The leader of the “Milliy Tiklanish” party has announced the drafting of a law to ban LGBT propaganda in Uzbekistan. There is no information yet on when the draft will be released for public hearings.
This is not the first attempt to promote the idea of “LGBT propaganda” in Uzbekistan, for example, a draft “Information Code” was previously initiated in 2022, which contained vague language restricting media and bloggers from disseminating LGBT information. Article 54 proposed to ban “Propaganda of pornography, unnatural relationships between same-sex couples.” The law is still being drafted.
If the law on LGBT propaganda is adopted, the human rights situation in Uzbekistan will deteriorate even more. The country still criminalizes sexual relations between adult men. The “propaganda ban” will make it impossible not only to debate possible decriminalization, but also to simply talk about the situation, lives, and needs of LGBT people.
Anti-rights and anti-gender trends are being easily shared and adopted between different parts of the world. This harms LGBT people's access to human rights. In 2024, ECOM documented 75 cases of human rights violations in Uzbekistan based on SOGI. LGBT people do not feel safe to report such cases.
ECOM would like to state:
- ECOM calls on the Uzbek authorities to refuse to initiate a discriminatory law on “banning LGBT propaganda” and to remove Article 54 from the draft “Information Code” as restricting freedom of speech and expression;
- ECOM calls on the international community to condemn the “LGBT propaganda” initiative in Uzbekistan;
- ECOM calls on the international community to pay attention to the growth of anti-LGBT legislative initiatives in the EECA region and to support local LGBT organizations and initiatives.
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