CIVIL SOCIETY ACTIVE IN NORTHERN KAZAKHSTAN

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TAGS: PGOV PREL ECON EAID SOCI KDEM KTIP OSCE KZ
SUBJECT: CIVIL SOCIETY ACTIVE IN NORTHERN KAZAKHSTAN

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1. (U) Sensitive but unclassified. Not for public Internet.


2. (SBU) SUMMARY: During recent visits to Kazakhstan's Kostanai
and North Kazakhstan Oblasts (refs A-D),NGO representatives
emphasized the growth of a vibrant civil society, especially in
Kostanai Oblast. They highlighted key challenges facing the
multi-ethnic and agrarian border regions, including unemployment,
infectious diseases, environmental problems, domestic violence, and
human trafficking. END SUMMARY.

KOSTANAI OFFICIALS AND NGOS DESCRIBE VIBRANT CIVIL SOCIETY


3. (SBU) According to Akimat (regional administration)
representative Tatyana Zueva, more than 500 NGOs actively work in
Kostanai Oblast, and the Oblast distributed more than 50 million
tenge ($333,000) to 70 NGOs to complete 75 projects over the past
year. During a roundtable with 12 NGO interlocutors and three
regional administration representatives, NGOs praised the local
government for their support. Emphasizing the region's
predominantly rural and agrarian nature, Zueva underlined the Oblast
Akimat's efforts to allocate most of its budget to NGOs outside of
major cities.


4. (SBU) One of Kostanai's largest and most successful
organizations, Pomosch (Help),provides activities for disadvantaged
youth and helps drug addicts and AIDS patients. Headed by Igor
Vassilenko, a medical doctor and psychologist, whose hobbies include
Asian martial arts and music, Pomosch has 28 employees and 53
volunteers. The NGO took a large, decrepit, two-story building and
renovated it into a modern facility with a recreation center,
medical clinic, and local-government-funded communal NGO resource
center. Help also completed more than 10 large-scale, year-long
projects.


5. (SBU) Speaking at the roundtable, Vassilenko praised the
Kostanai government's support and its employment of a tender-process
to fund NGO activities. He has used grants to equip a suite of
rooms for medical treatment and collectively create a website with
other NGOs, which has answered more than 5,000 anonymous questions,
many on health concerns related to drug use and sexual activities.
Thanks to the organization's efforts, the drug addiction situation
in Kostanai improved, and Kostanai moved from second to fifth in the
number of drug addicts per region, he asserted. According to
Vassilenko, the good cooperation of Kostanai's civil society and
local government has engendered the region's favorable
socio-economic situation, in comparison to other Kazakhstani
regions, Russia, and other CIS states.


6. (SBU) Dmitry Dei, formerly the director of an 80-member NGO
association, recalled using a $3,000 local-government grant and
USAID support to sponsor NGO workshops. Alexey Kulikov described
his "Crossroad" organization's implementation, with local and U.S.
government funds, of more than 20 projects for orphans. Valentina
Komkova, formerly Chairwoman of a Confederation of Free Trade
Unions, recounted her participation in an entrepreneurial
policy-making council of experts and the development of
anti-monopoly trade legislation. Mikhail Dauenov, an elderly
gentleman representing "For a Judicial Kazakhstan," which he claimed
is one of Kostanai's oldest and most powerful NGOs, asserted
accountability and control of corruption is better in Kostanai than
in other regions of Kazakhstan -- and other CIS countries. He
thanked the United States for its recognition of Kazakhstan's
development of civil society "by supporting its 2010 OSCE
Chairmanship."


7. (SBU) Despite widespread praise for local-government support,
financial challenges remain. According to Tatyana Shalygina of the
Kostanai Oblast Human Rights Bureau, her office provides judicial
assistance to refugees, stateless persons, and low-income

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applicants. In 2009, the number of clients doubled from the
previous year to 1000. Shalygina warned that her organization's two
lawyers and one other regional employee cannot meet growing demand.
At Lyubov Efanova's "Choice" center, 300 volunteers -- no paid
employees -- train disadvantaged boys. Meanwhile, Kuralay
Akhmedinova's all-volunteer center provides free consumer rights
consultations. Alexey Kulikov, who had been to the United States,
requested that the U.S. Government send NGO experts to observe local
conditions and advise them on how to expand activities given local
conditions.

