Women Support Center works to encourage gender equality in Kyrgyzstan through the advancement of human rights and active participation in democratic reforms. It was established in 1995 to promote a democratic society through understanding the role and capacities of each individual.

Aims and activities

The main activities and objectives of the Women Support Center are concentrated on building the capacity of civil society to address gender issues. This is one of the most important crucial activities of the organisation's work. The achievement of this objective implies raising gender sensitivity among the population and introducing gender approaches into different areas of social life. The organisation does this through trainings, and ensuring the access of civil society representatives to information on gender issues.

There is a lack of information on gender issues in Kyrgyzstan, and the process of introducing gender-sensitive approaches into society is only just beginning. Multiple new initiative groups and other local organisations have little opportunity to familiarise themselves with this subject matter. First, it refers to information sources in the Kyrgyz language, as well as to information reflecting the local context specificity. The number of conducted training sessions on gender and contiguous themes does not meet the current needs of different groups.

In this regard, another important objective in the organisation's work is to expand the methodological and information base on gender issues, which includes a number of components such as the expansion of the information base on gender, including development and publication of materials in the Kyrgyz language; development and introduction of new training methodologies; gender training of local trainers and other specialists and research on various gender-based aspects, given the local specificity. The Women Support Center has implemented more than forty-five projects in the past twenty years.

Recent activity

Since 2014 the organisation has joined in the Women Peacebuilding Project funded by the European Union. This two-year project aims at enabling women to play a greater role in conflict prevention and peacebuilding processes in Kyrgyzstan.

The main objectives of the project are concentrated on strengthening the role of women in conflict resolution by fostering women’s voices in policy discussions on the implementation of the National Action Plan, supporting the integration of women groups in early warning mechanisms and responding to gender-based violence in situations of crisis. Moreover, the organisation works to set examples of how women can play an active role as agents of peace and conflict resolution in areas at high risk of conflict.