Russia bans International Baccalaureate educational programme as ‘undesirable’

Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office on Monday declared the International Baccalaureate (IB), a Swiss nonprofit that offers international education programmes taught in schools across the world, an “undesirable organisation”, effectively banning its activities in the country.

In a statement, the Prosecutor General’s Office said that the IB aimed to “shape Russian youth according to Western models” through its programmes, which it claimed were based on “imposing its own vision of historical processes, distorting widely known facts, anti-Russian propaganda and inciting interethnic hatred”.

After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, IB programmes were “revised in line with the Russophobic position of the collective West” to include “calls for the international isolation of our country and materials discrediting the Russian army”, the Prosecutor General’s Office said.

It also accused the IB of aiming to promote “non-traditional values based on the ideology of banned extremist organisations”, though it did not provide further details of the organisations in question.

Founded in 1968 and headquartered in Geneva, the IB offers four educational programmes for students aged 3-19, which are taught in more than 5,000 schools in over 150 countries worldwide.

In an open letter published in March 2022, IB Director General Olli-Pekka Heinonen condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and stressed that the organisation would support schools impacted by the war, but it did not cease its operations in Russia. According to the IB’s website, some 29 schools in Russia currently offer IB programmes.

Any organisation deemed “undesirable” by the Russian government is legally obliged to dissolve itself, and any involvement in its activities becomes illegal. In recent months, authorities have increasingly used the designation to target foreign educational organisations they deem “anti-Russian”, including the British Council and Yale University.