TURKMENISTAN: STATELESSNESS MORE OF A PROBLEM THAN

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ASHGABAT 001607

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STATE FOR SCA/CEN; DRL; PRM

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/14/2019
TAGS: PHUM PGOV PREL PREF SMIG SOCI UN ZK TX
SUBJECT: TURKMENISTAN: STATELESSNESS MORE OF A PROBLEM THAN
NUMBERS SUGGEST

Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Sylvia Reed Curran. Reasons 1.4 (B) a
nd (D).


1. (SBU) SUMMARY: At a recent conference on statelessness in
Central Asia, participants from Turkmenistan, Tajikistan,
Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan exchanged ideas on best practices
for identifying people without citizenship documentation and
for preventing future cases of statelessness. None of the
Central Asian countries are signatories to either of the UN
Conventions on statelessness, but they are bound to protect
stateless people under other UN treaty obligations. In
Turkmenistan there are more than 12,000 people without
citizenship documentation. The Turkmen Government is working
with UNHCR to discover whether these people are citizens of
other former Soviet countries, who got caught between
bureaucracies at the fall of the Soviet Union, or whether
these people can be categorized officially as stateless.
Turkmenistan has not yet proposed any changes to its
citizenship laws to prevent future cases of statelessness.
END SUMMARY.
QCENTRAL ASIAN COUNTRIES SHARING DATA AND BEST PRACTICES


2. (C) The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) in conjunction with the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) held a conference on December
9-10 in Ashgabat on the topic of statelessness. The goal was
for Central Asian countries to exchange ideas on best
practices for identifying stateless people in their
countries, for taking steps to remedy the current problem,
and for preventing future instances of statelessness.
Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan sent
participants from government agencies. There were also UNHCR
and NGO representatives present from those countries.
Uzbekistan did not participate because it claims not to have
any stateless people within its borders, much like it claims
not to have a problem with gender inequality, according to
the Tashkent-based United Nations Population Fund
representative.


3. (SBU) The opening presenter, Mark Manly, the head of the
Statelessness Unit at UNHCR in Geneva, noted that the
magnitude of the problem of statelessness in post-Soviet
successor states is still not fully understood. An estimated
12 million people worldwide are considered stateless. None
of the Central Asian countries have signed either of the two
UN conventions on statelessness -- the 1954 Convention
Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons or the 1961
Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. However, all
Central Asian countries are party to treaties that have
elements of protecting stateless persons, including the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and
the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. For instance,
the Rights of the Child convention requires that a state
provide education to all children within its borders, not
just citizen children, according to the Turkmenistan UNICEF
country representative.


4. (SBU) Keymir Orazov, a UNHCR regional consultant based in
Almaty, presented data on statelessness in Central Asia. He
differentiated between people with unclear citizenship status
versus people who are officially stateless. Those whose
citizenship status is unclear may be citizens of a country
other than the one in which they reside, but they do not have
the documentation to prove it. In Kazakhstan 7,383 people
are registered as stateless and in Tajikistan around 3,000
people are stateless, most of whom came from Afghanistan. In
Turkmenistan there are approximately 12,000 people who do not
have citizenship documentation, and in Kyrgyzstan the
citizenship status of more than 20,000 people is unclear.

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The groups of people most at risk of being stateless are
those got caught between changing bureaucracies at the fall
of the Soviet Union, those from mixed ethnicity marriages,
children of mixed marriages, and labor migrants.

STATELESSNESS IN TURKMENISTAN


5. (SBU) The Deputy Chairman of the State Migration Service
of Turkmenistan, Annamuhamed Khodjamgulyev, presented
Turkmenistan's experiences with trying to identify and obtain
citizenship for stateless people. The Turkmen Government
worked closely with UNHCR to conduct surveys and found a
group of approximately 10,000 ethnic Turkmen that had come
from Tajikistan as refugees from the Tajik Civil War.
Between 2004-05 the Turkmenistan Migration Service worked
with UNHCR to register this group, and in 2005 former
president Niyazov issued a decree granting Turkmen
citizenship to the entire group. Brita Helleland, the UNHCR
Turkmenistan Country Representative, noted that this group of
former refugees settled mostly along the
Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan border and established productive
farming communities.


6. (SBU) Even after the refugee group from Tajikistan was
granted citizenship, there remain approximately 12,000 adults
in Turkmenistan without citizenship documentation. Helleland
added that since this number was only taking adults into
account. The total number of people in Turkmenistan with
unclear citizenship status was probably closer to 20,000.
Most of those are former Soviet citizens. Orazov opined that
these are likely people who were not registered as being
permanent residents of Turkmenistan at the fall of the Soviet
Union and so did not automatically get citizenship. However,
he said they also did not take advantage of the opportunity
during Turkmenistan's first year of independence to apply for
citizenship. Orazov added that, alternatively, they might
have come to Turkmenistan without documentation during the
1990s when Turkmenistan participated in the Commonwealth of
Independent States visa-free regime. Of this group, about
750 have been given Turkmen citizenship. UNHCR is
coordinating efforts to contact other former Soviet countries
to ascertain whether they have records showing that any of
these people are citizens of another country.

AN ASIDE ON LOW GOVERNMENT SALARIES


7. (C) In a side conversation with Poloff, one of the Turkmen
Government representatives, a woman who hears citizens'
complaints at the Supreme Court, said that average government
salaries in Turkmenistan are low, between 600-800 manat
($200-300) per month. She added that even the highest
salaries are only 1200 manat ($420) a month. She qualified
this by saying that at least it was steady money, unlike
working for a private business.


8. (C) COMMENT: The character of the Turkmen Government
participation in this conference was distinctly different
from the participation of the other Central Asian
participants. Aside from the formal presentation by the
Deputy Chairman of the State Migration Service, none of the
Turkmen participants asked questions or volunteered
information. Participants from the Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
and Tajikistan delegations, in contrast, asked questions
about steps the other participants took and contributed
examples of successful actions they had taken. This may
simply have been because the Turkmen participants were not
experts on statelessness problems. For example, neither the
woman from the Supreme Court nor the representative from the
International Department of the Ministry of Justice worked on
these issues. This seems to indicate that, although
Turkmenistan is working with UNHCR, they do not take the

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problem of statelessness as seriously as their neighbors, if
the attendance by less than appropriate officials was any
indication. The Turkmen Government, also in contrast to the
other Central Asian states, did not mention any proposals to
change citizenship laws in order to prevent future instances
of statelessness. END COMMENT.
CURRAN