Committee on the Rights of the Child

List of issues in relation to the combined sixth and seventh periodic reports of Tajikistan *

1.The State Party is requested to submit in writing additional, updated information, of 10,700 words maximum, by 15 February 2026. The Committee may take up all aspects of children’s rights set out in the Convention during the dialogue with the State Party.

Part I

2.Please provide information on measures taken:

(a)To adopt a comprehensive national policy and strategy on children, with dedicated resources, that encompass all areas of the Convention;

(b)To monitor the implementation of the national action plan to implement the Committee’s recommendations (2018–2022), specifying the results of such monitoring, whether steps have been taken to publish the national action plan in the State Party’s language and other languages spoken in the country and whether any follow-up action plan has been developed following its expiry.

3.Please provide information on:

(a) The bodies responsible for the implementation of the Convention at the national, regional and local levels, and the measures taken to strengthen resource allocation to, and coordination between, such bodies and child protection authorities, including at the local level;

(b)How civil society and children are involved in the work of those bodies and in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of laws, policies, plans and programmes relating to children’s rights;

(c)The measures taken to financially support the initiatives of civil society and promote its independence;

(d)How the media are involved in promoting children’s rights.

4.Please indicate the progress made in:

(a)Conducting a comprehensive assessment of the budgetary needs for children and developing child rights budgeting with monitoring and evaluation systems for assessing and tracking the impact of resource allocations on children’s rights;

(b)Establishing a comprehensive digital system to generate, collect and manage disaggregated data on children’s rights, including with regard to healthcare, alternative care, violence against children,children with disabilities, stateless children and children in conflict with the law;

(c)Determining the impact of training and awareness-raising initiatives on knowledge of the Convention among children, their parents and relevant professionals.

5.Please provide information on the progress made in:

(a)Ensuring the compliance of Act No. 1890 of 19 July 2022, on equality and the elimination of all forms of discrimination, with article 2 of the Convention and defining discrimination in legislation, including with regard to sexual orientation and gender identity; and ensuring that children are informed about the act and the complaint mechanism established therein, specifying the number of complaints submitted by children under this mechanism and the outcome of those complaints;

(b)Ending discrimination against girls, children with disabilities, children living in poverty and in rural areas, children living with HIV, children belonging to Lyuli, Pamiri and other minorities, migrant, asylum-seeking and refugee children, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex children and other children in vulnerable situations and ensuring that they have access to quality healthcare, education and other essential social services;

(c)Enforcing the right of children to be heard in legal proceedings that affect them, in accordance with legislative amendments, describing mechanisms to enforce the right of children to express their views and have them given due weight, including in decision-making processes in public and at home.

6.Please provide information on the measures taken:

(a)To address unregistered births and the lack of birth certificates, in particular in rural areas and for parents without identity documents, Lyuli children, children born to unmarried parents and unattended births;

(b)To end childhood statelessness, including through ratification of the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness and through legislative amendments;

(c)To bring into compliance with the Convention: (i) the restrictions on parental choice of names and surnames for their children; (ii) the prohibition of non-traditional clothes; and (iii) the ban on “unlawful education, including unlawful religious education”, and religious education abroadunder the Act on Responsibility for the Education and Upbringing of Children (2024).

7.Please provide updated information on the measures taken:

(a)To establish a legal and institutional framework, policy and strategy to prevent and address all forms of violence against children, and special procedures to investigate sexual offences against children; establish a data-collection system on gender-based violence, in cooperation with civil society and the United Nations Children’s Fund; and provide training for judges on gender-based violence;

(b)To prevent filicide and maternal suicide and address the practice of sex‑selective abortion favouring boys:

(c)To enforce the ban on corporal punishment in all settings, including at home, promote positive discipline and develop early intervention programmes, as an alternative to imprisonment, for parents who abuse their children;

(d)To establish services for recovery and reintegration and reporting mechanisms for child victims, including those with disabilities and those living with HIV/AIDS;

(e)To raise public awareness of the right of children to be protected from all forms of violence and abuse, including from caregivers, and establish a system for early warning and case management.

