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Kyrgyzstan in Turmoil

Gulomjon Jorobaev's house has been burnt, but he has returned back there and despite the insecurity he continues to live there Photo: Dimitry Motinov

The team comprised of Tatiana Kotova – DCA Regional Representative, Martin Schuster – Communication Officer, Aprodev and Sudhanshu S. Singh – Humanitarian Programme Advisor, ACT Alliance.

The implications of the conflict in Kyrgyzstan, which triggered on full scale on June 10th 2010, are still experienced by the communities and humanitarian organizations alike.

Although violent clashes stopped long ago, the scars are hard to eradicate. The communities are living under a fear psychosis. Serious polarization has taken place between Uzbek and Kyrgyz communities. There is an absolute lack of trust. Co-existence is on the verge of peril. This division is a serious impediment in the relief, recovery and reconstruction efforts. The conflict has impacted the lives of over 375,000 people, and they need support to rebuild their lives almost from scratch.

Protection

There are two prominent issues now, i.e. separation of family members and loss of registration and other key documents. Given the specific vulnerability to women, they have been sent to a safer place, and the men and elderly women are staying back in the burnt houses or nearby places. This separation is adding more to their trauma and feeling of insecurity.

Moreover, they have also lost their important documents, including the registration documents, which would make it challenging for them to claim their entitlements. People are confined to their localities and do not have the courage to venture out to resume their normal routine. This situation is also restricting them from buying items essential for a normal life.

There is another underlying explosive reason, which may cause another round of conflict, or at least keep hampering all efforts of reconciliation. Both communities involved in the conflict have suffered damages and losses.

However, the Kyrgyz community feel that they have been singled out as perpetrators and that both nationally and internationally only the plight of the Uzbek community is being highlighted. Consequently, anger is building among them. Some of them check various websites and find that the reporting is entirely discriminatory and against the image and interest of the Kyrgyz community. They feel that affected Kyrgyz communities have been largely excluded from humanitarian support for this very reason.

Therefore, there is an urgent need to address this explosive situation.

Water

Water sources, inside the houses have been completely damaged in the fully or partially burnt houses. Therefore, the families still living in burnt houses have no private source of water and rely on the public posts for fetching water. The family of Gulamjon Jorobaev, visited in Jalal-Abad walks more than 50 meters to a public water post. Water is supplied only for two hours every day and within this period all the families, without private water sources, have to collect enough water to last the whole day.

Since the families have lost almost all household assets they hardly have containers to collect and store water. Most of the families have been provided with jerry canes as part of NFI relief items and that is the only container available to them. The family of Gulamjon has seven members. They have one jerry cane and two buckets, which they could salvage from the burnt house. They can store maximum 20 liters of water in these three containers, which is neither sufficient nor safe to be stored.

In IDP camps, visited by the assessment team, water is supplied through a tanker everyday. UNICEF has provided a water storage facility, which is being used to store the supplied water to be used during the next 24 hours. This camp is accommodating 160 families (at least 800 people), which gets 3,000 litres of water everyday. This quantity is far below the Sphere standard and certainly not sufficient to meet the needs of the people. Consequently, people are following poor hygienic practices. The families have been provided with chlorine tablets to purify the water.

Sanitation and hygiene

The IDP camps have no sanitary facilities and that is posing a serious problem for them. IDPs in urban areas do not find proper open space to relieve themselves. This is particularly embarrassing for women. Furthermore, they do not have enough soap for proper hand wash etc. In absence of any enclosure, people have not taken bath for many days.
Sanitary condition was bad even prior to the conflict, and that has become worse now.

The families, whose houses have been burnt completely, are left with no personal hygiene material. They even lack tooth brushes, tooth paste, shaving kits, sanitary napkins, etc.

Food

People in the IDP camps have largely received food support from their neighbours and relatives. Some food has come as part of the humanitarian aid also. Since they lack cooking utensils, cooking is done in large vessels for the entire camp. This is not appreciated by the people. They would prefer to cook for their own families according to their taste. Since the cooking pots have limited capacity, food is cooked twice, first for men and then for women. Women also find it culturally inappropriate to sit with all the men and eat. Usually they find the food quantity sufficient, but not the quality. They are compelled to eat the same food for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The families are left with nothing to prepare their food. They are coping by collecting firewood to cook the food. WFP will continue to distribute food to all affected families. Their food support consists of wheat flour, edible oil and high calorie biscuits. This support is definitely not sufficient to make the food basket complete, and therefore, there is need to provide supplementary food items.

Nutrition

The lactating mothers and mothers of infants are finding the situation difficult. They are not able to properly breastfeed the children as their own diet has gone down. They have not received baby food from anywhere, and therefore, infants have no choice but to be insufficiently breastfed. This is likely to impact their nutritional status in the coming months.

