Kyrgyzstan to Offer Dual Nationality

Legalising dual citizenship will benefit Kyrgyzstan, but achieving it will require a lengthy process of signing bilateral agreements with other countries, analysts say.



Under the new constitution introduced following mass protests in early November, Kyrgyzstan nationals are allowed to take out citizenship of another state.



Valentin Bogatyrev, vice-president of the Vostok think tank, welcomes the introduction of dual citizenship, since it would benefit the many Kyrgyzstan nationals working as migrant labour in Russia.



“It is to our advantage, but I don’t know about Russia,” he said. “Russia is unlikely to agree to dual citizenship. Until we have an agreement with Russia on this, the scheme won’t work.”



The Kyrgyz foreign ministry’s migration service estimates that around 500,000 Kyrgyzstan nationals are currently abroad, while the Russian interior ministry says over 250,000 Kyrgyz citizens entered the country in 2005. About 4,000 of the Kyrgyzstan nationals in Russia have been granted permanent residence, and another 130,000 have temporary residence rights.



Aigul Ryskulova, the head of the State Committee for Migration and Employment, told NBCentralAsia that the introduction of dual citizenship would be a great support for those migrants who want to be able to return home at any time.



Ryskulova noted that at present, Kyrgyzstan has no such dual nationality agreement with any country.



“Our country will have to enter into negotiations with the governments of countries with which we’d like a dual nationality arrangement. Only time will tell whether these countries will agree,” she said. “It’s a long road towards actually introducing dual citizenship with a particular country.”



Political scientist Tamerlan Ibraimov sees one of the benefits of dual citizenship as being that it will make it more possible to protect the interests of Kyrgyz nationals abroad.



At the same time, he can foresee demographic risks that the government would find it hard to address after the fact, especially in the south of the country, where most people are ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbek but all are Kyrgyzstan nationals.



“Let’s say Kyrgyzstan introduces a dual citizenship scheme with Uzbekistan. Then the south will be completely filled up with settlers who are Uzbek citizens, since the [current] population will have seized their chance to move to Russia,” he said. “That would create an ethnic problem.”



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)