Asel Dunganaeva

Born to a traditional Muslim family in rural Kyrgyzstan, Asel Dunganaeva was only allowed to go to school as a small girl. At the age of 17, she protested when her parents arranged for her to marry a landlord’s son. When she was 20, Asel discovered Alga and became involved in its activities, then in many other feminist activities through Alga and APWLD. 

Despite her young age, Asel has rich experience in organising and building capacities of women’s groups and movements. As a trainer and consultant, she has helped hundreds of rural women develop business plans and access financial resources. Furthermore, she developed a training module on sustainable livelihoods, including leadership and women’s human rights. 

APWLD interviewed Asel in January 2021 and below is her story.

Becoming a feminist and women human rights defender

I was born in a village and finished my education in Kyrgyz State Agrarian Academia which was very important to my parents as they wanted me to go back home and work in our small farm.

In my last year in Academia, I volunteered at the Association of Rural Women – Alga and was inspired by its work and the women who work there. At that time, I went to Alga from my university, which was 40 kilometres away. I wanted to achieve positive changes in the human rights situation of women for society and my community.

In the Kyrgyz language, Alga means ‘go ahead’ or ‘go forward’. It was the second reason I joined the Alga Women’s Association. I wanted to be strong and protect myself, my friends, and other girls who are kidnapped for marriage. 

Kyrgyzstan is a patriarchal country that has a lot of gender stereotypes. My family arranged a marriage for me with a landlord’s son in my village when I was 17. As a young person with so many dreams, it was a difficult time for me to have to give up everything I had planned—continue my education, become independent, and just enjoy my life. I shared my pain and fear with my grandmother, and she supported me. Being the oldest and wise, she held power in our family. She encouraged me to resist and told my parents that I should be allowed to realise my dreams. 

In those days, there was no law against rape and kidnapping in my country, so young girls were very vulnerable to being kidnapped for marriage at any time.

When I was 21 years old, I became aware that I could change my life and the lives of others through training and workshops and by involving women in the movement. Soon after, I became a trainer and provided peer-to-peer training among young girls in my community. Then, I started to work as the assistant of leadership programmes and became a programme coordinator.

Growing together with APWLD

My first contact with APWLD was at a workshop in Chennai, India in 2006. That was my first international training in which I learned about feminism and women’s struggle for rights. 

Before the workshop, I thought we lived in a world wherein most countries’ struggle was over, and our previous generations had achieved equality. Our mothers and grandmothers had struggles, but my generation’s lives were not so bad. 

However, when I met women from different countries in Chennai, I realised that women’s human rights violations happened globally. Thus, we should enhance our ability to face new threats and challenges according to our time, perspective, and reality. I realised that APWLD supported women in the struggle for rights in many countries, and I was impressed by women’s resistance and the solidarity achieved among people from Asia and the Pacific.

After that, I applied Feminist Legal Training and Practice (FLTP) training and Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) to deepen my knowledge of promoting women’s rights and find new tools for my work. APWLD strengthened my knowledge on international conventions such as Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and other UN mechanisms and instruments, which I carried back to my community. For instance, FLTP training helped me develop and enhance my knowledge, perspective and understanding of international law, national law, and our customs or traditional laws. I came to understand the system and how we could fight against it. 

FPAR was a new approach for me. Co-researchers in this journey were my community members, and it is also an approach to provide women with voice and visibility.

Through FPAR, we collectively organised advocacy actions to promote land rights for migrant women, mobilised women living with HIV/AIDs, and empowered women affected by climate change in practical ways. Women started making plans for their future. They demanded climate justice and saw solidarity as a source of hope, power, and motivation for change within their communities and their own lives.

Fostering feminist movement and solidarity

During FPAR and FLTP training, I met the best teachers like Judy Taguiwalo, Honey Tan, and Ivy Josiah from this region. They provided me with knowledge, methods, and support. Also, I had solidarity visits or meetings with women’s organisations in other countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand to learn how they use FLTP or FPAR in their communities. I brought their experiences to my community to show women that change is possible; women could change their realities and even the law.

During an FPAR in Kyrgyzstan where I was a mentor for migrants and women’s organisations, we organised landless women, ex-refugees, and poor women living in rural areas from Tajikistan and other parts of Kyrgyzstan to apply their experience working on land rights and defending themselves. They consolidated support from each other, began to talk to the authorities, and initiated public hearings about land issues. 

It was also a great improvement for the young researcher in the FPAR when she showed leadership in meetings with women and government officials. Thanks to FPAR, the community became more powerful, collecting all information about settlement rights and creating maps of power in their community. They used it to make a change in local legislation and received land successfully in 2020.

Alga is a grassroots organisation. We have made impacts based on the synergetic partnership with sister organisations in Kyrgyzstan and the women’s movement in Central Asia. 

Women from our association have been involved for a long time in contributing to the national women’s movement to promote women’s rights and gender equality. As a result of lobbying by the women’s movement in Kyrgyzstan, we have achieved good outcomes. For example, our Parliament amended the criminal laws of Kyrgyzstan by adding Articles 154 and 155 on punishment for bride kidnapping. We have been able to reduce discriminatory traditions and customs like bride kidnapping. Also, after an amendment to our legislation, we have 30 per cent of women in our Parliament now.

Involvement with APWLD’s governance and ways moving forward

As a representative of the rural women’s constituency, I was involved in the Climate Justice Programme Organising Committee (POC) of APWLD to discuss the challenge of climate change and natural disasters. In my country, rural women suffer the most from the impacts of natural disasters. Women need to be informed and to have access to climate justice information so that rural communities can grow and have equal access to resources and decision making.  

Climate Justice is a vital part of transformative development, Development Justice. There were five women in the CJ POC; all of us were representatives of different organisations from different countries but we shared common visions to promote women’s human rights, mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis, and achieve climate justice in this region.  

The CJ POC members were working on grassroots and/or national levels so that we could learn from each other. For example, a member from Thailand had work experience in the resilience of Thai people to land issues, water issues, and other issues connected to climate justice. In my organisation, we work with women and farmers whose lands were destroyed. Every summer, there would be strong droughts and women lost their harvests. It was my pain but also was my motivation to support women who work in the climate justice programme.

After meetings and forums with APWLD, we brought what we have learnt to our home countries and our communities. Such spaces provided by APWLD are good opportunities for feminists and organisations to increase their abilities. We teach young feminists how to use APWLD’s frameworks and approaches. We teach them about legal rights protection and FPAR/FLTP methods and help them understand our realities, especially the hidden causes of issues. In addition, in this digital time, we need to solve digital gaps in accessing technologies to support each other and strengthen our movement, and APWLD can do more for this.