Central Asia, as a region—much of its fate is being determined by its geographic location
between great powers such as China on the one hand, Russia, India, Europe
further to the west, so Central Asia as a region is at a crossroads.
This region has gone through a lot of changes, and I’ve seen how space can shrink
and then it can expand.
There is some space, but this space can be closed anytime.
Under the pretext of fighting extremism, for example.
The civil society is in danger in Tajikistan.
Why? Because of increasing authoritarianism in Tajikistan.
We are not even talking about issues of repression.
We’re talking about issues of economic survival.
Not many people have access to jobs, and this makes them more vulnerable.
Now, you have this aggressiveness coming from Russia, which is very bad, very worrying.
Hate speech is becoming more normal.
There is strict legislation on media.
There is strict legislation on NGOs.
People through their actions are bringing the very outcome they fear,
by trying to silence any moderate dissent.
What they may risk to get in the end is extremism.
In the long term, there will be a kind of friction between Russia and China
over who is the political and security boss of Central Asia.
And the countries in the region are going to be faced, as they always have been,
with this kind of choice about how to balance their relationships with large and powerful neighbors.
It’s impossible to look at things from just white and black color.
It’s all about tones, and different elements of society.
So from this perspective, it’s a challenge to create this movement and dynamics of open society
in a country like Tajikistan, which is moving towards the authoritarian structure.
The beauty of the open society is that implied in it that is the notion of patience.
And a recognition that open society in its pure form can never be reached,
but that it also takes a very long time.
So we really trust the foundation to see how far they can push the limits,
how much they can fund, how many grassroots organizations they can be involved with,
how they want to partner with the government, if they want to partner with the government.
We really trust people on the ground.
There is a big lack of trust from the people to the power.
And that’s what we are trying to change.
Saying to them that, “Guys, we are here to help you build trust within your people.”
But to build this trust, you have to be supportive, you have to be open, you have to be transparent.
Having open debates, inclusive debates in areas where it’s possible, where people
want to know where the money goes, they want more democratic procedures.
But in terms of open society, how we understand it in a comprehensive way, treatment of minorities,
and this nice comprehensive thing—that’s more difficult to push.
We do have several programs, which help us to navigate our work.
One of the key success stories was the establishment of the national testing center, which eliminated
corruption barriers for students who are coming with no connections, with no ties, with no money.
The main goal is to participate in education reforms.
Child-centered classrooms is the middle of these teaching processes.
So we’ve developed together a national concept of inclusive education.
And it is now an action, for those associations of parents of children with disabilities,
that they can use as a flag, and they can work with children of different types of disabilities.
We should talk specifically about palliative care.
People who really suffer, and which need palliative care, they do get this assistance.
And I think it’s a huge role of the foundation to give hope.
We also work on using human rights approaches in public health.
We work on civil initiatives on transparency and accountability, different initiatives
like economic advancement programs.
So we help them to get access to jobs.
We have pretty good grantees who act as watchdogs
to keep the internet environment and internet legislation free.
We train young researchers who want to do public policy research and create these messages
that can affect public policy, public opinion.
I think youth is definitely the most active part of society,
which has some more energy and desire to participate.
It’s important to maintain optimism and believe that even if sometimes we witness
the situation when one step forward is followed by two steps backwards,
these situations can not be sustainable in the long run.
There’s no easy answer to it.
What we need to do now is not to react but to reflect, and to figure out how we as an institution
and the partners that we have globally, can democratically understand what to do.