The ILO is ready to help Kyrgyzstan work out a special project on the elimination of child labour. Specialists of the state migration and employment committee say cases of child labour are often in Kyrgyzstan. Children under 14 years of age are actively involved in the labour market and in most cases get minimal wages or no payment for equal work with adults. As a rule, in Kyrgyzstan’s poorest families children have to leave school and start working to help their families.

Kyrgyzstan’s national migration and employment committee will monitor every year how the programme for national employment policy up to 2010 is implemented in the republic. The programme was developed with the ILO’s assistance. The government defined the implementation of this programme as one of the executive power’s priorities.

UNITED NATIONS, New York — Each spring for the last quarter century, the United Nations Population Award has recognized outstanding contributions to the field of population and development.

With support from UNICEF, the Kyrgyz National Broadcasting Company is going to launch an educational cartoon series featuring nine-year-old Meena. The series looks at discrimination against girls and women and offers positive insights from which families and communities can learn. The cartoons, now available in Russian and Kyrgyz, were developed as part of the Meena Communication Initiative - a major human rights intervention campaign in South Asia that began in 1991 with support from UNICEF in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Nepal.  Its main intention is to transform the severely disadvantaged situation of girls and young women in many parts of Asia.