MOSCOW — In another clampdown on dissent, Russian lawmakers approved a bill Friday that would impose tougher registration and reporting requirements on nongovernmental organizations that receive financing from foreign governments or other donors abroad.

The bill, which was approved by the Duma, the lower house of Parliament, was expected to receive final approval rapidly. Human rights and other advocacy organizations said such a law could be used to intimidate government critics and to impede progress toward democracy. Some said the law might block humanitarian aid.

Organizations receiving money or other aid from outside Russia would have to register with the justice minister as ‘‘acting as a foreign agent’’ — a politically pejorative label that some independent groups said they would work hard to avoid.

“This is blackmail by the government,’’ said Grigory A. Melkonyants, the deputy director of Golos, Russia’s only independent election-monitoring organization.

The group, which played a crucial role in helping to identify fraud in the December parliamentary elections, has long received financial support from the United States.

He said Golos would seek an exemption by trying to prove in court that it does not engage in political activity. If that fails, he said, the group will consider becoming a business, to avoid the ‘‘foreign agent’’ classification.

Several prominent organizations, including the Moscow-Helsinki Group, a defender of human rights, said they would have to curtail fund-raising.

Since Vladimir V. Putin’s inauguration as president in May, the Duma has approved laws that sharply increase penalties for participants and organizers of unsanctioned political protests and grant the government new powers to restrict ‘‘harmful’’ Internet content.

The Duma on Friday also increased the penalties for libel and slander — a bill that Putin expressed personal interest in seeing approved.

It, too, was expected to move quickly through the upper house and be signed into law.

While the bill on nongovernmental groups was approved 374-3, other measures have been pushed through by United Russia, the party that endorsed Putin for president.

Critics said the government’s efforts to clamp down on dissent would only hurt Russia’s reputation and hamper its development as a democracy.

Lyudmila M. Alexeyeva, a Soviet-era dissident who leads the Moscow-Helsinki Group, called the ‘‘foreign agent’’ law ‘‘despicable’’ and said she would dismiss staff members and stop raising money before being thus branded.

Boris Kashin, a member of Parliament from the Communist Party, said the proposed libel law, which would allow penalties of more than $150,000, was not worthy of a first-world country.

‘‘The fate of a banana republic awaits us,’’ Kashin said. ‘‘You are doing absolutely nothing to ensure that the country develops as it should.’’