Inclusion of women’s needs in the Programs of Socio-Economic Development of aiyl aimaks

Dear friends! We have achieved a good increase in the number of women in aiyl keneshes! This is undoubtedly a great achievement. But now there are problems that our elected women deputies in the villages must solve in order to promote women’s rights and improve the status of women, in accordance with the laws and policies of the Kyrgyz Republic. As the analysis shows, the strategies and plans for the development of villages in the majority do not include the problems that women face. Often, there is no assessment of the needs of rural women.

We believe that by participating in decision-making processes, rural women can solve various problems, for example, how to deal with violence against women, how to promote women’s entrepreneurship.

Many women became deputies for the first time, they have no experience in decision-making at the local level, and the women’s movement needs to be helped and cooperate with them so that local politics can begin to solve the problems of women in the villages. Local politics were and still often are patriarchal and ignore women’s issues.

The Women’s NGO Forum of Kyrgyzstan cooperates with local women’s organizations and local women leaders to strengthen women’s leadership potential. At present, the reasons

insufficient implementation of gender policy at the local level is the low capacity of local governments in defining, planning and implementing tasks to ensure gender equality and women’s rights in local development programs and plans, as well as the budget.

The forum brought together 30 women deputies from Osh, Issyk-Kul, Jalal-Abad and Chui regions at the training “Inclusion of women’s needs in the Programs of Social and Economic Development of aiyl aimaks”. The training was held in Bishkek on May 11 and 12, 2022. The training was held within the framework of the program of the Forum of Women’s NGOs of Kyrgyzstan “Participation of women in political processes”.

The purpose of the training was to increase the capacity of women deputies of aiyl keneshes to include the needs of women in the field of participation in political processes, combating domestic violence and expanding the economic opportunities of rural women in the Programs for the Social and Economic Development of aiyl aimaks.

We expect that by the end of 2022, in four programs for the socio-economic development of ayil aimaks in the Kara-Suu district

Osh region, Kemin district and Issyk-Ata district of Chui region, Toguz Torou district of Jalal-Abad region, Tyup district of Issyk-Kul region will include areas of work in the field of combating violence, increasing women’s participation in decision-making, expanding women’s economic opportunities.