A criminal case brought against her relatives was ongoing at the end of the year. They do not want to acknowledge the issue and do not understand the term “femicide.” If the problem is not addressed, we might witness more of such infamous local cases as the murder of Burulai at the police station and the kidnapping and murder of Aizada. One of the cases involved a husband pouring gasoline over his wife and setting her on fire. In September 2020, a 47-year-old man stabbed his wife to death for not cooking dinner that day. In June 2020, a video circulated on social media of a husband tying car tires filled with bricks to his wife’s neck while repeatedly slapping her and pouring buckets of cold water on her as a punishment. A more recent case of horrific abuse, reported in asian-date.net/central-asia/kyrgyzstan-women September 2021, involved a 28-year-old man torturing his pregnant wife with a red-hot iron. These two cases have not resulted in femicide but are more likely to be “unfinished femicides.” There are many more untold stories with sad endings.

A woman holds up photos of two women who were killed by their kidnappers in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on April 8, 2021. As younger people in Kyrgyzstan move to urban areas or abroad, rural areas in Kyrgyzstan are increasingly left to women. In this interview, Dr. Koichumanova talks about some of her findings and shares her views on how to expand women’s prospects in Kyrgyz society. The project has been implemented with the support of the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. For the last few years, Professor Cholpon Koichumanova has been working on a project studying the role and place of women in modern Kyrgyzstan. “There is a criminal liability for the threat of using violence that is dangerous to life and health . But criminal liability occurs only if there are sufficient grounds to fear the implementation of the threat,” she said.

  • Another 4,963 cases – close to 70 percent – were initiated under the Administrative Code, including 2,344 for “domestic violence;” this includes 896 cases registered for failure to comply with a protection order.
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  • Internal Affairs Ministry data shows that police registered 2,701 cases of domestic violence and issued 2,623 protection orders between January and March 2019, with only 83 extended beyond 3 days.
  • Kyrgyzstan’s government should expand the Family Violence Law’s definition of “family” to include unmarried partners, former partners, and relatives of current or former partners or spouses, regardless of whether they are cohabiting.
  • Representatives of participating States showcased efforts to support women in leadership positions and programs to address violence.

In December 2011, the four police officers who had tortured him were charged with abuse of power and unlawfully entering his house. Sharobodin Yuldashev was sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment for participating in mass riots, destroying property, robbery and taking hostages. In August, the Law on Protection from False and Inaccurate Information was signed by the president, amid concerns that it unduly restricted the right to freedom of expression and could prevent criticism of public figures. It empowered unnamed state bodies to shut down or block websites for publishing “false or inaccurate” information, on the basis of a complaint by a private individual or a legal entity. In March, civil society activist Tilekmat Kurenov was detained and later charged with “calling for mass riots” and for the “violent overthrow of the government”.

In 2019, she was transferred to the passport control department at Manas International Airport, and soon she received her first promotion to the officer rank. “My goal is to get the rank of colonel, since now that I have become a service officer, I can count on a long-term career in the Border Service,” – Nurkyz shares her plans. For three years of border service work, 28-year-old Nurkyz Nurlanova has maintained more than 150 automated passport readers at the Manas International Airport in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. Women in Kyrgyzstan also face other dilemmas in a society that often blames a woman for the breakup of her marriage. Statistics from 2019 show that 86 percent of women withdrew their abuse complaints.

Freedom of expression

“It doesn’t matter if you give it to every member of the family saying what he can’t do – it has no power,” said the director of a crisis center in Osh, southern Kyrgyzstan’s largest city. The Working Groups are part of what is known as theSpecial Proceduresof the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms.

Kyrgyzstan’s government has taken steps to improve prevention, protection, and response regarding violence against women and girls. Measures include criminalization of domestic violence in the January 2019 Code of Misdemeanors, the adoption of a strengthened Law on Prevention and Protection Against Family Violence in 2017, and the criminalization of religious marriages of children in 2016.

Human Rights Seminar Returns to the OSCE with a Focus on Women and Girls

From early childhood, Nurkyz watched her father with great interest and enthusiasm when he repaired cars, and often helped him. Later, Nurkyz decided to study engineering, successfully passed the selection test for admission to a local university, becoming the only one among her peers to successfully graduate from her studies. This website is a project of the Women Peace and Security Programme of the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom.

In March 2010, opposition politician Roza Otunbaeva rose to power as caretaker president following a revolution against Bakiyev’s government, becoming Kyrgyzstan’s first female president. In Kyrgyzstan, the law enforcement agencies are very male-dominated, and women mostly do paperwork. A gender-balanced composition of state bodies could help to prioritize the issue of domestic violence. It is important to cultivate social empathy and mindfulness regarding women’s rights, raise awareness among law enforcement agencies and educate women and girls about their rights. In addition, in recent years, women have turned to the traditions and skills of needlework inherited from their mothers and grandmothers—carpet-weaving, embroidery, making products from felt, etc.—to alleviate poverty and unemployment.