NON-PROFIT SECTOR IN YUGOSLAVIA[1]

- Basic Facts -

According to the research done on the non-profit sector in FR Yugoslavia, the historical preconditions for its creation and development could be found in the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th century, and in the following environments: traditional forms of rural solidarity, Orthodox church influence and charitable work in many humanitarian, educational and other societies in Yugoslavia in the first decades of the 20^th century, until the Second World War.

After the Second World War, all non-profit organizations, endowments, legacies and funds are nationalized and confiscated. New organizations that were established in those times had to work in the frames of the communist system and were under the state control. Until 1990 there were about 19 000 of different non-profit organizations but with no new types of NGOs, such as human rights organizations, peace groups, ecology associations or other local organizations engaged on broader social problems in the public sphere. Today in FR Yugoslavia, together with the organizations from the previous period there are about 25 000 NGOs.

Since 1990 and the legalization of social and political pluralism, by passing of the Law on Association of Citizens in Associations, Social Organizations and Political Parties which are established on the Territory of the SFRY, a new period for the third sector has begun. Since then the number of NGOs has been constantly increasing. This is indicated by the data on registered NGOs.

Since 1990, when free association and organization of citizens has been legalized, 1 344 new NGOs have been registered in FRY by the end of 1999. In three years (until the end of 1996. there were 695 registered NGOs) the number of NGOs has doubled.

All of these NGOs were established under very difficult circumstances (war, sanctions and inflation) by people who had limited experiences with the activities of such organizations. A major increase in NGOs was noted after the civil protest of 1996-97, when the most of the student and youth organizations were established. Since then, interest in NGOs has increased significantly. Between 1997 and the beginning of 2000, significant progress was made in developing the nongovernmental sector infrastructure. NGOs that appeared in the beginning of the nineties succeeded in establishing the infrastructure for long-term and strategic functioning and in consequence to this their results improved. They enabled further spreading of similar organizations in smaller cities and towns in Serbia that were just a few until 1997. Today this picture is entirely different, since the number of NGOs in Serbia is constantly increasing.