HRW: Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan border deal should prioritize human rights News
Nikolai Bulykin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
HRW: Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan border deal should prioritize human rights

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Friday urged Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to place local populations’ human rights at the center of the deal settling their long-standing border dispute. The group also urged the states to ensure victims of war crimes from the 2022 conflict receive justice.

The group urged the two neighboring states to support investigations into the alleged human rights and international humanitarian law violations as well as long-term initiatives to promote the respect of human rights, such as the reduction of hate speech. Hugh Williamson, HRW’s Europe and Central Asia director emphasized that “long-lasting peace will require rebuilding trust based on respect for human rights between border communities and reckoning with the injustices committed during past conflicts.”

Both states face allegations of war crimes stemming from the 2022 conflict where at least 37 civilians were killed and thousands displaced over four days of fighting, according to the group. The previous 2021 clashes also resulted in civilian deaths. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are both parties to Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions which bans the deliberate killing of civilians as well as indiscriminate attacks which could harm civilians.

On March 13, the deal was signed between both countries’ leaders and has been ratified by both parliaments thereby reopening the 1,000km-long border and ending the decades-long dispute. As a part of the deal, each side has promised to share mutual resources such as water, to demilitarize the area, and to exchange equal sections of territory. HRW called on the two countries to ensure the agreement is respected and that local populations receive adequate access to education, water and housing.

Relatedly, UN Secretary-General António Guterres praised this agreement, calling it a “historic achievement.”

The border between the two states was not officially demarcated following their independence from the Soviet Union and has seen periodic skirmishes over key resources used for farming in Tajikistan and the Batken region in Kyrgyzstan. It was not until 2021 that large-scale violence erupted.

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