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| About Coalition |
| The Coalition “For Democracy and Civil Society”
Description and structure of the Coalition
The PU “Coalition for Democracy and a Civil Society” (the Coalition) is a non-governmental, independent and neutral union of citizens and the organizations, the purpose of which is to build a strong civil society, strengthen the rule of law and protection of human rights in Kyrgyzstan.
The Coalition is the neutral, non-party, non-commercial and non-governmental organization. General Assembly of members, which happens once two years, is the supreme body of the Coalition. The General Assembly elects the Board of Directors, which consists of 15 people and the President of the Coalition, who carries out the management of the organization’s activities. The Coalition has 7 regional offices in all oblasts of Kyrgyzstan.
Coalition unites more than 1,200 individual members combined into 61 primary cells, and also a network of partner public organizations (73 NGOs).
Background
Coalition since 1999 has been the umbrella group and spokesman for Kyrgyz civil society. We were main initiators of convening the 3rd sector in 2000, 2002, 2005 and 2007. Until recently, all these years we had been the only NGO which maintains regional offices and full time staff in all oblast centers. During elections in 2000 and 2005, referenda in 2003 and 2007, usually more then 160 NGOs participated in our full scale voter education and election observation campaigns. So quite naturally the regional civil society organizations have come to view the Coalition as the network organization, responsible for facilitating and running the communications of Bishkek NGOs and government initiatives with the grass-roots.
Created in 1998, the Coalition emerged as a result of the NGO Forum and was organized with the purpose of promoting democratic political processes and public involvement in social and political life of the country. The organization’s activities are focused on following program issues: supporting the development of free, fair, transparent and democratic election system; civic education; development of parliamentary system, civic advocacy campaigns; and state reform on local, regional and national levels.
Since its formation the Coalition had created a network of independent observers in Kyrgyzstan. The Coalition is also a member of the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO), which conducts independent international observations in the CIS countries and in Europe. Thanks to lobbying the status of an independent observer by the Coalition, a separate article included into the Election Code of Kyrgyz Republic in 2000, which was devoted to the election observer’s rights as participants of the election process. Also, in 2002 the Coalition became the initiator of the idea of conducting a joint conference with Central Election Commission on “Elections and the Civil Society Institutes”, which was conducted until the year 2005. The Coalition continues to conduct large-scale independent monitoring of referendums and elections in all levels. Currently it has been carrying out the disputes with CEC in the courts for not publishing results of the Parliamentary Elections in December 2007.
The Coalition conducts large scale civic education activities on the issues concerning electoral process, local governance, the Land Code, advocacy, parliamentarism and human rights. For these purposes Coalition had published and distributed more than one million copies of informational leaflets, posters, handbooks, guidelines, T-shirts, stickers, etc. among civil society activists, local government bodies, Jogorku Kenesh deputies, NGOs and political parties.
One of the vital directions in Coalition’s activities is the development of parliamentarism. The Coalition organized public meetings, debates and round tables on the national level in cooperation with the deputies of Jogorku Kenesh to increase the civic participation in the legislative process. The Coalition has been publishing the newspaper called The Democrat for almost 3 years, which covers the issues and events concerning human rights and development of democracy in the country and abroad. The newspaper also covers information about current activities of Jogorku Kenesh, texts of the draft laws so that voters have an opportunity to take an active participate in the decision-making process. The Democrat was distributed free of charge among Coalition member organizations, other NGOs, political parties, Jogorku Kenesh the Government, Administration of the President, local government bodies, embassies and the international organizations.
Currently, the organization is realizing a project with a grant of the European Commission “National Video Dialogue Network”.
Staff of Coalition has a long standing experience in organizing and realizing large scale regional activities, meetings, hearings, trainings and seminars, in elaborating, publishing and disseminating information, training materials newspaper, banners, as well as in working with the mass media. |
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