Source: World Bank

Young people’s political involvement is often attached to youth wings of political parties, but as the Rights of Young People in the Kyrgyz Republic cited in Youth and Public Policy in Kyrgyzstan found, independent elements of youth activism do exist.

After the mass protests leading to the ouster of then-president Bakiyev in April 2010, some young people observed the emergence of ‘two major groups—those who rode the revolutionary wave and those activists who had entered the public arena long before the storming of the Government House’ in central Bishkek implying that a strain of political opportunism exists among young people just as it does among their elders. While some youth NGOs receive support from domestic sources, many rely on grants from international donors.

Changes made to the country’s election law in June 2010 introduced a youth quota in parliament, mandating that no fewer than 15 percent of every party’s candidates be younger than 36. Although youth activists have pointed out that many parties viewed this as a formality and put young candidates at the bottom of their party lists, the requirement did raise the number of young politicians in the national legislature to 10 percent. Provincial level Youth Ministry officials have also initiated ‘young liaisons’ from each city neighborhood to support the work of the mayoral Committee for Youth Affairs (described in more detail in Section 6.3 of the Youth Policy Review). The Youth and Public Policy in Kyrgyzstan noted that youth policy had been ineffective:

Over the past decade, Kyrgyzstan has developed a raft of youth policies, but few of these seem to genuinely improve young people’s access to information, rights, and opportunities. Too many of the laws, regulations, and conceptual documents have been reactive: off-the-cuff responses to political events— particularly, young people’s participation in the popular uprisings that overthrew two presidents—rather than the enactment of a strategic vision. Worse still, many policies exist on paper only, without effective mechanisms to achieve their stated aims.

The national youth law (2009) sought to address these concerns but the formation of the Ministry of Youth Affairs, in response to the April 2010 uprisings (now the Ministry of Labour, Migration and Youth) similarly lacked the coordination and strategy of previous youth policies.  The report identified a number of factors compounding the effectiveness of youth policies and Ministries:

...Foundational youth policy documents adopted since 2009 contain contradictions and lack concreteness; responsibility for implementation continues to be diffuse; data collection and procedures for evaluating and monitoring policy are extremely weak; policy coherence, cross-sectoral cooperation, and creative approaches to engaging young people are also missing. Overall, Kyrgyzstan’s youth policy fails to focus on young people’s needs or future roles in society.

 It further concluded: Kyrgyzstan’s approach to creating a Youth Ministry, together with the latest wave of national youth policies, suggest that the country’s leadership has not learned from past mistakes and that, despite vocal official commitments to young people, youth policy remains a low priority for the government.