Central Asia

KYRGYZSTAN

The project is designed to address the immediate consequences of the June 2010 violence in Osh and Jalal-Abad and to create conditions for rebuilding inter-community relations in the South of the country. The first component of the project targets students in ethnically mixed universities – Osh and Jalal-Abad State Universities and the Osh State Law Institute. Through the provision of space for dialogue and support to joint initiatives, the project will reduce the tension between ethnic Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbek students and will increase their knowledge and skills to manage conflict. About 120 students will improve their understanding of the needs of each community, build interpersonal relations and gain skills and understanding that will help prevent violence on campus.

As part of the project’s second component, Alert will assess the prospects for private sector involvement in peacebuilding and will identify possible areas for further engagement. Alert will also facilitate a lesson-sharing visit of representatives of the Caucasus Business Development Network (CBDN) to Osh and Jalal-Abad.  

The third component of the project links up grassroots work in the South with the National Dialogue Forum. Alert and civil society organisations engaged in confidence-building work will channel lessons learnt from community-level interventions to the high-level policy process.

KYRGYZSTAN

The project supports the formulation of a nationally-owned approach to peacebuilding through the establishment of a Nationali Dialogue for Kyrgyzstan. The Forum involves 30-35 influential, well respected and committed individuals, over a third of whom are women, from state institutions, civil society, religious authorities, academia and the private sector, including representatives of all major ethnic groups.

The main objective of the project is to conduct an informal high-level dialogue drawing on all sectors of society to exchange views about socio-political and other developments in Kyrgyzstan, with a view to enhancing understanding and contributing to a creative and peaceful resolution of the pressing issues facing Kyrgyzstan. It will be achieved through the inclusion of all major parties to the conflict in a dialogue process on peace and reconciliation, the facilitation and support to the formation of a broad consensus on the need to prevent escalation and to build lasting peace. A series of practical activities can also result from the process and are likely to include research, analysis and presentation of the conflict in its complexity that will allow for opportunities for conflict transformation and conflict prevention to be identified and explored.

More specifically, the project will produce the following outputs:

• a National Dialogue for Kyrgyzstan will be established and its members’ capacities built;
• tools or possible practical activities to support the dialogue process will be developed – these can include in-depth analysis of the peacebuilding and reconciliation needs and processes; conflict mitigation and prevention measures at the community level and promotion of the Forum’s work and key messages to the public.

TAJIKISTAN

The project is a follow-up to the pilot Zivik-funded project ‘Tajikistan Policy Dialogue Initiative’, which Alert implemented in 2009. It continues the policy dialogue set up within the framework of the first project and focuses on youth policies and the prevention of radicalism. One of the key outputs is a policy concept on the prevention of radicalism among youth, which will inform the overall strategy on secular state-religion relations developed with European Commission's funding.

The project promotes participatory planning approaches, fosters social inclusion of youth and mitigates the tension between the secular authorities and the religious communities. The project facilitates dialogue on the critical issue of youth, religion and radicalism at a policy level, enhances dialogue and interaction between secular and religious youth, raises the awareness of youth on religion, democracy and tolerance, and enhances their participation in policy-making processes.

The project is organised around two strands of activity: policy development and youth participation. Within the first strand, a policy working group is tasked to develop a concept paper on the prevention of radicalism among youth and advocates for its endorsement by the State Committee on Youth Affairs, Sport and Tourism. Within the second strand, secular and religious students take part in a student camp on youth participation and the prevention of radicalism, and in student debates discussing policy solutions and needs for state support to youth policies.

TAJIKISTAN

The rise in religious radicalism, combined with other social and economic issues, is contributing to tension in communities, and may even be utilised to foment widespread unrest in Tajikistan given the right triggers.

However, a major exacerbating factor is the government’s response and policy towards religion and religious organisations, which risks alienating these communities. Religious values and communities can play an important role in promoting democracy, tolerance and peace, and as such, religious leaders are important actors in civil society with a great deal of influence over their constituencies.

This project aims to harness the potential of religious leaders for their peacebuilding role, to foster positive relationships with State bodies that define policy towards religion and to improve that policy in a way that reduces tensions within and between religious and secular communities. It does so by combining the peacebuilding expertise of International Alert with those non-governmental actors that participated in the Tajik peace process, building on existing capacities and the positive Tajik peace-making experience.

This project is funded by the European Union.