This year, Kyrgyzstan is among seven countries in the world, the positions of which in the annual civic space ranking has been downgraded. The People Power Under Attack 2023 ranking was published by the global civil society alliance Civicus Monitor.
The countries of the world are distributed into five categories depending on the points scored: countries with open (free) civic space, narrowed (freedoms are partially limited), obstructed (oppressed civil liberties), repressed and closed.
Kyrgyzstan scored 40 points out of 100 and was included in the category of countries with repressed civil space. Since 2018, the republic has been in the category of countries with obstructed civil space.
The reasons for the downgrade, as noted, were the promotion of bills restricting the activities of NGOs and the media despite widespread criticism, pressure on independent media, criminal prosecution of civil society activists, journalists and other critics of the government, as well as a long lasting ban on peaceful assemblies in the central districts Bishkek.
Neighbors in the region also received relatively low scores. Tajikistan (12 points), Uzbekistan (18 points) and Turkmenistan (8 points) were included in the category of countries with closed civic space. Kazakhstan with 27 points was categorized as a country with repressed civic space.
As the authors of the ranking stress, almost a third of the world’s population now lives in countries with closed civic space. This is the highest percentage (30.6 percent) of the world’s population living in the most restrictive environment possible since the first Civicus Monitor report in 2018.
«Only 2.1 percent of people live in open states where civic space is both free and protected. This is the lowest percentage and almost half the percentage from six years ago,» the authors say.
