicating successful practices in the regions. This work will be scaled up in 2022. It is essential to involve the whole civil society in the fight against the pandemic, to ensure that the population has full confidence in the government fighting against the pandemic, conducting vaccination and organizing treatment of patients.

Mutual recognition of vaccines produced in different countries of the world is also becoming important, as well as increasing opportunities for equal access to vaccines for all nations of the world. There is an urgent need to accelerate the assessment of the quality and safety of medicines by authorized international bodies.

The sooner this is done, the sooner global business activity, including the severely affected tourism industry, can be restored. In order to address this issue expeditiously, the Civic Chamber, through its presidency to the AICESIS, plans to build a longterm partnership between the Association and international organizations concerned with public health and safety, in order to strengthen the voice of civil society and solidarity in combating global challenges in all areas of public life, from health to digitalization.

The monitoring of the national projects will be an active part of next year’s work. The Civic Chamber notes with regret that, so far, the national projects have not been established as a management mechanism in the area of national development goals, but have largely been reduced to yet another way of spending budgetary funds.174 The national projects also fail to reflect the highest national priority, defined by the head of state in his address to the Federal Assembly, of preserving and multiplying the people of Russia.

This year, the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation signed an instruction that representatives of the Civic Chamber should be included in all public expert councils of national project (program) committees. The Civic Chamber hopes that delegating 27 members of the Coordination Council under the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation on national projects and population preservation to these councils will help to establish constructive cooperation in this area. Russian citizens should feel the exact positive results of the national projects in their daily lives, and see themselves and their future in their goals and results.

A particularly pressing issue in this area in the following year will be the issue of demographic policy, achieving the goals of preserving and multiplying Russia’s population and achieving sustainable population growth.

In 2021, the Civic Chamber proposed a set of long-term measures to update the National Demography Project and also formulated proposals to implement additional support measures for families with children, including those with many children. Active work on the proposed initiatives will require close and constructive interaction between the Civic Chamber and the Russian Government, the legislative and relevant executive bodies of state power.

Noting the significant growth in volunteering, the Civic Chamber sees its future task as maintaining and increasing the potential for social change, that volunteering brings along.

In 2022, the Civic Chamber will promote an initiative on the need for insurance for volunteers working in search units helping to deal with emergencies. The state should be challenged to ensure that the lives and health of people performing this crucial social function are protected.

The Civic Chamber’s partnership with the “Krug Dobra” (Circle of Kindness) Foundation remains an absolute priority. In its first year of operation, the Foundation has become the embodiment of a new paradigm of social justice in Russian society; people with different incomes, positions and statuses have united around the most important social agenda — helping sick children. Despite the considerable success of the Foundation, the Civic Chamber will continue to monitor its work, provide it with direct support to optimize its activities, improve its decision-making mechanisms, expand the list of diseases and categories of patients with whom it works, increase the availability of medicines and advise the state on how these issues should be addressed at a systemic level.

Support for the nonprofit sector remains one of the Civic Chamber’s priorities in the new year. While welcoming the Government’s decision to provide state support to business in a situation of new restrictions and to extend this support to the nonprofit sector, the Civic Chamber considers it important that the state respects the equality of support measures for organizations of all any legal forms.

Noting the effectiveness of previously provided assistance to NGOs and recording the growing need for charitable assistance and outreach work by NGOs due to the intensifying pandemic, the Civic Chamber believes that support to socially oriented nonprofit organizations should not be solely a situation caused by a complex epidemiological situation. The next year, the Civic Chamber will seek to enshrine in legislation the status, role and functionality of the support infrastructure for NGOs along the lines of the SME support infrastructure.

Given the growing demand from civil society for the protection and improvement of our country’s environmental potential, the Civic Chamber notes that the environmental agenda in 2022 will be determined not only by the framework of national interests, but also by global trends, the main one being decarbonization, which has already been reflected in the relevant instructions of the President of Russia. For its part, the Civic Chamber will further strengthen monitoring of citizens' environmental rights, enforcement of statutory regulations in order to preserve nature for future generations and achieve the stated goal of carbon neutrality.

The most important initiative in the field of environmental policy was the proposal by the President of Russia to “color” the environmental payments that are made to the federal budget. This would allow to direct funds toward ecosystem restoration. The Civic Chamber will pay particular attention to the implementation of this mandate by the responsible state authorities in 2022.

The Civic Chamber plans to take an active part in the World Heritage Committee’s 45th session organized by UNESCO, which will be held in Kazan in 2022. The session will include reports on the state of natural heritage sites such as volcanoes in Kamchatka, Lake Baikal and the Western Caucasus. The Civic Chamber believes that environmental public organizations can provide significant assistance to the authorized state authorities in providing objective and independent information on the state of these natural objects.175

By stipulating in the amendments to the Basic Law the need to protect historical memory and preserve historical truth for future generations, the state has shown its readiness to safeguard Russia’s national interests and strengthen its state sovereignty. At the same time, the scale and complexity of the goals and set tasks require the active involvement of all civil society in preserving the memory of generations of citizens of our country and their glorious labor and military deeds.

The Civic Chamber will focus on historical education and the patriotic and moral upbringing of young people and the rising generations within the framework of this theme.

The President of Russia has supported the idea of declaring 2022 the Year of Folk Art and Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Peoples of Russia. The Civic Chamber, for its part, will help to implement a number of programs and projects aimed at develofping and supporting folk art and the arts in the following year to preserve and strengthen the country’s multi-ethnic culture.

In November 2021, the Civic Chamber launched a hotline to monitor the state of local cultural centers in rural areas and small territories. The findings will provide the basis for further work to support the preservation of the system of local cultural centers throughout Russia.

In the State Duma elections, 11 members of the Civic Chamber received a deputy’s mandate. The Civic Chamber considers its colleagues, who became deputies, as a new “public faction” of the State Duma176, counting on close cooperation in the new year, expanding the formats and areas of joint work within the preliminary hearings of draft laws, joint discussion and promotion of socially significant initiatives on the topic of family support, motherhood, child protection and traditional family values, youth policy and support for the nonprofit sector.

In the coming year, the Civic Chamber will continue its systematic work to train members of regional chambers, public councils and public supervisory commissions in the practical skills of public oversight, improve their media competence, and actively involve public institutions in the regions in joint promotion of socially significant initiatives and implementation of all-Russian monitoring projects.

Particular emphasis will be placed on the publication of special thematic reports and ratings by the Civic Chamber, which will reflect current points of growth and ensure that the most effective development tools are developed.

The events of 2021 have convincingly demonstrated that dialog between civil society and the state offers excellent opportunities and prospects for the implementation of the most ambitious civic projects aimed at creation and development. But to have such an effective dialog, it is important to go all the way from raising a problem in the public arena to developing exact mechanisms for solving it and communicating this solution in language that the state understands.

The Civic Chamber tries to be a feedback channel so that an individual citizen’s voice can be heard by a specific minister, deputy or head of region. Our main function is to ensure dialog and effective communication between all stakeholders, and the system of civic chambers in Russia is successfully coping with this task today!

Conclusion