Ravenstvo (Equality): Kyrgyzstan's Disability-Led Response to Gender-Based Violence

Ravenstvo ("Equality") is a women-with-disabilities-led public association headquartered in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic, chaired by Gulmira Kazakunova. Founded in 2014 (with roots in an earlier Issyk-Kul provincial union of disabled people), it runs peer counselling, life-skills and violence-prevention training, vocational and financial-literacy programmes, and advocacy for legal reform on behalf of women and girls with disabilities. Its flagship project, funded through UN Women's UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women (Grant Cycle 27, 2023-24), "No Violence Against Women and Girls with Disabilities", directly targets over 280 women with disabilities aged 18-65, out of an estimated 102,000 registered women and girls with disabilities nationally.
Independent surveys conducted alongside this work document both the scale of unmet need and the shape of the response: a 2022 UNFPA study of 300 women with disabilities found that roughly a quarter lacked independent decision-making power over leaving home, marriage or having children; a 2023 Human Rights Watch investigation interviewed 56 domestic-violence survivors with disabilities across three provinces; and a 2025 Equality-led survey of 150 women across seven regions found 93% had experienced some form of abuse, yet only 8 had sought help from police or medical services. Kyrgyzstan's parliament and president responded in 2025 with criminal-code amendments imposing harsher penalties for sexual violence against people with disabilities (February) and a new law aligning domestic legislation with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (August).
Structural gaps remain severe: as of 2021, Amnesty International documented only two domestic-violence shelters nationwide, neither disability-accessible nor government-funded, and Ravenstvo's own programming remains dependent on international donors (UN Women, UNFPA, the UK government) rather than domestic public funding — a sustainability risk shared across the country's gender-based-violence response infrastructure.

Read the full analysis: https://untf.unwomen.org/en/grant-giving/current-grants/europe-and-central-asia