Legal Reform Program

Overview

The USAID Legal Reform Program (LRP) supports Uzbekistan's efforts to ensure further development of rule of law principles, build the capacity of legal professionals and training institutions, enhance citizens' access to justice, improve the legal operating environment for civil society, promote gender equality, and create a healthier investment climate. USAID partners with the Ministry of Justice, Ombudsperson's Office, Business Ombudsman's Office, Chamber of Advocates, Higher Legal Education Institutions and technical law schools, and key actors in civil society to meet these objectives.

Program Objectives

Develop rule of law in Uzbekistan
Develop the legal profession in Uzbekistan
Develop the legal enabling environment for civil society and non-governmental organizations in Uzbekistan

Key Results

Gender

Supported the development and public hearing of the country's first-ever Gender Law "Guarantees of Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Men," adopted in 2019l.
Supported the country's first legislation criminalizing gender-based violence and prescribing sentences for violent GBV-related crimes.
Trained over 13,000 specialists, government officials, mahalla activists, journalists, and representatives of NGO's on the implementation of gender legislation; trained over 300 members of Parliament on gender approaches to law-making and budgeting; trained over 200 journalists, bloggers, and journalism students on gender-sensitive reporting.
Created the first handbook on legal-gender review of draft regulations, gender statistical data analysis, and methodology of legal studies from a gender perspective.
Conducted research on domestic violence, gender-based harassment in the workplace, and gender aspects of the migration policy with recommendations for legislative improvement.

Rule of Law Development

Provided expert input to prepare a draft Model Investment Agreement for the Ministry of Justice. The Government of Uzbekistan used this model to negotiate 22 investment agreements that leveraged nearly $2 billion in investments from the U.S., Canada, Germany, France, Turkey, UAE, and other countries.
Supported the development of recommendations to incorporate international best practices into more than 30 legislative acts and reviewed 2,000 regulations to ensure they meet anti-corruption policy.
Supported administrative justice reforms in Uzbekistan by using analysis of best practices of administrative justice to develop and submit draft regulations to the government.
Co-developed a handbook on inter-parliamentary diplomacy that helps local deputies enforce their inter-parliamentary functions effectively.

Legal Education

Trained over 6,000 legal professionals to improve their skills and knowledge of international best practices.
Developed 47 new educational courses and incorporated them into the permanent curriculum of leading legal education institutions in Uzbekistan; over 13,000 students have already taken these courses.
Presented more than 600 legal textbooks from the U.S. to libraries of law schools, enabling Uzbekistan's students to access knowledge from international sources.
Assisted 14 technical schools to develop and conduct online training courses using LRP-donated equipment.

Enabling Environment for Civil Society

Over 4,000,000 citizens and counting are benefitting from the program-supported free legal website advice.uz, which hosts information on basic legal issues covering all areas of public life.
NGOs provided free legal advice to over 650,000 citizens and increased awareness of over 130,000 citizens about their rights and opportunities to access justice.