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The Danish Refugee Council has restored houses in Kyrgyzstan for 10,000 displaced who were forced to leave their homes and businesses after the clashes in 2010. The situation in Kyrgyzstan is now so good that DRC is ending its effort in the country.
Almost 400,000 people were forced to flee in the former Soviet Republic Kyrgyzstan as the result of ethnic clashes in the summer of 2010. The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) has since helped 10,000 displaced to return by rebuilding 1,700 permanent houses in the Southern part of the country where the displaced originated from. The work with the rehousing is done and DRC is thus leaving the country.
”The acute emergency has ended, and since we’ve succeeded to rehouse many of the displaced whose houses were destroyed, we can now leave the country on a positive note. Our project has been a great success, and we’ve achieved what we aimed at with our presence,” says Shanna Jensen, section leader in the Danish Refugee Council.
In addition to the rebuilding, DRC has been giving legal aid to many of the vulnerable groups. In Kyrgyzstan it hasn’t been a tradition to have papers on your belongings. Many didn’t have deeds on the houses where their families had stayed for generations and a lot of the small businesses were not registered with the authorities.
”It’s been a big effort to figure out who had the right to what and in educating people on their rights in general. A lot of the vulnerable groups didn’t think they needed papers on their houses and businesses to get compensation,” Shanna Jensen says.
There is still work to be done even though DRC is leaving the country. A range of now former employees have thus established their own NGO where they among other things are going to work with the legal aid. They will for instance start a mobile clinic so they can move around the country and counsel people on their rights.
“The employees got the idea by themselves. They would like to continue with the rebuilding of their country and the education of the population. We have off course supported the idea that the development continues based on local forces even though our work here is done,” Shanna Jensen says.
DRC has been working in Kyrgyzstan since 2003 through a network of local NGOs. The local experience of the organization combined with the global expertise meant, DRC was chosen as the central actor in the international restoration work after the clashes in 2010.
