IWPR Trainee Wins Parliamentary Coverage Award

Long-term IWPR contributor Asyl Osmonalieva has been awarded a prize of 1,500 US dollars for seven articles on issues debated in the Kyrgyz parliament.

The competition was organised by the parliament with the support of the European Commission-United Nations Development Programme Parliamentary Reform Project. According to Asyl, her prize came as something of a surprise, "I have to admit that there was a lot of criticism in the reports so it was a bit unexpected to find that in the end my publications were named as the best." 

We did everything possible to give even-handed and balanced information and provide an opportunity those involved to state their position.
Asyl Osmonalieva, IWPR contributor

The prize comes after Asyl's nomination as a finalist in the Developing Asia Journalism Awards - run by the Asian Development Bank Institute - for an article she wrote for IWPR entitled Kyrgyzstan's Controversial "Winter Sale", published in January 2009. In October, Asyl travelled to Tokyo for a training programme on economic, financial and environmental reporting as part of the award.

Talking about her analytical reports on the inner working of parliament, Asyl said, "The decision to take part in the competition came at the last minute; I submitted seven reports just before the deadline."

Two of these items were written for IWPR. One of them, Disappointment at Kyrgyz Media Law Changes, looked into amendments to the media legislation approved by parliament. These required television stations to ensure that not less than 50 per cent of their overall output was in the Kyrgyz language. They also had to produce 50 per cent of their content themselves and reduce the amount of programming bought in, mostly from Russian TV. The bill promptly came in for public criticism.

"We did everything possible to give even-handed and balanced information and provide an opportunity those involved to state their position," Asyl said.

Another IWPR article, Kyrgyzstan: Yet Another Tax Amnesty, was about an effort to get people to declare assets on which taxes had not been paid. The controversial bill brought a strong reaction from the public and some deputies. Asyl said that by focusing on the heart of the controversy, the report depicted the difficult political dispute that lay behind this law.

Asyl continues to write about parliament and her aim is to show not only discussions themselves but also events behind the scenes.

Separately, some local authorities in Tajikistan have been spurred into making fresh efforts to tackle a rising tide of suicides by an IWPR round table on the subject.

Religious leaders and teachers also followed suit, offering talks on how to cope with difficulties of life without resorting to a tragic solution.

Students and teaching staff from Khorog University in Badakhshan, a mountainous region of eastern Tajikistan, who attended the meeting showed a particular determination to put into action some of the ideas voiced during the IWPR event.
They introduced weekly discussions and plan to start a campaign for their university to open a psychology department.

The IWPR round table on the issue of suicide and ways of dealing with it was held on October 22. A similar debate was held in Badakhshan in June.

The latest session resulted in setting up a working group that intends to petition the regional administration for help in preventing suicide and raising awareness about the issue.

Organised within the European Union-funded IWPR Human Rights project, the meeting in Khorog aimed to bring together the human rights community and media to raise awareness about the rising trend in suicide attempts.

The meeting received extensive coverage on regional TV and radio stations. In the words of radio journalist Safarmon Butabekova, it was the first time that the debate on suicide had involved such a wide range of people, "There was a huge response and as a result the problem was raised at the highest level."