The ongoing fight against child marriage and ‘bride kidnapping’ in Kyrgyzstan | UN News
Although child marriage and “bride kidnapping” are illegal in Kyrgyzstan, both practices still exist in parts of the country. An initiative from a UN-backed programme is finally leading to a change in attitudes, and a decline in these harmful practices.
The program includes a set of measures in the field of policy and law-making: strengthening institutions, preventing violence, providing services to victims of violence, collecting quality data, and supporting the women's movement and civil society.
For empowered women such as Ms. Almanbetova, this is the right direction in which Kyrgyzstan should be travelling: “I am not against starting a family and I dream about it in the future. But the approach must be primarily the desire of the girl herself, and not her parents.
“The times when a woman is treated as a second-class person must be a thing of the past. This has become a serious brake on the development of our society”.
