Presented by: Nina Bagdasarova, American University in Central Asia
Presented at: 6th International Conference on Conflict Resolution Education
Date of Session: June 14, 2013

Session Description: After the bloody interethnic clashes in 2010 between Kyrgyz and Uzbek ethnic groups, Kyrgyzstan faced extremely high level of social tension. A lot of this tension was caused by the language division within society. In post-conflict situations within Uzbek communities the demand for training in official languages has increased dramatically. The Center for Social Integration Policy conducted policy research in order to combine opinions and positions of various stakeholders including children, parents, and state and local officials. The results led to a focus on developing new educational policies on language instruction. Many citizens want to obtain a command of the official languages in addition to their mother tongue, and multilingual education may help address this need. The design and practice of current policy creation and implementation will be presented at the conference.