NORTH KAZAKHSTAN NGO FOCUSED ON YOUTH AND HEALTH CONCERNS


8. (SBU) In North Kazakhstan Oblast, PolOff met five young NGO
leaders who share office space to save money. The most experienced,
Sergey Belov, founded the organization "Active Youth" as a college
student in 2005. According to Belov, the region's most serious
problems include unemployment, alcoholism, crime, and infectious
diseases. Since 2006, Belov's former volunteers have founded nine
different NGOs and won numerous grants, including a three-month,
$1,400 project to create youth centers. Belov expressed concerns
about the difficulty of obtaining government support for his project
to open youth activity clubs throughout North Kazakhstan Oblast and
Petropavlovsk city. "The North Kazakhstan Oblast administration
prefers to organize one-time events, since they say funding centers
offering several events per week over a long-term is more
complicated and expensive," Belov complained. Regional
administration officials reportedly told Belov that large-scale
activities, such as festivals, are easier to prepare -- and generate
more publicity.


9. (SBU) Belov described a 95% Oblast-funded project, in which NGO
workers and regional health experts travel to rural villages to hold
seminars and empower local leaders to organize activities to resolve
health problems. Ministry of Health experts also traveled to the
three sub-regions of North Kazakhstan Oblast, where tuberculosis is
a significant problem, to teach care-giving to family members of
acutely ill patients.

MAIN CHALLENGES: FUNDING AND GOVERNMENT SUPPORT


10. (SBU) The continual challenges of young NGOs, Belov argued,
include convincing government officials, who change positions
frequently, to accept their ideas and competition for limited funds.
Belov told PolOff "local government authorities change very fast --
the head of North Kazakhstan Oblast's Department of Internal
Politics has changed three times in several years." Each time, NGOs
must convince authorities to cooperate anew, a time-consuming
process, which often requires gradually building trust and
relationships. Nonetheless, he praised the Oblast level, which
established a Youth Committee willing to engage with NGOs, while
asserting that most national-level senators from North Kazakhstan
Oblast "do not understand NGOs." Belov alleged North Kazakhstan's
regional administration allocates most funding to one large NGO,
which has been working in the NGO field for about 10 years and is
supported by an unnamed local senator. Belov underlined
difficulties for new NGOs to access both international and
domestic-funding sources.

NGO URGES MORE HELP ON TRAFFICKING AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE


11. (SBU) The Womens' Support Center provides assistance to female
domestic-violence and human-trafficking victims. Its chairwoman, a
well-known, outspoken human rights activist, Alina Orlova, who made
a presentation on her organization's activities at the OSCE's Human
Dimension Meeting in Warsaw in October, underlined the leading role
played by foreign and international organizations. She asserted
that despite the national requirement to protect and rehabilitate
victims of human trafficking, the mechanisms "are not fully worked
out." She highlighted insufficient Kazakhstani-government funding
to NGOs under the government's "Plan of activities to prevent crimes
related to human trafficking." To underscore her point, she cited a
statistic comparing the $70,000 allocated over a three-year period
to NGOs for victim protection with the Ministry of Culture's $87,000

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annual budget for "socially-significant projects." Orlova further
underlined gaps in media awareness campaigns, primarily arising from
the Kazakhstani government budget cycle, and occasional problems
with ineffectual courts and law-enforcement entities, especially in
southern Kazakhstan. Orlova also noted an increase in domestic
violence in North Kazakhstan, affecting even well-educated women,
due to the economic crisis.


13. (SBU) COMMENT: Both local officials and NGO representatives
highlight civil society's success in the Kostanai and North
Kazakhstan regions. NGOs are expanding activities, obtaining some
funding, cooperating with local government, and creating spin-off
organizations. NGOs, however, continue to struggle to obtain
financial support, and, especially in North Kazakhstan, to improve
cooperation with the regional administration. Kostanai Oblast NGOs,
which have contributed to a very vibrant civil society, could offer
"best practices" to other regions of Kazakhstan and support
inter-regional cooperation. INL has been working closely with NGOs,
the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Interior to support
effective information campaigns to combat trafficking in persons and
has been pleased with the results. END COMMENT.

HOAGLAND