The Debate | Opinion | Central Asia

ADB’s Commitment to Zero Tolerance on Reprisals Meets Uzbekistan’s Reality of Fear and Silence

Safeguards exist on paper, but are development banks prepared to confront the political realities that prevent those safeguards from functioning in practice?

The Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) “zero tolerance” policy on reprisals against activists and communities is an important step forward to strengthen the protection of those who monitor and report on rights violations related to international development projects. But at the ADB’s annual meeting in Samarkand earlier this month, that commitment collided head-on with the political realities of modern Uzbekistan.

From May 3-6, the ADB held its Annual Meeting in Samarkand, attended by government officials, bankers, investors, and civil society representatives. I was invited, in my capacity as founder and director of the Uzbek Forum for Human Rights (Uzbek Forum), to speak on a panel discussing the impact of retaliations on “constructive consultations, accountability, and grievance mechanisms” in ADB-financed projects.

Ironically, upon arriving in Tashkent, I discovered that the Uzbek authorities had refused to confirm my registration along with two other participants affiliated with Uzbek Forum for unspecified “security reasons.” After initially being given assurance that we could take part, the decision was quickly reversed. We were finally told that we could participate, with restricted access, and that the main venue where official sessions were taking place would be off limits. 

No one explained what exactly these “security concerns” were, or whose security was supposedly under threat from a human rights organization officially registered in Berlin. Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Investment, Industry and Trade, which was coordinating with the ADB, informed the bank that it had no objection to Uzbek Forum’s participation, but could not influence decisions made by the country’s security apparatus. It is difficult to imagine a more fitting illustration of the very issue under discussion: a civil society representative being obstructed from taking part in a panel about repression against civil society.

To the ADB’s credit, they continued negotiations after initially proposing that I participate remotely, despite the fact that I had already traveled from Berlin to Samarkand. Had this arrangement gone ahead, it would have resulted in a deeply paradoxical situation: delivering a presentation on retaliations via Zoom from a hotel room located only a short distance from the conference venue, while simultaneously being denied permission to enter it.

The author asking a question during another panel. Photo provided by author.

The incident unfolded against the backdrop of Uzbekistan’s growing partnership with the ADB. Another package of $12.5 billion in investments was announced, adding to the $5.4 billion in loans the bank has issued over the past five years. According to the ADB’s country partnership strategy for 2024-2028, the bank aims to support Uzbekistan’s transition to a green economy, strengthen the private sector, and invest in human capital.

The carefully curated public image of a “New Uzbekistan,” as an open, reforming, and rapidly developing economy, has successfully obscured a deeply constrained civil society in which freedoms of speech and association remain severely limited. 

During the ADB meeting in Samarkand, Uzbek authorities appeared determined to remind activists of that reality. Several Uzbek activists who had traveled to Samarkand to meet with ADB representatives received phone calls from local police or district administrations. One individual who approached a human rights defender from Karakalpakstan insisted on speaking privately and claimed to represent the “mahalla association,” Uzbekistan’s neighborhood-level governance structure. He claimed that all Uzbek activists had been assigned an “assistant” to help........

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