KYRGYZSTAN TODAY Policy briefs on - Department of Geography

seemingly happen to form regionally or are concentrated in the country’s capital city,
yet, there are attempts to work together and only 9 percent of NGOs reported not having
joint activities (though the survey focused on 2005 – an unusually dynamic year in terms
of collective actions because of the March 2005 post-revolutionary movements).
Since the late 1990s coalitions and networks have formed as a way for NGOs
to work together. Being part of a network or association is becoming fashionable
and productive (only 9 percent reported that participation in associations/coalitions
was of no use, while the rest stated that it helped to get to know each other, to
spread information and increase outreach and to organize joint events). Going
beyond collecting names on an association’s list and moving towards regular
members’ participation in real social activities is still an issue for many associations
and coalitions, although at the moment even tertiary and symbolic connectedness is
important, though not sufficient.
Theoretically, more than five hundred currently active organizations could have
come up with numerous ways of being connected and forming more diverse associations.
There are new areas of public interest, which become the juncture for new connections,
such as gold mining, which has brought together environmental and human rights
organizations. However, there are areas, like public television reform, which were high
on the rhetorical agenda, but have not translated into collective action, apart from a
handful organizations specifically specializing in the issue. Links between the emerging
experts/think tanks community and the NGO sector is only now being forged and is
happening at too slow a pace for current civil society’s policy activities.
Civil society as an associational society?
NGOs in Kyrgyzstan quite often serve as a place for individual actions of individuals
working there and who come together with a relatively small number of other individuals
in other organizations. There are of course examples when NGO leaders come together
quickly to sign petitions or put together advocacy campaigns on election monitoring.
The most notable example was in 2002 when women’s NGOs gathered more than 30
thousand signatures to introduce a popular legislative initiative regarding domestic
violence. Few examples highlight the general trend of non-sustained associational
membership. It would be great from the social capital perspective if even a small number
of those who signed the anti-domestic violence legislative initiative remained active and
regularly engaged members for women’s causes.
In times of crisis, a country produces social movements as a way for citizens to
express their support for or the undesirability of social change in a sustained and longterm
manner. Occasional blasts of dissent and protests have been part of NGOs’ history,
though in rare cases they can be called movements. The low level of trust between
organizations, and them and their constituencies, is another factor hindering the
development of wider collective actions.
Sector and wider society
Members of NGOs are members of society and quite often their personal stories of
unhappiness with social reality led them into public activities. However, attachment to
the cultural settings of either their previous background or their current environment
has an impact on their activities as members of civil society. Divides are created by
language, city/rural sub-cultures, generational differences and many other factors, and
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