The American Bar Association Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (ABA CEELI) launched its first Kyrgyzstan program with the opening of its Bishkek office in 1993. ABA CEELI opened a second office in Osh in 2001. The ABA’s initiatives have strengthened the rule of law through legal education, civic education, criminal law, anti-corruption and anti-human trafficking efforts, and privacy rights in the Central Asia region. The ABA established Rule of Law Initiative (ROLI) in 2007 to consolidate its five overseas rule of law programs, including CEELI—which was created in 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Our efforts have included:
- Helping to form the Association of Attorneys of Kyrgyzstan, the first of its kind
- Creating the country’s first publicly accessible legal information library centers in Bishkek and in Osh
- assisting in the formation of the Kyrgyz Judges Association by developing its charter and code of ethics
- Developing an advocates training center, the first and only continuing legal education provider for defense advocates
- Coordinating the first-ever public hearing on a draft law in Kyrgyzstan
- Establishing five regional street law centers, which raise rule of law awareness among young people and institutionalize an anticorruption curriculum
- Training law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys on combating human trafficking
- Training judges, lawyers and voters to manage election-related complaints and issues in advance of the 2010 constitutional referendum and parliamentary elections
- Distributing 400 copies of a regional manual “Know Your Digital Rights on the Internet” among target beneficiaries in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan