Source: Amnesty International –
On 22 June 2026, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs adopted the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Rules granting the Indian government sweeping new powers to police the activities, operation, management and leadership of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) receiving foreign funding.
The amendments significantly expand an already restrictive legal framework established under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), 2010, which regulates the receipt and use of foreign contributions by individuals and organizations in India. It prohibits contributions for activities deemed to be detrimental to the “national interest,” an overbroad term open to misuse. Since 2010, successive governments have amended the Act three times, most significantly in 2020, when the law was expanded to ban the transfer of foreign funds between organizations, to cap administrative expenditure and to require funds to be routed through a single designated bank account. In 2016, three United Nations Special Rapporteurs jointly urged the Indian government to repeal the FCRA, warning that it was being used to silence organizations whose priorities did not align with those of the government.
In 2011, the Indian government notified rules to the FCRA, and has amended them 10 times since then. The latest amendments further perpetuate the Indian authorities’ use of the FCRA over the last decade as a tool to silence peaceful dissent and the exercise of fundamental freedoms and obstruct independent human rights work in the country. Such misuse has been repeatedly noted by various UN mechanisms, most recently by the UN Human Rights Committee in 2024 in its concluding observations on the fourth periodic review of India’s implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
The new rules apply to nearly 14,500 organizations that currently hold a FCRA license, and to all non-profits who may want to apply in the future. Existing non-profit organizations now face a one-year deadline to bring their registration in line with a far more limiting framework, or risk losing the ability to carry out their work altogether.
Under international human rights law, the right to freedom of association includes the right of associations to seek, receive and use resources, including funding from foreign sources. This is protected by Article 22 of the ICCPR, to which India is a state party, as well as by Article 13 of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders adopted by consensus by the UN General Assembly. Any restriction is permissible only if it is prescribed by law with precision and is not overbroad, is strictly necessary to meet only a legitimate aim provided for under article 22 namely, national security or public safety, public order, the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others, and adopts a proportionate means to meet that aim. This test also applies to restrictions on the right to freedom of expression protected by Article 19 of the ICCPR. The new amendments place multiple undue restrictions on NGOs and in doing so, fail this test in several respects.