KYRGYZSTAN TODAY Policy briefs on - Department of Geography

not all of them can be overcome easily and they serve as an identity mask enabling or
disabling cooperation.
Promising new spaces?
There are some hopeful signs for social capital in the realm of civil society and it is
not only the realization by many activists that there is a need for better cooperation and
coordination within the NGO sector as proclaimed in forums. For example, online Diesel
forums brought together various people unknown to each other and then we saw these
people marching together as a group in the reformist rallies of 2006. Another example
was two years ago, when women’s organizations organized a conference with NGOs
working on the rights of sexual minorities to discuss a common agenda and there have
been further promising attempts to strengthen these links. When some NGOs seriously
started to address the issues of state budget transparency, there were surprising
discoveries of new partners among mass media and finance professionals. Another
demonstrative example is that people living with HIV see each other as clients of NGOs
then start to form their own groups, which at some point become new organizations
promoting the rights of their members. There are possibly numerous other emerging,
uncounted attempts to link up within and outside the sector, which are not yet effective
because the moment isn’t ripe for NGOs to take social capital seriously.
What could be done?
by NGOs
• Continue to systematically organize nationwide self-reflective forums through
regenerating organizing groups (or committees);
• Use frequent rotation of leadership of existing and potentially new associations/
coalitions/networks to avoid a perception of internal hierarchy;
• When joint projects are arranged, equal access to resources for urban and rural
NGOs should be ensured in order to avoid internal hierarchies;
• Use ad hoc groups more actively to react (or better still, to act proactively) to rapidly
changing political and legislative processes;
• More actively engage professionals as volunteers of NGOs/associations as a way
of regenerating membership of NGOs;
• Use the internet more effectively (wherever possible) through wider (national)
mailing lists and put more emphasis on providing access to partners in rural
areas to provide milieu for intersectional agenda building with more equal access
for everyone.
by Government
• Develop a coherent vision of the NGO sector as part of Kyrgyzstan’s society,
otherwise the government sends ambivalent signals;
• Promote volunteerism for the sake of NGOs’ development, but also to form a
sense of citizenship through, e.g., introducing training for volunteers in university
education, as students currently constitute the majority of volunteers;
• Support changes in the tax code that propose increasing to 10 percent nontaxable
cha ritable giving by organizations and individuals with the aim of increasing
links between NGOs and indigenous donors;
• Set up partnerships with NGOs whenever social mobilization is being planned,
as civil society does this more genuinely and effectively than local authorities;
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