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Feedback Joint Submission to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child by Anti-Discrimination Centre Memorial Brussels in partnership with the Pamiri Diaspora Human Rights Activists Tajikistan.
The situation of children belonging to Pamiri Indigenous Minority
Working on minority issues in Central Asia, ADC Memorial has researched the situation of Pamiris and published a number of Human Rights reports (Nationless Ethnic Groups of Tajikistan (Pamiri, Jughi, Yaghnobi): From Non-Recognition to Discrimination (2017); The situation in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, Tajikistan: The government shuts down internet and communications and takes other excessive measures (January 2022); Discrimination of excluded groups in Central Asia (September 2022); an alternative report to the UN CERD on Tajikistan (March 2023)); alternative report to the UN CEDAW (January 2024, confidential submission); a report within the UPR process (2026). ADC Memorial is in contact with the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues who is very much concerned with the situation of Pamiris in Tajikistan (see his report (2023) after the visit to Tajikistan in 2022).
In our reports, we described discriminative practices of the Tajikistan authorities towards the Pamiri population, meaning inter alia denial of their cultural and linguistic specifics, suppression of their self-identity, including bans for Pamiri languages in education and public space. In 2022, the authorities shut down many NGOs in GBAO and all over Tajikistan (see a statement of Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, on the dissolution of more than 700 NGOs in Tajikistan, with a special attention to almost full collapse of civil society in GBAO, March 2024).
The situation of Pamiris has seriously deteriorated since November 2021, when public protests against police violence were brutally suppressed in GBAO, while in 2022 mass repressions resulted in killings, arrests and closed trials. In May 2022, dozens of civilians were killed by military forces during a cleansing in Vamar, a town in Rushan district. Since the escalation of repressions in the GBAO in 2021, dozens civil society activists, journalists, and bloggers were sentenced to long prison terms after non-transparent trials.
These events, as well as the whole process of escalation in the GBAO, directly affected the Pamiri children population. In this report, the authors point out mainly the problem of the children’s rights related to education.
The situation of children from the Mugat community
The situation of children from the Mugat community in Tajikistan remains a cause for concern, even as the authorities refuse to take systematic measures to address the historical structural discrimination faced by this minority.
Thus, in the recommendations resulted from the consideration of the state report at the 109th session of the UN CERD (2023), the Committee once again expressed concerns about the situation of the Mugat/Jughi group and noted with regret the reluctance of the Tajikistan authorities to adopt an action plan to improve the situation of this minority, although in the previous recommendations and in the General Comment No.27 (2000) on discrimination against Roma groups, the Committee pointed out the importance of positive measures. The CERD urged the authorities to adopt such an action plan or strategy to improve the situation of Mugat/Jughi, paying particular attention to the situation of women and girls, their protection from discrimination and stigmatization, ensuring their right to education, work, health care and adequate housing. The Committee also recommended organizing educational campaigns to promote tolerance towards the Mugat community.
In particular, the statistical estimate of the number of Mugats in Tajikistan is questionable. In the additional information sent by the authorities if Tajikistan to the UN CERD in 2018, this number is estimated as appr. 13 000 which looks more adequate than the data provided later (~3 500), including in the state report to the UN CRC in response to the List of Issues (3 365). In this regard, the number of Mugat children involved into the school education looks disproportionately low (1083 children, as mentioned in the state report to the UN CRC in 2022).
The authorities used to replicate a narrative about “their own traditions” which prevent Mugat children from receiving education (e.g. a statement of the Children’s Ombudsman Rajabmoh Habibullo, who in July 2019 said at a press conference that all conditions have been created for the education of Mugat children and, according to her, the cause of their bad education and deplorable social situation is their own traditions, therefore the positive measures recommended by the UN are redundant). Meanwhile, the problems of access to school education, attendance, transition from primary school to secondary school, obtaining vocational and higher education by representatives of the Mugat community are extremely relevant, especially for girls, as in places of compact residence of Mugat in a number of districts, the school attendance is too far from complete. Obviously, shifting the blame for this situation only to parents is counterproductive, and the lack of special support measures leaves Mugat in a vicious circle of structural discrimination and makes children victims of exploitation and harmful traditional practices.
In the Report of the Special Rapporteur on minority issues Fernand de Varennes (2023), after his visit to Tajikistan in 2022, it is stated that “There is not a single specific reference to the Mugat in the National Strategy on Human Rights or the associated Action Plan. A visit to one Mugat community confirmed their apparent segregation on small plots of land, a lack of equal access to public services and crowded and underresourced education facilities when compared with those of the Tajik majority. That is despite the call by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination for the Government of Tajikistan to take steps to end such cases of discrimination, including by adopting an action plan to improve the situation of the Mugat”. The Special Rapporteur’s own observations in Tajikistan led him to a conclusion that “the lack of public infrastructure for water, sewage treatment, power and other public services, such as public education of equal quality, are the direct result of discriminatory actions by State officials in terms of resource allocation, planning decisions and other measures where double standards appear to be applied on the basis of ethnicity. He witnessed the obvious differences in budgetary investments between a Tajik majority school and a school catering to Mugat children and the lack of sewage treatment facilities and running water for parts of a Mugat community, while next door, a brand-new sports stadium was being constructed by the authorities. None of those differences were accidental or simply structural: they were the result of willful decisions and policies made by local and national officials”.