Child Protection

In 2011, 10,266 children lived in residential care institutions; a 20 per cent decrease from 2005. Still, the conditions in residential care institutions are often inadequate and and their institutional mandates are divided between various line ministries depending on the age, the disability and at risk status of children. The Child Rights Units established as pilots with UNICEF support in 2006 and taken to scale by the Government afterwards play a role in both making recommendations for referring children to placements and protecting the rights and interests of these children.  The reform of the child protection system is affected by a lack of services for prevention of family separation, family support and substitute care and weak gatekeeping mechanisms.

Children with disabilities (CWD) are among the most vulnerable children in Tajikistan. There is no appropriate data collection on CWD, according to MLSP about 27,000 (official data of MLSP as of October 01, 2011) CWD (up to 18 years of age) are receiving disability assistance.  Given the internationally acknowledged disability rates among children, this number is likely to be an underestimate. Day care services for CWD have limited outreach.  CWD constitute about 15 per cent of the total number of children in residential care institutions including the boarding schools.  A National Concept on Inclusive Education was adopted in 2011 which is now awaiting implementation.  The majority of children with disabilities do not receive an adequate education, and general schools are not adjusted and equipped to receive CWD. Parents tend to “hide” their CWD, due to existing stigma in the community, especially in rural areas. Although the 2009 Regulation of Social Assistance at Home Units allows its staff to offer services to children with disabilities in their homes, the SAHU staff does not yet have adequate skills to work with CWD. Moreover, their allocation of resources is insufficient to cover all needy children, which prevents them from reaching all children who require assistance. The last polio outbreak in 2010 left more than 500 children with some form of disability mainly in the eastern and central parts of Tajikistan.

Child abuse and neglect is a problem, and children are exposed to physical and psychological punishment.  Among children 2-14 years, 76.7 per cent of boys and 71.8 per cent of girls experienced some forms of punishment. Severe physical punishment applied to 18 per cent of boys and 14.2 per cent of girls in the same age group. Children consider physical violence/abuse to be a “normal” form of discipline used by parents and relatives to punish and teach children obedience. Many children and parents also consider various non-physical, psychological punishment to be normal (MICS 2005). : This wide scale acceptance of physical and non-physical punishment can lead to underreporting of cases of violence against children.  The Global School- based Student Health Survey (2007) indicates that 12.6% of students reported seriously considering attempting suicide; and 12.0% actually making a suicide plan in the past year. Around 200,000 children aged 5-14 are engaged in some form of child labour (excluding non- intensive household chores) and 65,000 children aged 5-14 are engaged in paid work (MICS 2005).

There is no specialised juvenile justice system in Tajikistan yet. A National Plan of Action on Juvenile Justice System Reform for 2010-2015 was adopted to bring the legislation and practice in line with international obligations and to set up a specialised juvenile justice system. Due to the lack of coordination and monitoring of the reform process and financial shortfalls, the implementation of the plan has been slow. Children occasionally face pre-trial detention for non-serious crimes and extended deprivation of liberty, often for minor offences. Administrative detention in the closed type special school and the special vocational school is an actual problem. In 2011, there were 545 reported juvenile offenses (TransMonee data Base), about 75 per cent of which were theft (Juvenile Justice Assessment 2012)[1].  In 2011, 382 children were convicted out of whom 118 received a custodial sentence.

The 2010 observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child on the second periodic report by the Government of Tajikistan point out issues such gender discrimination, discrimination against children with disabilities, situation of children in care institutions, children living in rural areas,  lack of access to family support services for children with disabilities, the deterioration in the quality of education and health services, additional household costs of school attendance and the lack of a specialised juvenile justice system.

Women and girls face great challenges. For instance, only one in ten parliamentarians is a woman, and one woman in six marries before the age of 18 years. The UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women noted in her concluding statement of May 2008 that while gender equality is promoted in law, in practice the situation of women has regressed in the past 15 years.

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