Progres Foundation with Partners Advocate for Key Policy Changes for Women’s Rights in Turkmenistan at CEDAW Session

We are proud of our partnerships and our recent accomplishments. We would like to provide an update and share the news with our dedicated readers and supporters at Saglyk.org and Progres.online in Turkmenistan.

Progres Foundation is grateful to everyone who shared and keeps sharing their stories, commentary, observations with us on issues impacting women and girls in the country. We respect confidentiality and ensure anonymity. You can share your stories via our online Dymma! Campaign and/or via the Survey on Domestic Violence in Turkmenistan (available in Turkmen, Russian, and English). Your stories have been valuable sources for a deeper understanding of the structural issues women and girls face in Turkmenistan today.

OUR NEWS

On January 2, 2024, Progres Foundation, in partnership with The Advocates for Human Rights (The Advocates) and the Center for Reproductive Rights, submitted two shadow reports to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) titled: Lack of Domestic Violence Protection for Women and Girls and Access to Safe and Legal Abortion: Urgent call for Turkmenistan to adhere to women’s rights convention. Both reports were followed by oral statements made by the Executive Director of Progres Foundation and the partner from the Center for Reproductive Rights in Geneva at the 87th CEDAW Session, January 29, 2024.

The reports looked into the legislative aspects and their limitations in Turkmenistan: either lacking comprehensive protection for women and girls in the case of gender-based violence (GBV) and domestic violence (DV), or restrictive laws, criminalizing certain practices as in the case of abortion rights, which effectively limited women and girls’ access to safe abortions. The reports highlighted poor data collection, and lack of statistics in both topics, lack of compliance with international and national laws, treaties and guidelines, as well as stigma and discrimination. The report on GBV and DV in Turkmenistan, also raised topics of providing avenues to protect victims of GBV and DV and fostering a safe environment for civil society organizations working on gender issues. In addition, based on the analysis, each report provided a list of tangible and comprehensive recommendations to the government of Turkmenistan to implement in the coming years.

As a result of the shadow reports, oral statements, the State Report and a dialogue between the CEDAW Committee and the delegation of Turkmenistan on February 2, 2024, the Committee prepared Concluding Observations, issued on February 14. Progres Foundation is pleased that the Committee accepted and incorporated our recommendations on domestic violence and abortion. Progres Foundation’s intervention provided the international community with data and analysis that allowed them to better understand the deteriorating status of girls and women in Turkmenistan. We believe that taking our recommendations into account is a significant step forward in improving the lives and the status of women and girls in Turkmenistan.

As part of the shadow report submission, The Advocates also reviewed the Criminal Code, the Administrative Code, and the Criminal Procedural Code of Turkmenistan at the request of the Progres Foundation. The Center for Reproductive Rights looked into the Public Health Act of 2015 and 2002, the Criminal Code, the Constitution of Turkmenistan, and other relevant laws and their compliance with WHO guidelines on abortion for our shadow report.

Our recommendations have been incorporated into sections “Women’s access to justice,” “Gender-based violence against women,” and “Health” of the Concluding Observations.

The following are some highlights from the reports:

WOMEN’S ACCESS TO JUSTICE

16. Recalling its general recommendation No. 33 (2015) on women’s access to justice, the Committee recommends that the State party address the barriers to women’s and girls’ access to justice, including by:

1. Developing a comprehensive adequately funded legal aid scheme for women, including procedural accommodation, and ensure free legal aid to women without sufficient means, in particular victims of domestic violence;
2. Increasing the number of legal aid centers, particularly in rural areas, ensuring adequate funding;
3. Strengthening awareness-raising among women and girls about the legal remedies available to claim violations of their human rights.

GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

27. The Committee notes the National Survey on Health and Status of a Woman in the Family in 2022, the resulting recommendations and the roadmap to address them, as well as the creation of the special working group of the Interdepartmental Commission on Compliance with the International Obligations Undertaken by Turkmenistan in the Field of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, to develop measures to prevent violence against women. However, the Committee notes with concern that 12% of women in the State party have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner, as revealed in the survey. It also notes with concern:

1. The absence of legislation specifically criminalizing all forms of gender-based violence against women, including domestic violence, and the absence of a comprehensive strategy to eliminate all forms of gender-based violence against women;
2. That the new Law on Social Services (2021) does not explicitly provide for victim support services for women survivors of domestic violence, the absence of State-run victim support services and the lack of State funding of victim support services provided by civil society organizations;
3. The lack of disaggregated data on cases of gender-based violence against women and girls.

28. Recalling its general recommendation No. 35 (2017) on gender-based violence against women, updating general recommendation No. 19, and its previous concluding observations (CEDAW/C/TKM/CO/5, para. 23), the Committee recommends that the State party:

1. Adopt, without further delay, legislation specifically defining and criminalizing all forms of gender-based violence against women, including domestic violence; develop a comprehensive strategy to eliminate all forms of gender-based violence against women, including domestic violence; and ensure provision of free legal and medical aid for victims of violence;
2. Systematically investigate and prosecute all reported cases of gender-based violence against women, including domestic violence, sentence perpetrators and provide mandatory capacity-building for judges, prosecutors, the police and other law enforcement officials on the strict application of relevant criminal law provisions and on gender-sensitive interrogation and investigation methods in cases of gender-based violence against women and girls;
3. Strengthen victim support services by amending the Law on Social Services (2021) to explicitly include support services for women-survivors of domestic violence; publish and expand the standard operating procedures for police, social and healthcare workers on quality services for women and girls victims of domestic violence across the country; and make public the roadmap developed to address recommendations of the Survey on Health and Status of a Woman in Family;
4. Develop social contract legislation to enable civil society organizations to contract with the State party to provide essential services to women and girls survivors of violence, and establish a formal mechanism for the State party to partner with these organizations; support and increase the number of independent NGOs working on gender equality and the protection of women’s rights and provide adequate funding to them as well as to organizations operating shelters;
5. Systematically collect data on the number of complaints of gender-based violence against women and girls as well as on investigations, prosecutions, convictions, and on the sentences imposed on perpetrators, disaggregated by age and relationship between the victim and the perpetrator.

HEALTH

45. The Committee notes the information provided during the dialogue with the State party about a slight reduction in maternal mortality and early pregnancies. However, it notes with concern:

1. The limitation of abortion services upon request to five weeks of gestation, and that abortion services obtained beyond the specified grounds are criminalized under the Criminal Code, carrying a maximum penalty of 2 years;
2. That only 47% of women of fertile age are using modern contraceptivesand the limited access of women and adolescent girls to adequate sexual and reproductive health services and information, including family planning, in particular in rural areas;
3. The requirement of parental consent for girls below the age of 18 years to access sexual and reproductive health services, contraceptives and abortion;
4. Forced virginity testing on young girls in cases of rape;
5. The lack of training of health care staff on women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights;
6. The low percentage of women screened for cervical cancer and the lack of information on the prevalence of breast cancer in the State party, as well as on the treatment available to women and girls;
7. The persistent lack of publicly available disaggregated data on the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the State party and stigmatization of women and girls living with HIV/AIDS.

46. The Committee recalls its general recommendation No. 24 (1999) on women and health and targets 3.1 and 3.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals, to reduce global maternal mortality and ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, and recommends that the State party:

1. Recalling the guidelines on abortion care of the World Health Organization, amend article 18 of the Criminal Code and article 19 of the 2015 Public Health Care Act to legalize abortion and decriminalize it in all cases and ensure that women and adolescent girls have adequate access to safe abortion and post-abortion services to ensure full realization of rights of women, their equality and their economic and bodily autonomy to make free choices about their reproductive rights;
2. Provide free access to modern contraceptives for all women and girls, including women with disabilities, rural women and refugee women;
3.  Reduce the age requirement for girls to access sexual and reproductive services, including contraception and safe abortion services, without parental consent;
4. Abolish the harmful and stigmatizing practice of virginity testing on young girls;
5. Provide health care staff with training on women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health and rights;
6. Expand the cervical cancer screening campaign to cover all eligible women, collect disaggregated data on the prevalence of cervical and breast cancer and provide training to medical and health professionals on their early detection, including in rural areas;
7. Collect data on the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the State party, disaggregated by sex, age and other relevant factors, provide training to medical and health professionals on non-discriminatory and scientifically appropriate treatment of women and girls living with HIV/AIDS and conduct public awareness campaigns to destigmatize women and girls living with HIV/AIDS.

Following-up to the Concluding Observations, within two years the government of Turkmenistan is requested to provide a progress report on implementation of the recommendations. Progres Foundation will be monitoring the process and the progress on state party’s commitments.