First meeting of public councils from the regions and the capital Bishkek.
Bishkek, April 17th. For the first time since the independence of Kyrgyzstan in 1991, members of the public councils from the regions and the capital Bishkek met for a dialogue platform. The conference was organized by the Kyrgyz Open Institute for Social Policy and the Gustav Stresemann Institute (GSI).
"Kyrgyzstan is made up of many regions, not just the capital," Svetlana Bashtovenko, President of the Resource Center for Elderly and member of the Open Institute for Social Policy, said at the conference, which had close to 70 participants. "More intensive cooperation between the public councils of all parts of the country is an important contribution to Kyrgyzstan's future".
Jyldyz Iskakova, coordinator of the GSI-project "Strengthening Civil Society Participation in Public Councils in Kyrgyzstan" stressed that the country can only develop if citizens can actively participate and contribute to it. "We can only do it if we all work together."
The Public councils, which were established based on a law passed in 2014, provide this opportunity. The councils are made up of volunteers from the respective regions or municipalities. They advise authorities and public institutions to improve their work and services for the population.
In the seven regions outside the capital, Bishkek, volunteer bodies had already been formed at the local level during the time of the Soviet Union, taking care of citizen’s needs. The focus was on different regional topics: some councils provided better medical care for seniors, others helped to find work for migrants, and others worked to reduce the number of burglaries and thefts in their communities.
The conference participants exchanged views on the functioning of their respective councils and reported on results already achieved. At the end of the conference, they signed a memorandum of understanding on "Implementing joint activities of local public councils, public councils of state bodies, government agencies and local self-governing bodies to solve local development issues". The goal is to work together more closely in the future and to better connect the regions of the country.