People who have committed sexual violence against children under 18 years old are now utterly prohibited from working with them, Oliy Majlis Senate Chairperson Tanzila Narbayeva stated.
She recalled that in April, President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed amendments to legislation on the protection of rights and freedoms of women and children. A group of representatives of ministries and agencies, non-governmental and international organizations, as well as civil activists, including those from the anti-violence project Nemolchi.uz, were working on the amendments for a year.
The amendments introduced a clause prohibiting perpetrators of violence against underage youth from working in educational, training, recreational, sports and creative organizations and from engaging in activities involving direct work with children.
The same document noted that a register of people prohibited from working with children would be introduced. On November 17, a special decision of the government of Uzbekistan approved the register maintenance procedure.
The law requires the register to include individuals with prior convictions for:
- premeditated murder, rape or forced satisfaction of sexual needs in an unnatural form against a victim under 18 years old;
- coercion of a person under 18 years old into having sexual intercourse, involving sexual intercourse or satisfaction of sexual needs in an unnatural form;
- sexual intercourse or unnatural fulfillment of sexual needs with a person under 16 years of age or committing lewd acts against them;
- importing into Uzbekistan, producing and distributing pornography with a description or image of an underage person or involving one as a performer in acts of a pornographic nature;
- procuring, organizing or maintaining brothels of debauchery involving an underage person;
- terrorism.
The register is being created and will be maintained in a special information system.
“The most important and noteworthy is that the employment of those included in the register is controlled based on the data in this information system,” the head of the Senate said.
The message does not specify whether this register will be open as previously suggested by activists of the project Nemolchi.uz.