8.Please provide updated information on:

(a)The status of the reform on child protection and the timeline for developing community-based family support services to prevent institutionalization, with particular attention paid to poor households, single mothers, families of children with disabilities, children of migrant workers and refugee children deprived of a family environment;

(b)The situation of children left behind by parents, including children born to unmarried parents and those of parents working abroad, and the measures taken to support such children;

(c)The current state of institutional care, and the mechanism and criteria for placement, in the light of the information provided about the transformation of children’s homes;

(d)The status of foster care and support available for children leaving care;

(e)Mechanisms to review placements and to monitor the conditions and the quality of alternative care, and child-friendly channels for reporting abuse in alternative care, including information on reported cases and the outcome thereof;

(f)Efforts to align the definition of disability with international human rights standards, implement a human rights-based approach to disability and ensure access to essential services, support systems and inclusive education for children with disabilities;

(g)Support provided to children with autism spectrum disorders and their families.

9.Please provide information on the impact of the measures taken:

(a)To ensure access to primary healthcare during childhood and motherhood, including antenatal and neonatal care and immunization coverage, especially in rural areas, specifying whether compulsory health insurance coverage has been introduced;

(b)To eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and ensure access to free early testing and treatment;

(c)To ensure access to healthy and nutritious food during childhood and motherhood and tackle micronutrient deficiency, stunting, obesity and underweight and the sale of unhealthy food in schools;

(d)To prevent and treat tuberculosis, including drug-resistant tuberculosis, in children;

(e)To promote exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months of life and ensure access to breast milk substitutes for HIV-positive mothers;

(f)To address mental health issues among children and adolescents, including the very high rate of suicide, and ensure the availability of mental health support services, including mental health centres for adolescent girls, to prevent suicide;

(g)To address the prevalence of substance abuse, including the abuse of new psychoactive substances, among children and adolescents;

(h)To enforce mandatory sexual and reproductive health education in schools, pursuant to the Reproductive Health and Reproductive Rights Act (as amended in 2015);

(i)To address HIV prevalence among children and HIV infections in the hospital environment and support children living with HIV/AIDS;

(j)To prevent and reduce the incidence of HIV, sexually transmitted infections and adolescent pregnancy and ensure confidential access to treatment, contraceptives and safe abortion;

(k)To ensure access to safe drinking water and sanitation and to menstrual hygiene management in schools;

(l)To protect children from natural disasters and prevent deaths due to natural disasters.

10.Please provide information on the measures taken:

(a)To pursue educational reform, including implementing competency-based education and digital transformation, strengthening teacher training and increasing budgetary allocations;

(b)To strengthen vocational education, develop updated curricula and increase incentives and support for girls;

(c)To expand preschool education, reduce school dropout rates, particularly among girls, among children in rural areas and beyond ninth grade, and lower the cost of higher education to allow parents to enrol their daughters alongside their sons;

(d)To integrate courses in minority languages into the education system;

(e)To ensure that the requirement to present a negative HIV test in order to enrol children in educational institutions is in compliance with article 2 of the Convention.

11.Please provide information on:

(a)Children in street situations and the measures taken to identify the causes of, prevent and address the phenomenon and to provide children with support and ensure their reintegration;

(b)The measures taken to cease police raids leading to the detention of children in street situations, alternatives to detention and progress in decriminalizing status offences;

(c)The results of the efforts made to eliminate and strengthen the monitoring of child labour, including in cotton harvesting;

(d)The measures taken to improve the identification of child victims of trafficking, prevent and eliminate child trafficking and improve services for child victims;

(e)The measures taken to ensure access to essential services, specialized assistance and asylum procedures for refugee, asylum-seeking and unaccompanied migrant children and to protect them from exploitation and abuse, commenting on reports of the detention and deportation of asylum-seeking and refugee children and their families and specifying whether the detention and deportation of asylum-seeking and refugee children is legal and, if so, in what circumstances.

12.Please provide information on:

(a)Progress in the implementation of the Justice System Reform Programme for Children (2023–2027), including the number of courts and judges and other specialized professionals for children and child-friendly rooms in courts;

(b)Alternatives to detention and the reasons for the reported increase in pre- and post-trial detention;

(c)The provision of legal aid and specialized assistance;

(d)The strengthening of recovery, assistance and reintegration services;

(e)The protection of child victims and child witnesses of crime.

13.Please provide updated information on the measures taken:

(a)To address the reports of torture and ill-treatment of children by law enforcement authorities, including with a view to obtaining self-incriminating statements in the course of criminal proceedings, including statistics on prosecutions and the sentences imposed on the perpetrators;

(b)To enable the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights to monitor all places where children are deprived of their liberty, including institutions and alternative care and with regard to the ban on the solitary confinement of children and their detention with adults, including details of the results of such monitoring;

(c)To establish a child-friendly mechanism for complaints related to the deprivation of liberty and conditions of detention, internment or ill-treatment, including details of the complaints received and the outcome of those complaints.

