Global Voices

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The world is talking, are you listening?

Blogger Teocrat calls [ru] on Tajikistan's young people to contribute to public consultations on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The aim of the consultations is to review progress towards the MDGs and hear from people what they think should come after 2015, the deadline set for achieving the Goals. Many users suggest in comments that education should be a main focus of the post-2015 development framework for Tajikistan.

A new Facebook page, Volleyball for Tajikistan, has recently been launched to raise funds for two volleyball teams created in the country's south. Within eight days after the launch, people from across the United States donated enough money to purchase uniforms for 26 young Tajikistani volleyball players, including 13 girls.

Blogger Teocrat writes [ru] that the conscription of young men into the military in Tajikistan puts a heavy financial burden on the conscripts’ families and the state. He also suggests that the better educated and more religious conscripts reduce the incidence of bullying in the army.

Matrix [ru], a Central Asian youth TV project focusing on Internet and new technologies, has produced a video [ru] about bloggers in Tajikistan. While few Tajiks presently run blogs, some local organizations teach young people how to start blogging.

Ahead of the 2013 presidential elections in Tajikistan, Post Scriptum suggests [ru] that the country's young people should be more active in articulating their political preferences. ”We should not silently nod in agreement when our future and the future of our country is decided [by older people],” writes the blogger.

On Nancystan, an ex-pat blogger writes about her adventures in Tajikistan and posts photos from the country. In some recent posts, the blogger shared images of a Tajik town lying on the Afghanistan border high in the Pamir mountains. She also wrote about her visit to a border market where merchants from Afghanistan arrive each Saturday to sell their goods to Tajik nationals.

If you ever happen to travel to Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, you might think twice before visiting the city's underfunded zoo. Matthew Askaripour, an American student, posted on Twitter a photo of a ‘basically dead’ camel that he took at the zoo. Shocked by the state of the facility, he writes: “I may never go to a zoo again”. But there are also much more positive photos and videos from the zoo.

Tajik blogger Khurrshed has translated a number of popular mobile games into Tajik. Khurrshed explains [tj] that he did the translation in order to make mobile gaming accessible to young people who have cell phones but do not speak English or Russian. Another Tajik blogger recently wrote about the importance of the vernacular language in the process of nation-building in the country.