Lives in Limbo: A Review of the Implementation of UNHCR's Urban Refugee Policy in Tajikistan

In Tajikistan as in other countries, the implementation of UNHCR’s new (September 2009) urban refugee policy is heavily conditioned by local circumstances. Tajikistan is a post-conflict state which has few resources, limited governmental capacity, no functioning social welfare system and poor socio-economic indicators. Livelihoods opportunities are scarce, obliging nearly half of the adult male labour force to work abroad and to support their families by means of remittances.

Ethnic linkages between the Tajik people and the small and predominantly Afghan refugee population have generally been conducive to good relations between the two communities. Even so, a degree of tension has emerged in relation to the refugees’ presence, with the Afghans increasingly being perceived as undeserving migrants rather than as people who are in need of protection and solutions.

A fragile legal system, coupled with stringent restrictions on the movement and residence of refugees, which bars all refugees and asylum seekers who arrived after the year 2000 from living in the main cities of Tajikistan including the capital Dushanbe, has contributed to the challenge of implementing UNHCR’s new urban refugee policy. The situation has been exacerbated by the organization’s very modest presence and resources in Tajikistan and its need to cooperate with a state which does not regard the refugee issue as a high priority.

In these difficult circumstances, UNHCR’s Dushanbe Office, supported by the Regional Office for Central Asia and the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, should formulate an urban refugee strategy for Tajikistan that is based on four principal components of the new policy:

• undertaking high-level advocacy with the Tajik authorities so as to gain acceptance of the notion of state responsibility and respect for international refugee protection principles;
• establishing effective partnerships with governmental and non-governmental partners that can contribute to the task of providing refugees with adequate protection and durable solutions;
• mobilizing additional human and financial resources for the organization’s activities in Tajikistan; and,
• ensuring that refugees and other persons of concern to UNHCR are included in the programmes of other UN Country Team members, donor states and international financial institutions.

As well as pursuing these broad strategic objectives, UNHCR should focus its efforts on six specific areas in which the protection space available to refugees and asylum seekers in Tajikistan is currently very limited.