Women and Girls With Disabilities in Kyrgyzstan Still Face Abuse Despite Recent Reforms

Last updated: 22 September 2026

Aisha (not her real name), a woman with an acquired disability, sitting at the Center for Independent Living, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. © 2022 Cabar.Asia

On March 6, 2026, Human Rights Watch published an article examining the situation of women and girls with disabilities in Kyrgyzstan, arguing that many continue to face harassment, physical and sexual violence, and economic discrimination despite a series of recent legal and policy changes. The report presents the issue as a gap between reform on paper and protection in practice, saying that although the government has taken some positive steps, many survivors still remain unheard, unsupported, and unable to access justice effectively.

A central part of the article focuses on new research conducted in March 2025 by Equality, a grassroots organization of women with disabilities. According to the findings cited in the report, the group surveyed 150 women with disabilities across seven regions of Kyrgyzstan, and nearly 93 percent said they had experienced abuse, in some cases in multiple forms. The article lists the most common types of harm reported by respondents: 140 women described psychological abuse, 80 reported harassment, 70 reported economic problems, 60 reported physical violence, and 40 reported sexual violence. These figures are used to show that abuse is not an isolated problem, but a widespread and deeply rooted reality affecting disabled women across the country.

The article also emphasizes how rarely survivors turn to official institutions for help. Of all those surveyed, only eight had ever contacted the police or medical services. The reasons cited include distrust of law enforcement, lack of information about legal rights, fear of shame or social judgment, and concerns about personal safety when the abuser is a family member. This part of the report suggests that the low level of official reporting is not simply a matter of silence or statistics. It points instead to a broader system in which many women believe that reporting abuse may bring little protection and may even increase their vulnerability.

The findings are linked to earlier documentation. The article recalls a December 2023 report based on interviews with 56 survivors in three provinces, which found that families often hid disabled relatives from society, police frequently minimized reported violence, and shelters and legal services were largely inaccessible. By connecting the new survey to those earlier findings, the report argues that the problem has been visible for years and is not a recent or isolated development. What emerges is a picture of violence taking place in private settings while public institutions remain poorly equipped to respond in a consistent and accessible way.

At the same time, the article notes that the Kyrgyz authorities did make several important legal changes in 2025. In February 2025, President Sadyr Japarov signed amendments to the criminal code introducing harsher penalties for sexual violence offenses against people with disabilities and recognizing disability as an aggravating factor in such crimes. The amendments also removed exemptions from imprisonment for offenders convicted of sexual violence against persons with disabilities. The report presents these reforms as a response to long-standing advocacy and as a formal acknowledgment that women and girls with disabilities face heightened risks of abuse.

Still, the article adds an important nuance: stronger punishment alone does not automatically create a rights-based system. It argues that treating disability itself as a reason for harsher penalties, and grouping people with disabilities together with children in legal language, can reinforce paternalistic assumptions and stereotypes of inherent vulnerability. In that sense, the report suggests that protection should not be built only on ideas of weakness or dependency, but on equality before the law and full recognition of disabled people as autonomous rights-holders. This is one of the more complex points in the article, because it supports reform while also warning against approaches that may unintentionally deepen stigma.

Another major reform highlighted in the article came in August 2025, when the president signed a law on the “Rights and Guarantees of People with Disabilities.” According to the report, this law brings Kyrgyzstan’s disability legislation more closely into line with the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. The article says the law requires a move away from the medical model of disability, which focuses on a person’s condition, toward a social model, which emphasizes equal legal capacity, participation in public life, social protection, and independent living. It also says the state should support disabled people in developing skills for independent living and help ensure access to work, services, and community participation.

The report further notes that legal change has been accompanied by some institutional efforts. Throughout 2025, the Kyrgyz Ministry of Labor, Social Welfare, and Migration organized educational seminars for law enforcement and judicial personnel on helping women with disabilities access justice. In 2024, lawyers and human rights defenders also developed a practical guide for judges, prosecutors, lawyers, and social workers on protecting women with disabilities from violence. Local nongovernmental groups, supported by international partners, are also described as expanding empowerment and social justice projects focused on disabled women. Taken together, these developments suggest that the issue has gained greater visibility within both state institutions and civil society.

Even so, the article argues that major obstacles remain in the justice system itself. One of the clearest problems is the lack of reliable data. While authorities collect information on domestic violence, the report says it is not disaggregated by disability, and official statistics on sexual violence, domestic violence, forced marriage, and child marriage do not indicate whether victims have disabilities. Without this information, it becomes harder to assess the scale of the problem or to design targeted protection measures. The report also says there are no official or nongovernmental studies that accurately measure the prevalence of different forms of domestic violence specifically against women and girls with disabilities.

The article also describes justice institutions as physically and procedurally inaccessible. According to the Equality research cited there, courthouses and police stations remain difficult to access, and only 25 percent of buildings in Bishkek are equipped with ramps. The report adds that adapted information materials are still lacking and sign language interpretation is almost entirely absent in legal proceedings. These are not treated as minor technical shortcomings. In practice, such barriers can decide whether a survivor can report abuse, understand a legal process, testify effectively, or even enter the building where justice is supposed to be delivered.

The report also underlines what it calls a persistent culture of disbelief and dismissal. It gives the example of a case from Karakol, where a judge reportedly refused to admit the recorded testimony of a young disabled woman who said she had been kidnapped and raped over three days by two men. The refusal was based on her legal incapacity status, which the article says is a direct product of Kyrgyzstan’s outdated guardianship system. In another case involving a girl from Tyup, a conviction was eventually secured and the case was referred to the Supreme Court, but the report presents this as evidence that justice is possible only through exceptional effort and often after years of persistence. These examples are used to show how structural barriers, outdated legal concepts, and official skepticism can all combine to limit access to justice.

Overall, the article presents Kyrgyzstan as a country where meaningful reform has begun, but where everyday reality still falls short of legal promises. New laws, training efforts, and civil society projects suggest that the problem is receiving more attention than before. Yet the report argues that women and girls with disabilities continue to face widespread abuse, inaccessible institutions, inadequate data, and a justice system that is often unprepared to respond to their needs. In that sense, the issue is framed not only as one of violence, but also as a broader test of whether the state can make rights real for one of its most marginalized groups.

Conclusion

The article shows that Kyrgyzstan has introduced important reforms, but that women and girls with disabilities still face serious risks of abuse and major barriers when they try to seek help. The main issue attracting attention is the gap between legal progress and the continued reality of inaccessible institutions, social stigma, and weak implementation.

More broadly, the report places the issue in a wider human rights context by showing how gender, disability, and violence intersect. It suggests that lasting progress will depend not only on passing laws, but on making police, courts, services, and public attitudes change in ways that allow disabled women and girls to live safely and exercise their rights on an equal basis with others.