New project raising youth awareness of elections

The UN has recently launched a new project in Kyrgyzstan in an attempt to tackle acute voter apathy among the country’s youth, in particular within the rural population. The project is being run by the United Nations Volunteers (UNV), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) and began in late November ahead of Sunday’s local elections. Voter turnout at the elections to the Ayil Okmotus, or rural self-governing administrations, was 52.4 percent, the Central Election Committee said, but it not yet known what percentage of that were young people, who make up 40 percent of the country’s population. “If we are serious about wanting to develop a nation state, we need to start from local democracy, there are many issues to be resolved at this primary level. Today rural youth have a lot of problems - migration, lack of jobs. So we are trying to get cooperation between local decision-makers and local youth,” Timur Uzakbaev, coordinator of the youth election project, said in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital. The scheme, which has been launched in about 200 rural communities, has screened education films on the election, organised meetings of local youth with candidates and facilitated open discussions on the importance of the electoral process. But it’s not all work, the training is combined with a disco or other social events in order to attract more young people. But many young Kyrgyz are cynical about such schemes. “These things are all a lie, everybody promises us a lot of things but no one fulfills them. We still do not have safe drinking water, and so nobody cares about it,” said Maksat, a 23-year-old on the verge of becoming a labour migrant.