Oct 10, 2024
With disability rights organization New Age foundation, the Solidarity Center supported the re-launch of job search mobile phone app, “Ten Ishte” for people with disabilities in Kyrgyzstan. The app, which translated means “Equal Work,” was previously informational but now also lists inclusive job openings and accessibility information about the buildings in which those jobs are located.
“Everybody deserves the dignity of full participation in society, including opportunities to acquire jobs-based skills and earn their livelihoods,” says New Age founder and long-term Solidarity Center partner Askar Turdugulov.
In collaboration with experts and civil society organizations and with Solidarity Center support, New Age helped redesign the app to best serve the needs of people with disabilities who are living in Kyrgyzstan. The app’s launch in Bishkek on October 3, gathered key rights activists and political and business leaders, including people with disabilities, civil society organization leaders, employers, Deputy Minister of Labor Kyial Januzakova, Deputy Minister of Education Muratbek Kasymaliev, Bishkek Deputy Mayor Victoria Mozgacheva and key members of parliament.
Event feedback included a recommendation by public association ARDI lawyer Seinep Dyikanbaevato to report the app’s building accessibility ratings to the Bishkek mayor’s office.
A public signing of a Solidarity Center memorandum of understanding during the event, which for the first time also included the Kyrgyz Society of the Blind and Deaf, marks the expansion of a disability rights coalition that, through better access to good jobs, seeks better social and professional integration for people with disabilities in Kyrgyzstan.
Sep 24, 2024
Nearly two dozen participants from three countries joined in a recent leadership seminar in Issyk Kul, Kyrgyzstan, to discuss strategies for labor relations in inspectorates, unions and NGOs to fight labor corruption.
The seminar provided a deep understanding of basic labor rights and enabled participants to apply valuable lessons. Credit: Solidarity Center
“I didn’t know that this was such a relevant topic,” said Eshmurodova Sevara, a participant from Uzbekistan. “Corruption exists in our everyday life. As a student, I would like less of it in my life.”
The seminar provided a deep understanding of fundamental labor rights and also enabled participants to apply valuable lessons by utilizing effective tools to combat such corruption in labor as misappropriated funds, or personal gain at the expense of workers.
The regional seminar, part of a Solidarity Center school that facilitator Mukha Kazakhstan described as “very high,” builds on the success of the Annual School of Young Leaders in Kyrgyzstan, a country-wide program launched in 2019. The first Regional Youth School involved civil society and union members and leaders from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
Combining practical learning, including simulation exercises and gamification, the hands-on activities enabled participants to better understand the role of key institutions in addressing corruption in labor relations. (A video captures some of interactivity.)
Aliya Narbai, a participant from Kazakhstan, said he not only gained valuable insights, but practical tools he can apply. “After returning to Kazakhstan, I plan to initiate a campaign to raise public awareness about labor rights and corruption,” he said.
Equipped to Go Forward
“The school showed us how similar our challenges are. Now, we understand that we must act together, combining our efforts,” said Umar Zhaliev, a representative of the Federation of Trade Unions of Kyrgyzstan.
The program’s primary goal—to equip young leaders with the knowledge and tools to take action—developed through sessions in which participants created action plans to implement after returning to their countries. Through an emerging youth activist network, participants can develop mutual support and collaboration to advance labor rights and combat corruption throughout the region.
“Organizing the youth school on labor rights was vital because it empowered young people with essential knowledge and fostered community engagement,” says Solidarity Center country program director Lola Abdukadyrova. “By equipping them with this knowledge, we’re nurturing informed advocates who can effectively engage in labor rights discussions and drive positive change in their communities.”
As Sevara said, when I return “to my home city, I will try to study it even more deeply in order to eradicate it, at least in small parts.”
Aug 14, 2024
To focus attention on protecting workers from Central Asian countries who are migrating abroad to earn their livelihoods, the Solidarity Center was part of a broad coalition that organized a high-level conference in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, to coincide with UN World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. The two-day conference, which took place July 30 to 31, provided a forum for sharing best practices and strategies to combat forced labor, included representatives from regional and global representatives of civil society organizations, state institutions and organizations, trafficking experts and the U.S. government.
“Collaboration on labor protections can potentially ensure safer and fairer working conditions for everyone in the region,” says Solidarity Center Europe and Central Asia Regional Program Director Rudy Porter.
