Early elections planned for Kazakhstan in January, coupled with progress towards fully multi-party polls has created the urgent need for media training and capacity building. In mid December 2011, Internews launched activities to reinforce the media capacity during the electoral and post-electoral periods.

Kazakhstan’s polling date, originally set for August 2012, has been advanced by 6-months, leaving little time for all parties to prepare their political campaigns. Moreover, a number of political parties are changing their leadership creating an uncertain political scene. The result is a public information void, which professional media can fill. Internews has started to fill that gap by conducting training sessions for the media and civil society organisation representatives on how to cover elections, press conferences to inform citizens on the election process and TV programs with debates on the most common social issues in Kazakh society.

There is also a need for the Kazakh media to get more reliable data on the quality and quantity of media, on its strengths and weaknesses. By carrying out national research, Internews aims to build the capacity of the media in this discipline and to develop it in the long term. Other activities are planned to create long lasting best practice models: roundtables on media standards, regulations and lessons learned elsewhere, and specialist workshops on Conflict Sensitive Journalism.

The beneficiaries of this new project are primarily media professionals: editorial and management teams of three broadcasting companies, regional journalists and Civil Society Organisation representatives. However, this project is eventually set to have an impact on more than 16 million people including 5 million television viewers.

The Internews Kazakhstan project is supported by the European Commission’s Instrument for Stability.