Advocacy 

Widows are Helped to Obtain their Land Rights 

In 1996 the President of Tajikistan issued an edict providing 0.1 hectare of arable land, referred to as 

 Presidential  lands, to each member belonging to a collective farm. Local authorities, however, have 

abused the system and are taking land, especially that designated for women heads of household, for 

their own use. Often women are allotted land that is too stony to work or too far from their homes, if 

they are given land at all. Most of these women are widows and are the acting heads of larger 

families, so this type of injustice brings an additional hardship into their lives. The NGO Saodat  is 

Counterpart's target NGO and after receiving training and technical assistance through the Khujand 

CSSC they improved their capacity in community mobilization. The members of the NGO decided to 

take action and through a PCA they were able to identify the land distribution problem in several 

districts in the Sughd Province. As a result of their PCA activities they assisted women in two of the 

districts with obtaining land. Their assistance included arranging legal consultations, preparing 

necessary documents as well as mobilizing the women to advocate for their rights at the local 

government level. Due to this advocacy campaign almost 100 women in these two districts received 

arable land in accordance with the fixed norms.  

An Advocacy Campaign Succeeds in Releasing an Imprisoned Community Member  

In 1998 TASIF, working through the local NGO Nulufar, built a gas pipeline to provide the Chagatay 

community with natural gas. The pipeline crossed through a village located in a neighboring Frunze 

District. Recently the Frunze District authorities illegally cut off the gas going into the Chagatay 

village. Members of Nulufar and about 200 other members of the Chigatay community decided to 

hold a demonstration in front of the Frunze District authorities' office to protest the action and to 

demand a meeting with the local authorities. In addition, the members of Nulufar collected all the 

necessary legal documents, which proved the communities' right to use the gas, from the regional and 

state government and submitted the documents along with a petition of their demands to the Frunze 

District Prosecutor's Office. The officials resumed providing gas to Chagatay but at the same time 

they put Rahmon Satorov one of the activists of Chagatay community and the head of Sokhtmon a 

firm that maintained the gas pipeline into jail. As a result of Nulufar's  joint efforts with the local 

community they managed to bring the case to a higher court. To help them succeed, the community 

hired a lawyer to defend Mr. Sattorov in court. The Higher Court decided in favor of Mr. Sattorov and 

he was immediately freed. In addition the Deputy Prosecutor of the Frunze District, who had wrongly 

imprisoned Mr. Sattorov, was both fined and fired for his role in unjustly imprisoning the activist. 

According to Nulufar's leader Tursunoy Isomiddinova, the Advocacy training she attended at 

Counterpart helped her and the other members of the NGO to carry out this successful advocacy 

campaign.  

Social Partnership 

The President Encourages Social Partnership with National NGOs 

Counterpart and the Academy of Educational Development, working in partnership with the Office of 

President and USAID, conducted a national conference on Social Partnership for Sustainable 

Development on June 21, 2002 in the capital city of Dushanbe. The President of the Republic of 

Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmonov, met with the representatives of local NGOs for more than three 

hours during the morning session. President Rahmonov gave the opening speech highlighting the role 

of local NGOs as important partners in building civil society in Tajikistan. He assured the NGOs that 

the Government of Tajikistan would support and work together with local NGOs is solving a wide 

range of the social and economic problems. This was the first time the necessity of social partnership 

was officially recognized as a priority by the Government of Tajikistan. Seven representatives from 

various local NGOs had an opportunity to present short speeches concerning the role of local NGOs 

in helping to solve social and economic problems.  They also addressed some of the difficulties and 

obstacles they are currently facing in the present social and political environment.  The speeches laid 

the groundwork for afternoon group discussions on ways in which the government, on both national 

and local levels, can better cooperate with local NGOs to achieve mutual objectives. NGO 

representatives from all over the country, the heads of various government ministries from the 

Republic of Tajikistan, as well as the representatives from a number of foreign embassies and 

4