As many as one third of economically active Kyrgyz seek work abroad in Russia and Kazakhstan each year.

With funding from USAID, the OSCE, UNESCO and co-financing from the Soros Foundation-Kyrgyzstan, the Bishkek branch of EFCA has led the implementation of a labor-migration program at the grassroots and policy levels to protect the rights and interests of labor migrants.

In 2006, EFCA set up five resource centers in the Kyrgyz Republic to help labor migrants find legal work in Russia. The centers – in Bishkek, Kyzyl-Kia, Naryn, Osh, and Jalalabad – train migrants before departure about the laws and culture of their destination. They also provide printed materials with legal and job advice.

The centers also established partnerships with organizations in the Russian regions of Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Voronezh, and Penza, to create labor migration “bridges.” Thanks to these links, more than 500 labor migrants obtained contracts with Russian employers before they left home, removing much of the risk from the potentially hazardous journey.

“I went to Russia via one of the labor migration centers, and so far as I know my rights were protected,” said 26-year-old T. Akunov from Talas. “There I met a fellow Kyrgyz named Mamit. He wasn’t happy with his work and drank a lot: he said he got paid less than what he’d agreed and he didn’t have a contract to back him up.”

EFCA is also working at the level of international policy, through a working group on labor migration it established under the auspices of the Eurasian Economic Community, where EFCA is one of the few independent NGOs with observer status. During 2007, experts from the six members of the EEC – Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – developed a model law protecting the rights of labor migrants. The law, for example, explicitly grants labor migrants the same rights that domestic workers enjoy.

The effort reached fruition in April 2008 at a meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, when parliamentarians from the six countries agreed to introduce the law into their domestic parliaments. While the ou

tcome of this legislation in the six countries may be difficult to predict, EFCA did succeed in putting the issue on the agendaof countries that in the past seldomly acknowledged the mass movement of people across their borders.