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What's Being Done On . . . Political and Civic Participation of Youth?
of the Youth Human Rights Group in Kyrgystan Ms. Maria Lisitsyna is the Chairperson of the Coordinating Council of the Youth Human Rights Group (YHRG), an organization in Kyrgyzstan founded and run by young people between ages of 17 and 35. Its main objective is to protect and promote human rights in the region. The group is active in several areas, such as human rights monitoring, education and awareness, legal counseling, and legislative reforms. A graduate of Kyrgyz National University and the faculty of law at the Kyrgyz-Russian Academy of Education, Ms. Lisitsyna is currently a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy. This interview was conducted on May 14, 2004, at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC, which serves as Secretariat of the World Movement for Democracy. The interview was conducted by Anna Pkhrikian-Kyrou, Project Assistant for the World Movement. Q: How did you first become involved with democracy promotion work? My involvement with human rights started during my work at the Bureau on Human Rights and Rule of Law, which is one of the first nongovernmental organizations established in Kyrgyzstan. I was 17 years old at the time and I simultaneously attended university and worked at the Bureau. At the beginning, my tasks were mostly technical and involved computer work, creating small legislative database, maintaining the organization's library, answering the phones, and recording visitors' complaints. I was very interested in human rights issues, but was not sure yet of what I wanted to do in my life. There were several factors and experiences that influenced my decision to continue working on human rights issues. The most memorable and emotionally difficult experience was talking to relatives of the people who were sentenced to death. Many years have passed, but I still remember some of them and their hopeless stories on how they tried to save their children from the death penalty. In a majority of these cases, the death penalty was imposed after an unfair trial and torture. Yet, there was nowhere that these people could go where their concerns would be heard. I think my personal involvement with human rights started with these cases, and not just with the formal beginning of my work in a human rights organization. Q: Please tell us when and how your organization was established and what the issues are that you work on? Our organization started as a youth program within the Bureau on Human Rights and Rule of Law. Later, the decision was made to form an independent organization, Youth Human Rights Group, which was officially established in 1995. Human rights issues are very diverse. This is why we wanted to find an area within this field to specialize in. Our first intention was to focus on issues of alternative service and defend the rights of those who refuse to bear arms based on their personal convictions. However, we soon chose to change our focus mainly for the following reasons: a campaign for alternative service requires a mass movement, while we were planning to work as a smaller group rather then lead a mass movement; in addition, we were unable to find people who would apply to court on the issue of alternative service. Instead, we chose to specialize in children's rights. Being young ourselves, we were feeling more comfortable with this focus. We also knew that there was a void in the field of children's rights in Kyrgyzstan. Organizations working for children and with children from the perspective of human rights did not exist. We started out our work with an education program in schools. We developed lessons on children's rights and taught them in seven schools in Bishkek. It was a very challenging task. The school environment was not always very conducive to student participation. As we walked into the classroom, teachers, seeing a young face, would turn to the classroom and urge the children to sit quietly and listen to their visiting teachers, warning them that if there is any noise coming out of the classroom, the children will have problems. The teachers' intention was to help us maintain order, but with such a start, it was not a very easy task to encourage students to participate, ask questions, and make comments. The children showed a lot of interest in the issue, however, so we proceeded to develop a human rights curriculum and a teacher's guide (using, a lot of materials published already by other organizations) on children's rights education. During the first few years we taught at schools ourselves. However, our organization is small, and we realized the need to expand the program. We started looking for more people who could teach human rights. Finding such people was also a challenge. Our position has always been (and that's why we've always been quite careful regarding the issue of introducing human rights into the formal curriculum) that it is better not to teach human rights if the person teaching the subject does not share these principles, does not have sufficient knowledge, and does not try to create a friendly environment in the classroom. Such teaching can harm the children more than benefit them. So, in the beginning, we were quite reluctant to collaborate with teachers on this issue. We started holding human rights workshops at the universities and proposing to the interested students that they teach human rights at schools on a volunteer basis. We agreed to train the volunteers, organize weekly meetings during which we could help them prepare for each lesson, and often visited their classes. We did this for several years; it was a way for us to involve more people in human rights work. Some of our current staff members are former educational program volunteers. However, despite the weekly preparatory meetings, our volunteers did not always have sufficient knowledge on the subject, often lacked practical experience in the field, and had difficulty answering some of the children's questions. It was also difficult for us to monitor the results of our educational activities, because we were not spending a lot of time in the schools, did not know the children in our classes well, and could not assess if the lessons impacted their lives. The lessons themselves were going well in most cases, but without support from teachers, the impact of lessons on the realization of children's rights in the schools was not very strong. An unsupportive school environment was the biggest challenge for children who tried to apply the knowledge they acquired. As you probably have guessed by now, our next step was to work with the teachers themselves, and we have now been working with them for over three years. Each teacher who is interested takes at least two 5-day sessions on human rights education. During such training we discuss educational techniques and provide participants with the maximum possible information and skills on human rights protection. The question of values and teachers' attitudes is at the core of the training and is in different ways reflected in all the sessions. Some sessions are specifically devoted to the school environment. Certainly, not all teachers are very