On 28 September 2026 in Tashkent, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), together with the Development Strategy Center, the National Center of the Republic of Uzbekistan for Human Rights and other partners, convened an expert discussion on the role of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in strengthening the rule of law and responding to new challenges in the protection of civil and political rights.
The discussion marked the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the ICCPR and was held as part of the Fifth Samarkand Forum on Human Rights. It took place 31 years to the day after Uzbekistan acceded to the Covenant.
The discussion brought together Changrok Soh, Chair of the UN Human Rights Committee, and Carlos Ramón Fernández Liesa, a member of the Committee, with Alisher Usmanov, First Deputy Chairperson of the Supreme Court of Uzbekistan, and experts from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the ombudsman institutions of Hungary and Kyrgyzstan, the prison administration of Spain and Tilburg University. They examined the place of the Covenant in the international legal order as the binding codification of the civil and political rights proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, its status in the domestic legal order, and ways of ensuring the conformity of national legislation and practice with its provisions.
The discussion also addressed the role of courts, prosecutors, administrative authorities and lawyers in applying the Covenant in light of the Human Rights Committee’s interpretations, mechanisms for giving effect to the Committee’s Views in domestic proceedings, and the place of the Covenant in legal education and professional training. It extended to the Committee’s contemporary practice and the use of its reporting and individual communications procedures by national actors
“Sixty years after its adoption, the Covenant binds 175 States, including Uzbekistan, and all branches of each of those States,” said Temur Shakirov, Director of the ICJ Europe and Central Asia Programme, who moderated the discussion. “Whether its guarantees reach those whose rights must be protected depends on judges, prosecutors and lawyers applying them in the cases before them, and on domestic procedures that give effect to the Views of the Human Rights Committee.”
Background
The ICCPR was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 16 December 1966 and entered into force on 23 March 1976.
Uzbekistan acceded to the Covenant on 28 September 1995, and the Covenant and its first Optional Protocol, which allows individuals to submit communications to the Human Rights Committee, entered into force for Uzbekistan on 28 December 1995.