As a percentage of population, forced labor in Central Asia and Europe is the second highest in the world–estimated at more than 4 million people. The U.S. Department of State’s 2023 Trafficking in Persons report details forced labor across Central Asia, including in Kazakhstan, where debt-based coercion of migrant workers is reportedly increasing. Globally, there were almost 8 million international migrants from Central Asian countries by mid-year 2020, more than 60 percent of whom were in Russia. A Solidarity Center-supported survey of hundreds of Kyrgyz women migrant workers across 19 Russian cities in 2021 documented brutal conditions on the job for these women, including sexual violence.
The conference, “Strengthening National and International Partnerships in Combating Trafficking in Persons,” was co-organized with the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Kyrgyz Republic’s Parliament, the EU Mission, the U.S. Embassy in Kyrgyzstan and global funder Winrock International. Also participating were Solidarity Center partner worker rights organizations Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights (KIBHR), Kyrgyzstan’s Insan-Leilek and Migrant Workers Union, and Uzbekistan’s Istiqbolli Avlod. The European Union, OSCE, UNODC and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) cosponsored.
The Solidarity Center participated on a panel on countering forced labor through promotion of fundamental labor rights in the region and highlighted a finding from recently completed research that almost 60 percent of Central Asian migrant workers surveyed do not know what forced labor is—which increases their vulnerability to unscrupulous employers or recruiters. Solidarity Center staff also used the panel as an opportunity to present recommendations emphasizing the role of labor inspectorates, unions and private and state recruitment agencies in combating forced labor.
The conference builds from a milestone convening the Solidarity Center organized in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, last year, where a joint regional action plan on combating forced labor and advancing worker rights was adopted by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan stakeholders, including government ministries and agencies, non-governmental and civil society sectors, and international organizations.
Forced labor is found increasingly in the private economy, in labor-intensive and under-regulated sectors such as construction, agriculture, fisheries, domestic work and mining, reports the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). Worldwide, 28 million people were trapped in forced labor in 2021, a number that represents an increase of more than one-third in only five years. Globally, forced labor in the private economy is estimated to generate $236 billion in illegal profits per year, an increase of more than $64 billion since 2014.
The UN’s 2018 Global Compact on migration, which sets out a cooperative framework for achieving safe migration within a rights-based framework, includes a process for implementation and review of UN member states’ progress on the issue.
* Currently available in Russian; English translation forthcoming.
Mar 18, 2024
More than 1 billion people, or 16 percent of the world’s population, experience a significant disability, and 80 percent to 90 percent of working age people with disabilities are unemployed in developing countries. People with disabilities are more likely to experience adverse socioeconomic outcomes than those without disabilities, such as under education, a higher drop-out rate, lower levels of professional integration and higher poverty levels.
In Central Asia, the Solidarity Center partners with disability rights groups to promote inclusive employment, including through inclusive education. Zakhira Begalieva and Gulmira Kazakunova, disability rights activists who head Kazakhstan’s I Teach Me and Kyrgyzstan’s Ravenstvo, respectively, last month joined more than 1,000 people from 100 countries in Vienna for the UN’s 2024 Project Zero Conference to learn more about Inclusive education and information and communication technology (ICT), and to explore regional and global alliance-building opportunities.
“Here you feel some kind of freedom and you feel that opportunities are not limited,” said Kazakunova.
In Kazakhstan, I Teach Me provides online training for youth with disabilities to prepare them for future employment and, in Kyrgyzstan, Ravenstvo educates women with disabilities to help them secure jobs and advocates for inclusive education to help increase job market participation for women with disabilities.
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which aims to create conditions for persons with disabilities to participate in society on an equal basis with others and free from discrimination, was ratified by Kazakhstan in 2015 and Kyrgyzstan in 2019. However, discrimination against people with disabilities has persisted.
In Kazakhstan, the UN Development Program (UNDP) reports that the country’s more than 750,000 people with disabilities every day, “face obstacles on the way to gaining equal access to education, health and employment.” The Solidarity Center in Kazakhstan is supporting partners who, after years of advocating for inclusivity, are now focused on implementation of new legislative measures and a legal framework adopted to ensure implementation of CRPD. Starting this year, more than 34,000 workers with disabilities were covered by measures to promote employment.