interested in the issue of human rights, but generally everyone actively participates in the discussions. We don't expect that they will teach human rights on a regular basis in their schools, but if they change their attitude, even a little, towards children's rights and conduct one or two events devoted to this issue, then we think it will already have an impact. Presently, we have a core group of 7 teachers and 3 YHRG staff members who act as trainers. We provide all teachers with educational materials, including teaching guides that we have developed and continue to change and revise based on the feedback we receive. It is worth mentioning that teachers specializing in different age groups and subjects are invited to our trainings. Some sessions (theories of human rights, mechanisms of protection, exercises on legitimate limitations of human rights, and on principles of human rights education) are common for all teachers. During other practical sessions, teachers are divided into groups according to the age of the children they teach (primary, secondary, high school). Q: What other activities does YHRG undertake? Today, in addition to our education program, we are involved in a number of other activities. We regularly monitor human rights situations in different state residential institutions. Thus we visit all orphanages and residential schools for abandoned children. We also monitor human rights in psychiatric hospitals in Kyrgyzstan. Currently, we are heavily involved with the issue of juvenile justice as it needs in-depth reform. Our most recent monitoring examined the human rights situation in juvenile prisons and special correction schools for at-risk children. We also examine the level of respect to children's rights in the work of different institutions that consider children's cases. Every monitoring is followed by some advocacy actions in order to improve the situation. We also provide counseling and legal assistance on a regular basis, and review, analyze, and propose amendments to national regulations and policies on human rights, and we prepare reports on children's rights in Kyrgyzstan to international organizations, including the Alternative Report to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. One of the most recent programs of YHRG focuses on training defense lawyers on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, which allows individuals whose rights and freedoms have been violated to file complaints with the UN Human Rights Committee against the respective states. The program consists of five 3- to 7-day trainings with participation of international experts. This program is important to us for several reasons. First, international pressure is one of the main tools we can use to advocate for change in our country, despite the fact that our government has paid less attention to its international image in the last few years. Second, most cases that usually get international attention are high-profile political cases. This procedure allows less noticed cases of human rights violations committed by state bodies to receive proper attention. Finally, it forces lawyers to pay more attention to human rights violations in the courts of Kyrgyzstan and to adhere to the international standards of law. The Human Rights Committee's requirement of "exhaustion of domestic remedies," which stipulates that before the case is sent to the Committee, it should be examined by all relevant national entities, is the most important because it completely changes the strategy of the defense lawyer, and allows for much more efficient protection achieved at the national level. Many of the defense lawyers that we have trained are currently in the process of preparing cases for submission to the Human Rights Committee. Q: Which of your projects do you consider the most successful and what has been the impact of the project on Kyrgyz society? We have some small successes in our educational programs, and in improving certain human rights conditions after the monitoring, as well as some successes on cases of particular individuals. However, in the field of human rights, you generally have to wait a long time for any visible impact. On the other hand, our first Alternative report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is a good example of success. We prepared this alternative (shadow) report in 2000 that represents the views of NGOs on the report that the government submitted to the Committee. It also provides additional information on the state of children's rights in our country. Many of the recommendations that the Committee then officially gave to government in its concluding observations were based on our report, and the government then adopted a national program and a 10-year plan of action for the realization of children's rights. Surely, the fact that the plan was adopted does not itself change the lives of people immediately, but at least this is an example for us of how young people can influence governmental policies. We just finished the Second Alternative Report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which shows that although the situation on children's rights is troubling in Kyrgyzstan, some small progress has been made as a result of the previous recommendations of the Committee. The process of writing such reports is a very positive experience. We always do it in cooperation with other NGOs. The resulting discussions and collaboration really helps all the NGOs involved in the process. Advocacy NGOs better understand the reality of life of people in difficult situations with whom they do not directly work; and more socially oriented NGOs (e.g., those working with street children) understand the importance of including more rights perspectives into their own work. The Committee on the Rights of the Child, in particular, provides an invaluable opportunity for young people to become more active in human rights issues at the international level. It formally encourages participation of children and young people in its sessions. I would encourage any group working on issues of children's rights to take part in this reporting process. It is really valuable and a helpful experience for organizations themselves. Q: As a youth organization, what are some challenges that your organization faced during its development, and how did you address them? And what issues do you continue to face? It is not easy to be a youth organization that specializes on rights issues. From the beginning, we faced the problem of not being taken seriously by governmental authorities, and often by other organizations. It is interesting to note that we easily established relationships with other organizations in Europe at first, and only later became more or less recognized in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia. But it took us much longer to find our place among different organizations in other CIS countries. Sometimes we had a feeling that nobody was interested in a new organization. Knowing that contacts with government would be quite difficult, we were not doing a lot of advocacy actions. The main rule for us from the very beginning has been to learn as much as possible on the topic before addressing it with governmental officials. If we