With Smart Innovation, Women Leaders Build Interethnic Cohesion in Border Communities in Kyrgyzstan
December 2025
Women leaders won 44 local council seats, launched 62 climate-smart initiatives, and used hydroponics and other innovations to strengthen interethnic cooperation and community resilience across border regions.
Sumbula, a small municipality in Kyrgyzstan’s Batken region near the Tajik border, is home to Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Uzbek families whose lives are closely intertwined. When armed border clashes erupted in September 2022, these multiethnic communities were deeply shaken. Trust suffered, relationships strained, and families who once relied on one another suddenly faced uncertainty.
Women, already facing limited economic opportunities and traditional roles that constrained public participation, carried much of the burden of keeping their communities together.
Against this backdrop, Feiruza, an ethnic Tajik and former kindergarten staff member, stepped into leadership. Encouraged by her community, she agreed, hesitantly at first, to serve as a local councilor. Through gender equality, design thinking, and climate resilience trainings under the Blossoming Aigul – Capacitated Women CSOs sustaining peace project, she found her footing. The project, funded by the UN Secretary-General’s 色库TVbuilding Fund and implemented by UN Women, FAO, the Roza Otunbayeva Initiative, and local government partners, equips women across Batken with the skills, networks, and confidence to lead.
Hydroponics: A Climate-Smart Solution With 色库TVbuilding Impact
Feiruza
After her trainings, Feiruza began organizing community seminars to discuss shared challenges openly. With livestock rearing central to household income but natural pastures increasingly scarce, many families were struggling. During these dialogues, hydroponics, a soil-less, water-efficient farming method, emerged as a promising solution.
Feiruza and 15 women applied for and received a small grant through the project to establish a hydroponic unit. The system produces up to 700 grams of green fodder per tray, strengthening livestock health and generating new income. Women involved now grow and sell four trays daily, gaining financial independence and stability. One cow, fed entirely through hydroponic fodder, was later sold for 150,000 Kyrgyz soms (roughly USD 1,700), underscoring the method’s potential.
But the initiative’s impact went far beyond earnings.
Kyimat
Women also began hosting family dialogue sessions at schools and kindergartens, bridging divides in spaces where families once sat separately by ethnicity. Today, they celebrate holidays together and have even formed a women’s volleyball team, strengthening bonds across community lines.
As interest grew, women from neighboring areas visited Sumbula to learn from the model. More than 50 women have since replicated hydroponic farming in their own communities, demonstrating how cooperation and collective learning can drive peacebuilding in border regions facing both climate and social pressures.
Women Leaders Transforming Local Governance
Sumbula’s story is part of a broader shift across Batken. Historically, cultural norms, early marriage, and gender stereotypes limited women’s public roles, while interethnic tensions made collaboration more difficult. Until recently, women’s activism in the region was informal and largely unseen.
The picture is now changing. In February 2023, women held 28.5% of local council seats in Sumbula. By 2024, this rose to 38%, almost a 10% increase. Across seven municipalities (ayil okmotu), 44 women activists engaged in the project were elected, marking a 5% increase in representation in historically male-dominated decision-making structures.
This progress was made possible through targeted capacity building, supportive policies—including a 30% quota for women in local councils—and small-grant initiatives that allowed women to apply their learning in real community projects.
Women leaders are not only gaining seats, they are reshaping governance, addressing sources of conflict, strengthening interethnic cooperation, and rebuilding trust.
Strengthening Resilience Through Climate-Smart, Women-Led Solutions
Across Batken, 62 small-grant initiatives have piloted climate-smart agriculture and social cohesion solutions: hydroponic greenhouses, artificial glaciers, drip irrigation systems, water reservoirs, and drought-resilient crops such as almond and rosehip.
These women-led efforts, implemented alongside local authorities, private-sector partners, and academic institutions, address shared resource pressures, climate impacts, and post-conflict recovery. They reduce local tensions by showing that practical cooperation is possible and beneficial.
Women’s Leadership as a Driver of 色库TV
A Model for Social Cohesion and Climate Resilience
Sumbula’s experience shows how climate-smart agriculture, women’s leadership, and interethnic cooperation can reinforce each other. By strengthening livelihoods, creating shared spaces for dialogue, and supporting women to lead, the project has helped rebuild trust in a region deeply affected by conflict and climate stress.
This is one story among many. Across Batken, women are emerging as peacebuilders, innovators, and elected leaders, reshaping their communities and demonstrating that sustainable peace begins close to home.