In Kyrgyzstan, the Solidarity Center is supporting a program focused on reducing discrimination in employment and promoting the labor rights of workers with disabilities—the first of its kind in the country. A 2022 Solidarity Center study revealed that only 20 percent of people with disabilities surveyed in Kyrgyzstan were employed, most in insecure seasonal or part-time jobs. Through a combination of legislative analysis, large-scale media campaigns, the development of a mobile application, individual legal support, educational trainings and collaboration with key organizations, the Solidarity Center is working to make real change for people with disabilities in Kyrgyzstan, including efforts to harmonize regulations and mechanisms in the country’s labor code to improve laws impacting people with disabilities.
Unions and other worker associations can be especially effective advocates for disability rights. The International Labor Organization (ILO) reports that unions are the strongest voices advocating for the rights of people with disabilities at work around the world. Public-sector unions, where survey data shows workers with disabilities experience higher levels of union representation, are natural organizers around rights issues because of their position at the nexus of governance and work.
Learn more about strategies that civil society allies in Kyrgyzstan, with Solidarity Center support, are using to advance and protect the rights of people with disabilities—including coalition-building and joint advocacy projects with national and local disability rights organizations, pro-bono legal support, data collection, legislative reform and trainings-of-trainers with disabilities. [Video in Russian]
Sep 19, 2023
Women and workers from marginalized communities suffered disproportionately from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and a new survey details the effects on Kyrgyz migrant workers in Russia.
The survey of almost 300 Kyrgyz women who are dependent on precarious, low-wage jobs in Russia finds that the pandemic exacerbated migrant workers’ vulnerability to economic precarity and that women migrant workers reported brutal conditions on the job, including sexual violence. Almost half a million Kyrgyz women were working in Russia in 2021.
The survey compiled data from Kyrgyz women working in Russia in caregiving, catering, domestic and janitorial work and garment manufacturing and retail sectors in 19 Russian cities, including Moscow, Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg. The survey was conducted by local non-governmental organization Insan-Leilek Public Foundation, a long-time partner of the Solidarity Center in advocating for the rights of migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan.
“The pandemic played such a cruel joke on us,” said a survey respondent. (For their protection, respondents are quoted anonymously.) “They start with migrants; they are the first to be fired.”
Respondents reported increased health precarity during the pandemic due to limited non-resident medical services and higher virus exposure while working service jobs, as well as increased financial precarity following mass service-sector and retail layoffs. Without formal written work agreements—common for migrant workers and a violation of their rights under Russian labor law—many lost their incomes without compensation, which increased their food insecurity and other economic hardships.
Rampant Worker Rights Violations, Including GBVH
- Many respondents reported health and safety violations and loss of dignity at work due to migrant status, unregulated use of chemicals and rampant sexual or other gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) by employers, supervisors and customers.
- Sexual violence was common. Fourteen percent of those surveyed reported rape; two were victims of gang rape in their workplaces.
- Sexual harassment was widely reported. Forty percent of participants said they were subject at work to comments about their bodies, obscene jokes and sexually suggestive gestures. Twenty percent reported violation of their personal boundaries, such as men touching their waist, breasts, buttocks and other parts of the body.
- More than half of the respondents were working without contracts, leaving them without legal protection and vulnerable to the whims of employers—many of whom reportedly refused to sign employment contracts at the time of hiring.
- More than two thirds of the women reported encountered discrimination at the workplace. Of that number, two thirds attributed it to their migrant status; half said it was because of their gender.
- Many respondents reported wage and working conditions in violation of Russia’s labor code, including a quarter of respondents who suffered wage payment delays, half who did not receive overtime pay and four-fifths who were denied paid sick and holiday leave.
- Half of respondents reporting rights violations did not know where to turn for help or were afraid to talk about it.
“I don’t want to seek help and it’s impossible to seek help,” said a survey respondent who reported being touched sexually at work but feared deportation if she reported the abuse.
Based on survey findings, Insan-Leilek made recommendations to the governments of Kyrgyzstan and Russia to better protect migrant Kyrgyz women, including a greater role for the Trade Union of Migrants of the Kyrgyz Republic, pre-departure worker rights training for those migrating to Russia for work and the creation of migrant crisis centers to provide emergency shelter as well as legal, medical and psychological aid. To address GBVH suffered by women Kyrgyz migrants in the world of work, union women are demanding ratification of UN International Labor Organization Convention 190 (C190).
Many Kyrgyz citizens are forced to move to other countries to earn their livelihoods because of limited economic opportunities in Kyrgyzstan, where a third of the population lives below the national poverty line and migrant remittances in 2022 represented 30 percent of the country’s GDP.
