Granting of citizenship to Tajik refugees in Turkmenistan lauded by UN

The United Nations refugee agency today hailed the decision of the Government of Turkmenistan to grant citizenship to over 10,000 Tajik refugees, most of whom who had fled civil war in their neighbouring Central Asian country between 1992 and 1997.

"We are extremely happy and grateful to the Turkmen government for this generous decision. We have been working closely for the past 10 years to find a permanent durable solution for these refugees," said Annika Linden, chief of mission for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat.

The President of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov, signed a decree last Thursday granting Turkmen citizenship to 13,245 people of ethnic Turkmen origin as well as people who had lived on land formerly rented to Uzbekistan and others who had migrated to Turkmenistan for family or other reasons.

Generally seen as an asset to the host community, most of the Tajik refugees started building houses and cultivating land obtained from the government in the 1990s. Their children were given the right to attend and graduate from Turkmen schools.

UNHCR, which opened its office in Ashgabat in 1995, has been providing protection to the refugees and assisting the government to facilitate their local integration through language courses and vocational training. The agency also contributed agricultural equipment such as tractors, bulldozers, electric transformers and water pumps to enhance their self-sufficiency.

"We always tried to make sure that these projects would benefit not only the targeted refugee communities, but also the surrounding local population," said Ms. Linden. "We believed this would facilitate the integration of the refugees into the wider community and allow them to adapt to Turkmenistan."

The collapse of the Soviet Union and ensuing civil wars and ethnic conflicts in the early 1990s created a complex refugee picture in Central Asia. UNHCR's engagement in the region began in Tajikistan in 1993 as an emergency response to help more than 600,000 people displaced by civil war. Within a few years, it had expanded to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.