Non-food items

The affected families have lost everything. They escaped only with the clothes on their backs. The NFI items of humanitarian agencies hardly contained clothing and either they are surviving on the same clothes or wearing the old clothes given to them by their neighbours. The winter is approaching soon, and they are worried about it in absence of warm clothes, enough blankets and mattresses etc.

Shelter and site selection

This is going to be a huge problem in the absence of any clear cut shelter policy from the government. No compensation has been declared so far and the affected families hardly have their own means to reconstruct. The approaching winter will be extremely tough for them.

The government is talking about relocation and construction of multi-story apartments for the affected families. However, either the families want in-situ reconstruction or want to be displaced to a safer place. Unfortunately, the policy dialogue is not involving the affected people in the policy dialogue. Some of the affected families expressed the desire to get material and cash support, so that they could reconstruct on their own. Given the seismicity of the area, it is important that the reconstruction follows the Building Back Better pattern and incorporates earthquake resistant technology, given the high seismicity of the area.

In one of the IDP camps, a seven year old girl had died a few days ago due to over exposure to heat.

Health

The Public Health System has largely become dysfunctional in this situation. Hospitals are operating, but the affected families are hesitant to visit them due to the current security environment. Given the current ethnic divide, the patients and doctors are identified more as Kyrgyz or Uzbek. Consequently, an Uzbek patient would not visit a Kyrgyz doctor and vice versa.

As a result, pregnant women are not getting ante-natal care or the specialised birth attendant services. Children are missing their vaccination schedule, patients are not getting treated and people suffering from chronic diseases have stopped their medication. This situation is particularly difficult for elderly people.

HIV/AIDS prevalence is high in the region, and it is very likely that infected people have stopped getting ARV therapy.

Psychosocial support

This area has emerged as a key area in need of interventions. Almost all of those who witnessed the carnage, including small children, are traumatised. Many have witnessed killing and arson. Some of them saw their own family members killed with their own eyes. They were relatively better off prior to the conflict. They can now witness their houses, burnt to ashes along with all of their possessions and then they see them living on the street, and depending upon the humanitarian aid for survival. The highly insecure environment and extremely limited mobility is not helping them to overcome their trauma.

Children and even adults have been reported to have sleepless nights and a feeling of unrest all the time. They articulate the need for psychosocial support and counselling. The ACT Alliance team is currently trying to identify competent agencies, which can provide adequate counselling and psychosocial care.

Education

The schools are closed now for summer vacation and are supposed to resume in September. However, quite a few schools have been burnt down completely. The education of the enrolled students will be affected unless new buildings are constructed in time. This seems unlikely given the limited time available, and therefore, alternative arrangements need to be explored.

The children have lost schools books and bags and they would need them before school starts again.

The fear psychosis would prevent many from re-joining their schools and colleges. The families would be reluctant to send their wards to the other cities to resume education.
Environment

The massive rubble is posing a serious threat. There is apparently no plan so far for proper rubble removal. The construction pattern here involved high usage of asbestos. Manual clearance of that would be a serious health risk. There are many families who are getting desperate to get their houses back. They have started removing rubble on their own and are therefore prone to serious threats.
Economic development and livelihoods

Livelihood sources are almost completely lost. The small businessmen are finding it difficult to have access to capital to restart their small entrepreneurial work. They are also uncertain about the future and therefore not able to plan their future course of action. The main market in Osh has been completely burnt down and therefore small suppliers have no place to sell their products.

The farmers, who have cultivated cotton crop, were supposed to harvest during autumn. However, given the complete capital loss and insecure environment, they are not able to visit the fields and apply fertilizers etc. Therefore, even if the situation improved enough for them to go for harvesting, they would not have more than 50% output.

Similarly those farmers, who cultivated potatoes, are not able to harvest their field. Even if they harvest, they do not have courage to visit the buyers in Osh to sell their output. They have adopted two ways to cope with the situation: Firstly, those farmers who have harvested the crop are waiting for the buyers to visit them at their places and buy potatoes for a throwaway price. They are usually selling potatoes for Som 3.5 per kilo and the same potato is being sold by the buyers for Som 10-11 in other cities. Secondly, the farmers decided against harvesting the potatoes. They would wait for the situation to improve, so that they could sell it with better profitability. There is a danger associated with this option. The potatoes would soon start totting in the field and may seriously harm the fields for a longer term.

In both cases, farmers have missed the opportunity to go for the second crop of rice. This is likely to have serious implications for food availability. It is expected that food will be in short-supply during the coming months, causing escalation of essential food commodities.

Sudhanshu S. Singh, Humanitarian Advisor for ACT Alliance in Kyrgyzstan