There are 11 thousand NGOs registered in Kyrgyzstan. Do we really need that many?

The International Republican Institute (IRI) today presented to the Kyrgyz media results of a poll coordinated by IRI and Baltic Suveys/The Gallup Organization and funded by the USAID.  Please note that the survey was conducted in October and does not reflect shifts in the public opinion following the November demonstrations.  However, the presentation includes important data from April 2005 and March 2006, which gives some insight into how public perceptions changed - and did not change - during the year.

Although the presentation itself is 82-slide long, KyrgyzReport presents you only a portion of the most important (the whole survey is very important).  For more information, visit IRI website for Kyrgyzstan or contact its Bishkek office at jlilley@iri.org.

Image 1: People are generally happy…

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Businessmen in Kyrgyzstan have welcomed a new law making it legal for them to use weapons to defend their property. However, there are a number of grey areas in the law which NBCentralAsia commentators say need to be defined more clearly – including what actually constitutes property, and what the police and courts should do when a violent incident takes place.

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By Aram Roston
Producer
NBC News Investigative Unit

Updated: 11:41 a.m. ET Oct. 30, 2006

WASHINGTON - An FBI report obtained by NBC News suggests that the ruling family of the remote and mountainous Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan oversaw a vast international criminal network that stretched all the way to a series of shell companies in the United States.

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