Union of Councils for Soviet Jews

Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union (abbreviated UCSJ) is a collection of Jewish human rights organizations working in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. They are based in Washington DC, but are linked to other organizations such as the Moscow Helsinki Group^{[citation needed]} and have offices in the countries in where they operate.

The UCSJ was formed in 1970 as a response to the second class citizen status of Jews in the USSR and Eastern Europe^{[citation needed]}. Today, most of its offices are based within the United States where it has 8 member councils, although there are six offices in various locations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, including Moscow, Almaty, Bishkek, Lviv, Riga, Tbilisi^{[citation needed]}.

Their activities include reporting on the human rights situations of countries in the FSU, as well as assisting communities in need, providing support for asylum seekers and migrants, exposing human rights violations and hate crimes, whether these are targeted against Jews or other minorities in the region, such as Roma or Muslims. ^[1] ^[2] ^[3] ^[4]. It receives funding from the European Commission of the European Union as part of a three-year project designed to combat racism, anti-semitism and islamophobia in Eastern European countries and the reports it produces on the situation in various countries are often presented to the US State Department.

Some 525,000 Jews remained in the post-Soviet states in 2003. Almost 450,000 of them live in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova [1].

A branch of the UCSJ was closed by the government of Belarus as part of what many observers saw as a wider crackdown on political dissent in the region. (main article - Human rights in Belarus)^{[citation needed]}