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Abstract
Providing support to “civil society” in the form of funding to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) became a central aspect of development engagement in Kyrgyzstan and other post-socialist countries in the 1990s, seen as a means of ensuring “good governance,” promoting participation, and providing a safety net of sorts to those who were left vulnerable by the market reforms that followed the collapse of Communism. Since then, donor engagement in Kyrgyzstan has led to the development of a thriving NGO sector, taken to embody “civil society” and to be a sign of the country's democratization, in comparison to its neighbors. However, this sector is dependent on support from international donors, and faces increasing hostility for supposedly representing outside interests, rather than effectively addressing the needs of the Kyrgyzstani population. This is particularly the case in regard to work on women's rights and gender equality. Based on interviews with 16 self-described activists working on gender issues, this paper explores what it is like to “do” gender activism in this practical and discursive environment. For my respondents, activity in the NGO sector emerges as not only a process that goes far beyond the straightforward implementation of donor agendas, but also one that does not necessarily “fit” with dominant understandings of what constitutes civil society activism.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the staff of the Social Research Center, AUCA, Bishkek, for their support during my time as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Center. The author would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers who provided feedback on earlier drafts of this article.
Notes
1. These include the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the regional development banks (e.g. the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Asian Development Bank).
2. This is a special issue of the journal Central Asian Survey on civil society in Central Asia.
3. It is impossible to state with any accuracy how many NGOs and other “civil society organizations” are currently active in Kyrgyzstan. A survey carried out by the Association of Civil Society Support Centers (ACSSC) in 2006 found that there were more than 8000 registered NGOs (Jailobaeva n.d.; Plakhotnikova and Kurbanova Citation2008), while two years later, Baktygulov (Citation2008, 31) gave a figure of 11,000 (employing around 100,000 people), and Tiulegenov (Citation2008) a figure of 14,000. However, it is thought that many of these registered groups are inactive (ACSSC Citation2006).
4. See http://www.donors.kg/en/donors/usaid_eng (last accessed 3 September 2009). The information on the donors.kg website has since changed.
5. Women's crisis centers offer women victims of domestic violence and other forms of gender-based violence psychological and legal support, and in some cases, also provide emergency accommodation and other forms of material support. Several crisis centers were established in the Kyrgyz Republic in the 1990s with financial and training support from international donors, part of a wider crisis center “movement” that emerged first in Russia in the early 1990s, and then expanded throughout the former Soviet Union. Introduced by Western feminists working for US-funded development organizations to local activists in Moscow and St Petersburg, crisis centers were quickly established in many Russian cities. They were presented as a technical “fix” to an identified “problem” (violence against women), rather than a means of challenging the social institutions upholding and perpetuating gender-based violence, and in contrast to the rape crisis centers and battered women's refuges established in Western Europe, North America, and Australasia in the 1970s, which were the product of grassroots, radical feminist activism. For more on the crisis center “movement” in the former Soviet Union, see Hemment (Citation2007) and Johnson (Citation2009). By 2009 when this research was conducted, only a few crisis centers were still operating in Kyrgyzstan, and only one was in a position to provide emergency accommodation and extended support.
6. Consultant to an NGO, author's interview, 29 September 2009.
7. Director of an NGO, author's interview, 24 February 2010.
8. Designer working for an NGO, author's interview, October 2009.
9. Space does not permit a full discussion of the tensions surrounding the word “empowerment” as it has come to be used in development, and in particular, in relation to gender equality. Suffice to say that in the context of Kay's argument, I would present the following definition of empowerment as reflective of the processes that Kay is seeking to describe: “empowerment is about the process by which those who have been denied the ability to make strategic life choices acquire such an ability” (Kabeer Citation1999, 435).
10. Director of an NGO, author's interview, 11 December 2009.
11. Director of an NGO, author's interview, March 2010.
12. Designer working for an NGO, author's interview, October 2009.
13. Director of an NGO, author's interview, 9 December 2009.
14. Director of an NGO, author's interview, 24 February 2010.
15. Psychologist working for an NGO, author's interview, 5 March 2010.
16. Counterpart Consortium was a USAID-funded NGO support initiative active in Kyrgyzstan in the 1990s.
17. Director of an NGO, author's interview, 11 December 2009.
18. Consultant to an NGO, author's interview, 29 September 2009.
19. Director of an NGO, author's interview, 9 December 2009.