Commissioned by GTZ, ARC (Koehler, Zürcher, Eckert) developed a concept paper for tolerance promotion at the community level in post-Soviet Tajikistan. The project built on the recognition that top-down tolerance promotion approaches aimed at elites and capitals were ill-suited to the rural post-civil-war context of southern Tajikistan, where informal institutions (adat, dzhamaat, mohalla, oksakal) retained strong authority.

Tasks included:

• Conceptual development of community-level tolerance promotion approaches for Central Asia
• Analysis of legal framework and institutional structure of local self-governance in Tajikistan
• Assessment of the community development approach of implementing partner MSDSP
• Identification and localisation of intolerance as a systemic problem at community level
• Review of existing approaches against their relevance for rural Central Asia
• Field deployment and consultations with local stakeholders, SDC and Aga Khan Foundation
• Workshop (1–2 days) with relevant actors in Tajikistan on cooperation goals and training content
• Concept adaptation based on field experience

Results: Concept paper for community-level tolerance promotion in South Tajikistan; stakeholder workshop report; recommendations for GTZ programme design; analysis of local institutional landscape.