Viktoriya Tyuleneva

Strengthening Civic Engagement in Restrictive Environments

Ms. Viktoriya Tyuleneva was most recently the project director of the Almaty office of Freedom House in Kazakhstan, where she led programs on civic education and youth mobilization, advocated for public engagement on human rights issues, and oversaw the development of the course “Imagining Kazakhstan” to train a new generation of civil society leaders in critical-thinking skills. From 2001 to 2013, she served as chief of the Human Rights Advocacy Center and deputy director for strategy development in Kazakhstan’s Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, where she utilized UN mechanisms to hold her government accountable and protect human rights and freedom of movement. At the Bureau for Human Rights, she also drew on her legal background to analyze policies and make recommendations focusing on the prevention of human rights violations. During her fellowship, Ms. Tyuleneva plans to conduct a comparative analysis of case studies of civic engagement in two post-Soviet states: Georgia and Ukraine. She will utilize the results of her research to develop a toolkit designed to promote civic engagement, with a particular focus on developing strategies for settings where civic space is under pressure.