The federation, founded 85 years ago and headquartered in Paris, includes 155 major human rights organizations from 100 countries around the world. "Each such report we prepare only if certain problems arise in the country. We prepared this work together with the SOVA Center and Civil Assistance," said Maria Shishchenkova, a representative of the Russian branch of the FIDH.
The main conclusion of the report is that xenophobic sentiments and discrimination based on nationality are growing in Russia, fueled at the state level. "Migrants face numerous difficulties in everyday life due to the general hostile atmosphere created by the media and some political parties," the report says. "Migrants are accused of increasing crime, drug trafficking, or corrupting the Russian population." Meanwhile, the authors call the government's program for the resettlement of compatriots "economically absurd" and note that its creation was dictated solely by political considerations: "The Russian authorities seek to combine the need for labor with the requirement that this labor force must be Russian."
A separate chapter of the report is devoted to the Russian-Georgian crisis. The reporters detail the events of last autumn: raids on Georgians, their expulsion to their homeland, and even deaths. At the end of the work, the authors give detailed recommendations to the Russian government, the European Union, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants. They advise the Russian authorities not only to strictly comply with the European Convention on Human Rights, but also to "apologize to the people who fell victim to the anti-Georgian campaign" and to investigate each of these incidents.