Building Bridges in Uzbekistan

Suhrobjon Ismoilov
Head of the Expert Working Group

The authorities in Uzbekistan are planning new legislation governing the charity sector, but in typical form are excluding genuine non-government groups from the process. 

A strategy for “further democratic reforms and building civil society” which President Islam Karimov unveiled in November includes a section on civil society institutions. The president’s office, parliament and government have set up dedicated working groups to implement the strategy, and new laws will be drafted that will ostensibly allow non-government organisations, NGOs, to be engaged as partners of the state.

However, such partnerships between state and NGOs will be limited to uncontroversial areas like supporting disabled people, creating new jobs, and developing of rural areas. Nor is there any chance that truly independent NGOs – the kind of civil rights groups that would press for a more democratic society – will be invited to take part. Instead, they are being ignored.

On paper, Uzbekistan would seem to have a healthy civil society sector consisting, as President Karimov has pointed out, of 5,100 NGOs. But these numbers are questionable, as they include as separate organisations the regional branches of state-sponsored organisations like the Mahalla Foundation, specialising in local communities; the Nuroni Foundation, whose remit is welfare provision, the elderly and young people; the Kamolot youth movement; and the Institute for Civil Society Studies. Although some of these organisations receive grants from international donors, their basic funding comes from the government, which set them up in the first place. They are all part of the National Association of Non-Commercial Organisations of Uzbekistan.

Aside from these “tame” NGOs, there are a number of groups which have not been granted official recognition and which are constantly under pressure from the authorities.

In the main, they are human rights organisations critical of the government’s performance. Their members undergo considerable risks to do what they do, and are not invited to take part in discussing and shaping government policy. They are completely marginalised from what is presented as a reformist process.

Under such circumstances, the only option left to them is to perform their own monitoring and critique of government programmes, and make this available to the domestic public and the international community. There is a clear need for this, since there is no real mechanism for monitoring and evaluating of such programmes.

The work done by the more active independent NGOs shows what is possible even under constant pressure, for example the output of the Ezgulik rights group, the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Defenders, the Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan, and my own organisation, the Expert Working Group, an independent think-tank.

At the same time, it may be worthwhile for independent NGOs to try to forge alliances among pro-government groups. Engagement with stakeholders should involve reaching out to the general public, but also to “GONGOs” (“government-organised non-government organisations”) and to any government agencies that are open to this kind of approach.

We need to bear in mind that many people, many officials are unhappy with the current state of affairs in Uzbekistan, and are not left cold by the criticism voiced by independent groups.

I can foresee that this will provoke criticism from those who ask what the point of seeking allies is. The reason is simple – to be able to spread one’s message as widely as possible, to attract public attention, and change the situation for the better. For government officials, it is a way of salvaging their reputations, given that things will ultimately have to change.

Suhrobjon Ismoilov is head of the Expert Working Group in Tashkent. 

This article was produced as part of IWPR’s News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.