KYRGYZSTAN TODAY Policy briefs on - Department of Geography

NGOs to involve the government and its institutions in their projects, donor grants have
acted as a massive incentive to establishing the government-NGO relationship in the
first place.
Furthermore, research findings have indicated that the government institutions at all
levels have few guidelines to refer to when working with NGOs, both on policy-making
and social services delivery; therefore, they do not know how to work with NGOs more
effectively. The research has also suggested that, for the most part, the government
institutions distrust NGOs and are not interested in working with them because they
are poorly informed about NGOs and their activities. All in all, the idea of working with
NGOs has been a new phenomenon for the government and its institutions since NGOs
emerged only after independence. For these reasons, the government needs to develop
a clear policy on working with NGOs, which would provide government institutions in
various areas and at all levels with core principles on how to build relationships with
NGOs.
The lack of state policy on NGOs has led to a desultory and sometimes discriminatory
government-NGO relationship. The government and its institutions tend to work more
with social service NGOs than with civil activist groups since the latter are considered
to be more active in advocacy and policy-making processes. Research has shown that
civil activist groups which criticize the government and its activities, especially those
infringing rights of citizens, are treated differently by the government and its institutions.
Compared to social service NGOs, civil activist groups tend to encounter more problems
created by government institutions, such as undermining NGO initiatives, refusal to reregister
and others. For example, one of the interviewees from a civil activist group said
that they were blacklisted for over-criticizing a government institution responsible for
people in detention and had been refused cooperation in future.
Furthermore, the government and its institutions, especially at the ministerial level,
involve NGOs in different working groups and committees to make joint decisions;
however the process of selecting NGOs for such committees is unclear. A number of
NGO interviewees noted that they had participated in different state committees, but
could not explain how and why they were chosen to serve on these committees. The
absence of clear selection procedures undermines the principles of democratic decisionmaking
and indicates an unfair attitude of the government to NGOs since one would
expect that NGOs would be selected for these committees by open competition.
Previous Experience: Concept of Government-NGO Collaboration
The government has made an earlier effort to establish an NGO support programme.
In 2004, the President of the Kyrgyz Republic signed a Decree approving a Concept
on government-NGO collaboration (Decree, 2004), the main aim of which was to
improve government support for NGOs. For this purpose, it established a number of
objectives: a) improving the system of government-NGO interaction and collaboration;
b) creating conditions conducive to increasing civil initiatives; c) funding public oriented
programmes of NGOs through state contracting; d) establishing consultative councils on
government-NGO interaction; e) conducting joint government-NGO events (conferences,
roundtables, seminars, training on social problems, charities, cultural–mass campaigns
and others); and f) providing information support to NGOs (i.e. supporting NGOs in
publicizing their activities).
All in all, the concept has great potential and could serve as a sound legal basis
for effective government-NGO collaboration. However, it has had little success since
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