KYRGYZSTAN TODAY Policy briefs on - Department of Geography

it has been only partly carried out. The concept has presented too–general aims and
objectives on improving government support for NGOs, but no real actions. According
to the concept, the Cabinet of the Kyrgyz Republic was meant to develop the state NGO
support programme and an action plan to implement it; unfortunately, this did not
happen. A lack of these key documents made the concept more declarative than actual.
It can be assumed that this happened because the Cabinet, which was responsible
for developing the documents, lacked commitment. Furthermore, no one from the
government followed up the implementation of the concept.
Nevertheless, different government institutions and NGO representatives have
contributed to the implementation of some objectives of the concept. The Ministry of
Labour and Social Protection, jointly with NGO representatives, has been lobbying for
a law on social contracting since 2006 (the third objective of the concept). This law is an
institutionalized mechanism, which delineates how the state can provide funding to
NGOs. In June 2008, the law was finally adopted by the Kyrgyz Parliament. NGOs have
high hopes for it since they consider state funding as a way to financial sustainability.
The fifth objective of the concept encourages the government and NGOs to conduct
joint activities such as conferences, roundtables, and others. According to the research,
this is the most widespread form of government-NGO interaction in Kyrgyzstan at all
levels and in all areas; however, it is difficult to claim that it was due to the impact of the
concept because other factors might have had a greater impact. The first factor is donor
grants, which encourage NGOs to work with the government in order to influence
decision-making.
The second factor is that NGOs have come to understand that any problem can be
solved only by working closely with the government; therefore, their interaction with the
government and political activeness have increased. Most NGO interviewees said that,
no matter how hard they tried to solve problems, they could not solve them because they
were addressing the consequences of the problems and not the reasons creating them.
On the whole, the main reason for most problems is poor legislation or policy, therefore,
the interviewees noted that now they concentrated more on influencing policy-making
processes. Examples of this were the demonstrations conducted by civil activist groups
throughout 2006 and 2007 (winter).
Besides the above-described concept, one more legislative document touches on
government-NGO interaction. It is a law on non-commercial organizations (NCOs),
adopted in October 1999 (Law on NCOs, 1999, according to which the government can
support NGOs by providing them with funding to carry out their programmes aimed
at the public interest and in any other ways, which are not prohibited by the legislation
(Law on NCOs, article 5, 1999). However, the law does not provide any details on
how the government should provide funding. In other words, it lacks implementation
mechanisms.
To sum up, the government and NGOs have had quite positive experience in
working together, however this has been small-scale and short-term in most cases. To
date, government-NGO collaboration has been mainly within donor-funded projects.
Unfortunately, the government has not had a clear state policy on cooperation with
NGOs; consequently the relationship between two actors has developed unsystematically
and disconnectedly.
The attempt of the government to create a state programme on NGO interaction
and support failed due to the poor implementation of this initiative. This indicates that,
in addition to a bare initiative, the state needs enhanced commitment to and control
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