Summer School “Democratic Institution Building in Central Asia - 30 Years After Independence”

From 19 till 24 July the International Alumni Summer School “Democratic Institution Building in Central Asia - 30 Years After Independence” organized for alumni and students of the OSCE Academy took place in Issyk-Kul. This School was organized with the support of the OSCE Programme Office in Bishkek.

The School was opened by Ambassador Alexey Rogov, Head of the OSCE Office in Bishkek. “The OSCE Programme Office in Bishkek hails the Academy alumni who dare to seek for knowledge and wisdom even during pandemic and hope that this School will become for them useful and interesting enough to broaden their horizons and serve them as a pool of ideas and thoughts applicable in their careers and life”- underlined Ambassador Rogov.

Twenty alumni and students from Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Romania, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan spent a week together with four experts – Prof. Dr. Anja Mihr, DAAD Associate Professor at the OSCE Academy, Radomir Djuric, Border Management and Anti-Corruption Expert, Dr. Elena Zhirukhina, Senior Lecturer at the OSCE Academy, and Uran Tursunaliev, Program Coordinator, Public Association “Centre of Initiatives “Suyyu Bulagy,”  discussing the political and societal transition and transformation processes in the OSCE region with a focus on Central Asian societies and states.

Additionally to the sessions led by Trainers, alumni had an opportunity to meet two Guest Lecturers, who joined via Zoom. On 20 July Julia Johannsen, coach and consultant for intercultural communication, discussed with participants cross-cultural communication that starts with understanding oneself and one's own culture. Through interactive exercises they discussed how culture shapes core values and defines one's being.

On 23 July within the session of Dr. Elena Zhirukhina participants met Gulnaz Razdykova, the Head of the Center for Analysis and Development of Interconfessional Relations (Kazakhstan), who presented the results of work of the NGO and shared their experience in the rehabilitation and reintegration of women evacuated from areas of terrorist activity.

During the School participants were invited to disucss and assess the process of state-building in Central Asia, development of civil society, conditions for revolutions and social change, institutional origins of ethnic violence, as well as compare and design potential schemes to improve the human condition in the region.

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