Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses conflicts between NGO members (female secular employees and religious leaders) who act for the prevention of domestic violence in Tajikistan.

Paper long abstract:

After the collapse of the USSR and civil war researchers observe and analyze violence domestic which is a mass phenomenon in Tadjikistan. For several years now local NGOs working in the field of prevention of domestic violence and supported by international donors have been working with mullahs.

Based on ethnographic research (interviews and participant observations) in NGOs between 2010 and 2012 in south of Tajikistan, I would like to anlayse tensions and conflicts produced by collaborations between NGOs' members. Althought local NGOs and international donors promote this collaboration, during my fieldwork I observed contradictory positions. Religious leaders working in these NGOs do not share the same positions on gender issues : women's access to education, political participation and divorce. Moreover some female employees do not agree with mullahs' positions on divorce, polygamy and abortion.

So I propose to analyse these conflicts between different actors, only visible at the intimacy and interrelation level, and their impacts on constructions of new forms of citizenship. Because of corruption and because of these violences are considered as a private matter by police, lawyers and judges, because of fear of repression, a lot of spaces of public sphere denied domestic violence. So conflicts inside NGO for prevention of domestic violence remain inside NGO sphere which constitute uncertain space for activist women to bargain forms of male domination because of mollah's presence.