EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
About the research
This report presents key findings from the human rights monitoring of
compulsory acquisitions of homes and farms in Uzbekistan for the period
2017–2024. These acquisitions have been organised by the state primarily
for the purpose of facilitating large-scale private developments.
The monitoring reveals that the unconstitutional and
illegal expropriation of private homes and farms by
the state, enacted by the executive and enabled
by a compromised court system, is a systemic and
systematic problem that has tainted this redistribution
of land. These landed expropriations to facilitate
private, commercially oriented developments
frequently involve serious abuses of public power,
which are potentially in violation of Uzbekistan’s
criminal code and constitution, in addition to the abuse
of critical rights enshrined in Uzbekistan’s constitution
and in international human rights law.
While these egregious abuses have been brought to
the attention of Uzbekistan’s president and national
accountability bodies, no meaningful action has been
taken to address them. The report concludes that
these projects, therefore, involve egregious violations
of fundamental human rights standards enacted
by public officials in pursuit of formal or informal
government policy.
4 A False Sense of Legality
Together, these findings demand urgent redress,
including an immediate moratorium on all compulsory
and “voluntary” acquisitions of real property by the
Uzbekistani state until:
(a) an immediate and systematic public inquiry has
been convened that remediates victims and holds
state officials and judges to account for committed
abuses;
(b) an international human rights stakeholder forum has
been held that can build a human rights compliant
reform roadmap for addressing the abuses
documented in this report and elsewhere; and
(c) the roadmap of significant human rights reform has
been completed. It is also recommended that
d) a multi-stakeholder forum be set up to develop
and implement a national strategy for disrupting
the flow of illicit wealth through real estate and
property development.