don't have sufficient information about an issue and we are not sure that the officials would understand it, we prefer not to raise that issue with them. We face several problems from the government, for example, in getting access to different institutions, such as prisons or psychiatric hospitals. In some cases, we know that the reason behind this is that the government wants to prevent independent monitors from seeing the situations in those institutions. In other cases, the fact that we are a youth organization adds to the challenge of gaining access. Before we were able to monitor psychiatric hospitals, I spent about one year going back and forth to see the psychiatrist- in-chief at the Ministry of Health who was all the time requesting more documents and asking more questions. Eventually, when the Ministry finally granted us access, he just said "In principle, I would prefer to deal with an adult organization." Fortunately, for the next monitoring we were able to gain access without any problems, even though the Ministry was not happy that we were constantly going to psychiatric hospitals. At least the issue of our organization's age hasn't been brought up again. Starting as a youth organization, you eventually reach a point when many members acquire expertise in the issues, and the work you do becomes less youth oriented. Today, many of our partners ask if we ever considered changing our name because they find it difficult to explain to their colleagues and donors why a youth organization is a partner on lawyers training, for example. So, we have a dilemma: change our profile and stop being a youth organization or always try to keep the youth dynamics within our organization and always involve new younger people in our activities and let them also acquire experience while working. Q:What are some of the challenges/issues facing youth in civil society today and in the region in general? Civil society in Kyrgyzstan is really growing and there are a lot of new initiatives. But at the same time, if you look closely you see that the situation is a bit discouraging. During recent years a dangerous trend has appeared. Some new NGOs are created either by relatives of governmental officials or even by officials themselves. The latter case is especially widespread outside of the capital. I saw a similar situation in Tajikistan as well. Young people coming to work at NGOs are not exposed to the same "spirit" of civil society activities like we were, for example. In January of this year, we conducted a 10-day school for young NGO activists and had great participants who really studied hard. But what shocked me most was a session devoted to motivation factors for youth involvement in the NGOs work. The trainers asked the participants to write an example of a situation in which something happened and they lost their motivation to continue their work in the organization. It was the most difficult exercise for them. The group that easily solved the difficult case studies and actively participated in different discussions just did not know what to do. It seemed that none of these young people ever asked "why am I involved in civil society activities?" For many young people working in nongovernmental organizations, their involvement with civil society activities is just regular work. They have an interest in these activities, but their interest in the substance of the work is often not encouraged. Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, several human rights NGOs were established in Kyrgyzstan, including ours. However, currently it is much more difficult to start working on human rights issues, and especially to establish a youth organization to deal with these issues. For example, I think our group would not be the same if we tried to re-create it today. There are several explanations for this. The political situation in Kyrgyzstan worsens day by day; the government puts more pressure on civil society activists; people are frequently arrested during demonstrations; when elections or referenda approach, many activists receive direct threats from security agencies. Not many young people without the experience of severe human rights violations and who have no specific reasons to engage in this type of activity will do so. Also, this is politically sensitive work, and the question "who are you and why do you want to do this kind of work?" always arises. People do not trust just anyone. Q: Could you please tell us a bit about the focus of your fellowship here at NED and why you decided to pick this topic? My fellowship topic is "Encouraging Youth Participation in Human Rights Promotion." I never reflected much on this topic before, mostly being involved with actual human rights work. I thought it would be interesting to reflect on this experience of working with youth and for youth issues from a more distant and objective viewpoint, and to look for ways of making youth participation more valuable. I also would like to link my research with one of our current projects at the YHRG focusing on capacity-building for young NGO activists. Frequently, young people working in NGOs lack training and moral support from their own organizations. So our program includes different trainings on human rights protection, participation in monitoring of forced child labor, and support for the initiatives of young NGO activists. I hope that my research will help us evaluate the effectiveness of our program and lead to some suggestions and recommendations on how to encourage youth involvement in the region. We would like to incorporate the experience of young people from other countries into our work in Kyrgyzstan. In Central Asia, youth activism is often manifested through the formal involvement (in most cases employment, sometimes volunteering) for the established NGOs. Not much is going on outside those organizations. We have colleagues in the US who shared with us their experience of community work and of activities that they were doing without even thinking to establish formal organizations. It is very interesting for us to learn about the experience of such initiatives in the US. Another question that interests me is if major human rights organizations in the US have any youth policies and how they involve more young people in their activities. I am sure we will find some new ideas on what young people can do in our countries. During this fellowship I also hope to meet and learn from many people from around the world working on human rights issues. I am especially interested in the experiences of youth from other non-democratic countries. Thank you very much and best wishes on your work. About "What's Being Done On . . . " For three months at a time, we highlight the activities of various organizations in different global regions, and links to important resources, that are focused on a particular theme or area of democracy work. Each new theme is announced via DemocracyNews, and the information from the previous installment is placed in the archives below. We hope to receive and post information about the work you or others may be doing that is focused on these issues. Send information via e-mail to the or by fax to (202) 378-9889. |
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