Central Asia: July/Aug ‘09

IWPR has organised a series of training seminars in Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan as part of the Central Asia Human Rights Reporting Project aimed at building bridges between regional media and the human rights community.

The events took place in the southern Kyrgyz city of Jalalabad, the capital Bishkek and in the Kazak city of Almaty.

Twenty members of activist groups based in southern Kyrgyzstan took part in the Jalal-Abad seminar, which focused on monitoring of human rights in penitentiary institutions and detention centres.

Then aim was to equip activists with practical skills in how to carry out such monitoring in accordance with international standards and national laws.

The training session was aimed at strengthening non-governmental organisations’ roles in monitoring detention facilities to make them more open to public scrutiny. This in turn will serve as a safeguard for the protection of human rights.

According to feedback from the participants, the training seminars were useful because they improved their knowledge and skills and also provided an opportunity to meet fellow activists and exchange ideas.

The chairwoman of the human rights NGO Justice, Valentina Gritsenko, one of the co-organisers of the seminars, said that such training is part of the concerted effort needed to improve human rights in prisons and detention centres.

“A joint approach is needed. In other words the public should be more knowledgeable about its legal rights, while staff members of penitentiary institutions and of the interior ministry should be more aware of human rights,” she said.

“Finally public control over such entities is needed that is exercised through civil society organisations.”

The Bishkek-based training session covered strengthening the role of NGOs so that in cooperation with government agencies they can make Kyrgyz laws compatible with international human rights legislation.

Representatives of NGOs from across the country and officials from the state agency for physical development and sport, youth affairs and protection of children took part in the seminar.

The trainer, Yuri Gusakov, the director of the Karaganda regional office of the Kazakstan Bureau for Human Rights and the Rule of Law, said it was important that the seminar had been attended by government officials.

“Such an approach could demonstrate that there is an interest in cooperation and could be an indication that there is a new approach to working with NGOs,” Gusakov said.

Participants also discussed their own experiences of supporting human rights in different parts of the country. In their feedback, they said the seminar provided them with specific knowledge of how to apply international standards of human rights in their everyday work.

Journalists in Kazakstan writing for IWPR attended a training event in Almaty that was aimed at improving their knowledge of human rights to assist them with their reporting. They were introduced to modern concepts of human rights, to the history of the subject and to key human rights conventions.

IWPR is keen to stage such events, where human rights organisations are provided with the material, information and contacts they need to share their experiences – which they can then apply in their work.

They are also introduced to practical skills about how to organise public monitoring as part of their work in the public interest.