Shortly before, in accordance with this new procedure, an official report of Turkmenistan was presented in Geneva by Shirin Akhmedov, Director of the national Institute for Democracy and Human Rights under the President of Turkmenistan and Essen Aydogdyev, Ambassador of Turkmenistan.
Subsequent to the results of the hearing, the meeting participants expressed 19 recommendations to the government of Turkmenistan to improve the human rights record in the country. Out of these, Turkmenistan agreed to consider 13 including:
- To establish an independent national institution of human rights (expressed by the delegation of the Netherlands);
- To ensure free entry to the country for the UN special rapporteurs on torture, on independence of judges and lawyers, on freedom of speech and self-expression, on violence against women, etc. (Uruguay);
- To ensure the International Committee of the Red Cross access to penal institutions (Czech Republic);
- To make all efforts to establish free mass media (France);
- To put an end to persecution of journalists (Canada);
- To allow for unhindered activities of human rights activists (France);
- To allow for unhindered activities of the opposition political parties (Canada);
It should be noted that the official report of Turkmenistan strictly denied any problems with regard to human rights in the country.
According to the UPR procedure, each country – UN member state – is reviewed once every four years. This means that now Turkmenistan will have to report on the performed work in four years.
The full report of the working group on UPR in English
Source: TIHR