14.Please provide updated information on the measures taken to implement the recommendations contained in the Committee’s concluding observations on the report of the State Party under the Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. In particular, please indicate whether all elements of the offences under articles 2 and 3 of the Optional Protocol, including the sale of children – a concept that is similar, but not identical, to trafficking in children – procuring child prostitution and possessing child pornography, are covered under national criminal legislation.

15.Please provide updated information on the measures taken to implement the recommendations contained in the Committee’s concluding observations on the report of the State Party under the Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict. In particular, please indicate the body responsible for coordinating the activities under the Optional Protocol, and the measures taken:

(a)To ensure that students of military schools are not trained in the use of weapons before the age of 18;

(b) To define and punish the recruitment of children under the age of 15 as a war crime and explicitly prohibit and criminalize in law the recruitment and use of children under the age of 18 in hostilities;

(d)To ensure that children are not affected by landmines and provide assistance to child victims;

(e)To improve data coordination in relation to repatriated families and establish targeted educational support for children repatriated from conflict zones.

Part II

16.The Committee invites the State Party to provide a brief update, of no more than three pages, on the information set out in its report with regard to the following:

(a)New bills or laws, and their respective regulations;

(b)New institutions and their mandates or institutional reforms;

(c)Recently introduced policies, programmes and action plans and their scope and financing;

(d)Recent ratifications of human rights instruments.

Part III

Data, statistics and other information

17.Please provide consolidated information for the past three years on the budget lines regarding children and the social sectors, indicating the percentage of each budget line in terms of the total national budget and the gross national product. Please also provide information on the geographical allocation of those resources.

18.Please provide updated statistical data, for the past three years, disaggregated by age, sex, ethnic origin, national origin, geographical location, type of disability and socioeconomic status, on the following:

(a)Cases of abuse of and violence against children, including torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, all forms of corporal punishment, child sexual abuse in and outside the home, domestic violence, bullying and online and sexual violence and abuse, and prosecutions and the sentences handed down in such cases;

(b)Children who have had access to recovery and integration services;

(c)Children who have had access to reporting mechanisms;

(d)Child deaths due to accidents, abuse and suicide;

(e)Children living with HIV/AIDS;

(f)Cases of child marriage and teenage pregnancy;

(g)Children left behind by migrant parents working abroad;

(h)Stateless children;

(i)Asylum-seeking, refugee and migrant children, including those in detention;

(j)Children belonging to Lyuli, Pamiri and other minorities;

(k)Working children, including those working in the informal sector;

(l)Child victims of trafficking;

(m)Children in street situations;

(n)Children living in poverty;

(o)Cases of sexual violence against children;

(p)Cases of filicide and maternal suicide.

19.Please provide data, for the past three years, disaggregated by age, sex, socioeconomic background, type of disability, ethnic origin and geographic location, on the number of children deprived of a family environment who are or who have been:

(a)Separated from their families, including the duration of their separation;

(b)Placed in institutions, including the number of institutions, with the data disaggregated by institution;

(c)Placed with foster families;

(d)Available for adoption;

(e)Adopted domestically.

20.Please provide data, for the past three years, disaggregated by age, sex, type of disability, ethnic origin and geographical location, on the number of children with disabilities who are or who have been:

(a)Living with their families;

(b)Living in institutions;

(c)Attending preschool;

(d)Attending regular primary schools;

(e)Attending regular secondary schools;

(f)Receiving individualized support;

(g)Attending special schools;

(h)Out of school;

(i)Abandoned by their families.

21.Please provide updated statistical data, for the past three years, disaggregated by age, sex, type of offence, ethnic and national origin, geographical location and socioeconomic status, on the number of children suspected of, accused of or recognized as having infringed criminal law who are or who have been:

(a)Arrested;

(b)Referred to diversion programmes;

(c)Placed in pretrial detention;

(d)Detained with adults;

(e)Convicted and serving a sentence in a detention facility, indicating the length of the sentence in each case.

22.Please provide information on how a children’s rights-based approach is integrated into the planning, implementation and monitoring of measures for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, including with regard to the participation of children and data collection, and on how those measures promote the realization of children’s rights under the Convention and the Optional Protocols thereto.

23.Please provide the Committee with an update of any data in the report that may have been outdated by more recent data collected or other new developments.

24.In addition, the State Party may list areas affecting children that it considers to be of priority with regard to the implementation of the Convention.