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IFES - Tajikistan

Tajikistan

Since 1996, IFES has assisted Tajikistani educators to develop a program to educate active citizens, conducted survey research, and advised political parties and the election commission on ways to strengthen the country’s electoral processes.

Current Projects

Educating Central Asian Youth About Democracy

About half of the population of Tajikistan is under 14 years of age. As a result, the habits and beliefs adopted by this next generation will noticeably shape Tajikistan’s political landscape. In order to equip this generation with knowledge of democracy and habits of critical thinking, IFES has worked with Tajikistani education officials to develop a civic education program used by more than 800 schools. The program has several components, including a multilingual text book, student action committees, student meetings with government representatives, political conversation clubs, and democracy summer camps.

Both the Student Local Government Days and Student Parliament Days programs give students face-to-face contact with their elected representatives. The first gives students the opportunity to shadow local officials in order to learn how local government works and how citizens can participate in it, and the second brings students and members of the lower house of Parliament together to discuss important political issues of the day.

Democracy summer camps, political conversation clubs, and student action committees are designed to teach students the skills they need to become active citizens and give them an opportunity to practice these skills in the real world. The summer camps feature instruction in the principles of democracy though hands-on activities and exercises while the conversation clubs engage young people in weekly discussions about democracy and current events. In the student action committees, students identify a school or community problem, develop strategies for resolving it, and then work to address the issue.

Supporting Credible Elections in Tajikistan

Though the country’s civil war ended in 1997, both government and the peaceful opposition still face the challenge of overcoming past suspicions. They are also working to increase their capacity to function as transparent and effective public servants and to create the conditions in which a democratic system of governance can flourish.

IFES is working with election officials in Tajikistan to enable them to hold transparent, representative elections. To reach this goal, IFES is training poll workers, educating voters about how and why to vote, and providing technical advice to the election commission, local political parties, election observers and NGOs.

In 2006, IFES conducted a survey that found that large numbers of Tajikistani labor migrants were unlikely to cast ballots because they did not know how to vote from abroad or were simply unmotivated to do so. Given that some 15 percent of the population can live abroad at any given time, this demonstrates the need for a remedy to the disenfranchisement of a significant percentage of the voting population.

Past Projects in Tajikistan »