On March 21, Bishkek Mayor Daniyar Usenov announced his initiative named “Beloved City”, created to mobilize school children to clean up the capital city from garbage before a series of major national holidays. Usenov’s project raised fierce reactions among local NGOs that claim his idea to use schoolchildren to clean up Bishkek’s streets is a direct abuse of children’s rights.

Over a dozen NGOs and human rights activists published a consolidated message against child labor that calls parents to collectively ignore Usenov’s project. In their joint statement to the public, they decry the project for harming children’s health, arguing that “City garbage might contain infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, hepatitis, and other parasitic bacteria dangerous for children’s health.”

The protest against this seemingly minor issue points at several important changes taking place in Kyrgyz society today. First, local civil society groups are mobilizing to protect the rights and health of children in their own communities. The protest is an ad hoc activity representing purely local initiative and not financed by any foreign or local donor. Indeed, low-paid or unpaid child labor exists throughout the country, along with a myriad of other social problems in Kyrgyzstan. Children are mostly engaged in the agricultural sector in rural areas and retail of newspapers and food in cities. Those forced to earn living from a young age often skip school and lack proper nutrition. Due to the deterioration of government support for women and rural education infrastructure, children are forced to execute responsible and often physically challenging labor at home. But Usenov’s project shows that instead of combating child labor, the government is encouraging it through its own policies.

Second, Bishkek residents are shifting away from Soviet traditions of forceful child labor on national holidays covered with a rhetoric of patriotism. Most current NGO activists had once been employed by the Soviet regime for “subbotniks” on ideological holidays to clean up streets and plant trees. During communism, refusal to show up at “subbotniks” could affect one’s school grades or even cost one’s job.

For the most part, Kyrgyzstan’s NGO community is comprised of the middle class urban population with university education. The age range of NGO members is wide, with the majority between 17-25 and 35-50 years of age. Despite their own experience in imposed free labor, NGO activists no longer see such state policies as appropriate and consider unpaid child work to be a violation of rights. Moreover, they managed to spread the message across society, changing the public’s understanding of the meaning of state-forced child labor.

Third, unlike civil society groups, Kyrgyz government employees have been shifting from Soviet perceptions of forced labor more slowly. Usenov’s project was not resisted by any public official or law-enforcement representative despite the fact that it violates Kyrgyzstan’s membership commitments with UNICEF’s Convention on the Rights of the Child and a number of national labor codes. Even newly elected ombudsman Tursunbek Akun and Minister of Education Ishengul Bolzhurova, mandated to deal directly with children’s rights, failed to react to Usenov’s policy.

Once again, such dynamics shows the difference between Kyrgyzstan’s civil society – which is full of professional leaders – and the government, still functioning in the old Soviet mode. NGOs were able to formulate and spread their message more effectively and raise public concern over policies to counter the government.

In the past few years, a number of NGOs have begun tackling the problem of forced child labor, making Bishkek the central locale for the propagation of children’s rights in the region.

Finally, Usenov is notorious for allegations of large-scale corruption, and civil society’s mobilization is an indicator of general dissatisfaction with the corruption of the government. NGOs warned Usenov that should he still choose to enforce his project, they will take legal actions against him at local and international courts. Shortly after taking over the office of Bishkek’s Mayor, Usenov banned public demonstrations in the city’s center, significantly constraining civil society’s ability to influence the government and the public.

In his battle with NGOs, Usenov will likely prevail and carry on his project. But more parents in Bishkek will be inclined to join the NGOs’ stance and, importantly, better understand children’s rights.