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A young Tajik boy was killed by a landmine on the border between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the AFP reported on Thursday. According to the Tajik interior ministry, Rashid Umarov, 10, and his friends were herding cows when they walked unwittingly into a mine field, officials said, adding that the boy died of his injuries on the spot. The recent incident brings to 62, the number of civilians killed by mines since Tashkent mined the border in 2001 in an attempt to stave off incursions by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Staying in that country, it was reported on Saturday that Tajik political parties and humanitarian groups demanded changes to election laws so they could be independent observers of next year's planned parliament vote. "We demand that the upcoming elections be transparent, free and fair, based on natural competition between the political parties and with no interference of the central government, local governing authorities or other forces," the groups said. Earlier last week during a visit to the country, Chris Patten, the European Union (EU) external relations commissioner, also urged President Emomali Rakhmonov to ensure the fairness of the 2005 elections. On Tuesday, James Callaghan, the representative of the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) Central Asia section, arrived in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, to attend a meeting of an international working group to discuss a UN financial support project for the Drug Control Agency (DCA) under the president of Tajikistan. Going to Kazakhstan, local media reported on Tuesday that the EU was ready to grant Kazakhstan more than US $250 million as technical aid for joint projects, including the country's preparations for membership to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), citing the announcement by the fifth session of the committee for cooperation between Kazakhstan and the EU. Also on Tuesday, the World Bank reported that a dry land ecosystem management project was launched in the Kazakh capital, Astana. The project's main objective is to promote sustainable land use in the dry land ecosystem of a pilot area in the central Kazakh province of Karaganda. The project is set to demonstrate the environmental, social and economic viability of shifting from the current unsustainable cereal-based production in dry land ecosystems to traditional livestock-based production systems. The project is funded by a $5.27 million grant from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), with additional contributions from other co-financiers, government, and project beneficiaries of about $4.43 million. The Russian ITAR-TASS news agency reported on Wednesday, world TB day, that over 4,000 people were dying of TB in Kazakhstan annually, with some 23,000 new cases of the disease being registered each year. Aykan Akanov, head of the national health promotion centre said that there were over 165 TB cases per 100,000 people in 2003. Juveniles aged 15 to 17, students and prisoners accounted for the vast majority of the sufferers. Also reported on Wednesday, over 20 billion mt of waste, including 230 million mt of radioactive waste, had accumulated in Kazakhstan, according to lawmakers of the parliament who drafted a new law on waste. Legislators said that accumulation of waste and garbage was "one of the worst threats to the ecological security of Kazakhstan." In neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, President Askar Akayev said on Thursday that a controversial bill, approved by the parliament earlier last month and making Kyrgyz the primary language in government, didn't contradict the nation's official policy of bilingualism, indicating for the first time that he may sign the bill into law. "Everybody who reads the bill can see that it does not contradict our language policy, which is officially bilingual," the AP quoted Akayev as saying. The law, which has yet to be signed, requires public servants and high-ranking officials to know Kyrgyz, prompting concerns of discrimination against ethnic Russians, accounting for some 15 percent of the population, which could trigger another exodus from the country. Also, Akayev reduced the number of crimes punishable by death in a move to further liberalise the country's criminal code, the president's office said on Thursday, adding that those found guilty of making an attempt on the lives of state, justice and law-enforcement officials would no longer be sentenced to death. Under a national human rights programme adopted in recent years, Bishkek aims to abolish the death penalty by 2010, following a moratorium on the death penalty in 1998. Going west to Uzbekistan, Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international rights watchdog, urged the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) on Tuesday to suspend all public-sector lending to Uzbekistan pending real progress by Tashkent toward meeting the EBRD’s human rights benchmarks. "The persistent and continuing reports of torture and torture-related deaths in custody only highlight the government’s failure to implement the [UN] Special Rapporteur’s recommendations," said Rachel Denber, HRW's acting head for Europe and Central Asia Division. Her comments come ahead of the EBRD’s decision in the coming days on the level of the bank’s engagement with the ex-Soviet republic. This month marks the one-year deadline for the Uzbek government to make substantial, measurable progress on a series of benchmarks that the ERBD adopted in its country strategy in March 2003. Three of the benchmarks pertain specifically to human rights: greater political openness and freedom of the media, the free functioning and registration of independent civil society groups, and the implementation of recommendations by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture following his 2002 visit to Uzbekistan. The Uzbek media reported on Wednesday that the country's justice ministry hosted the first meeting of an inter-agency working group on compliance to human rights by law enforcement bodies. The working group was founded in accordance with the government's decision last month to improve the protection of human rights and further deepening legal and judicial reforms in Uzbekistan. According to the Uzbek Narodnoye Slovo newspaper, the group accepted the plan of measures on implementation of the UN Convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, approved by the government earlier this month. Meanwhile, this week in Turkmenistan saw new, easier registration rules for religious organisations. Under the new rules, the groups must be established by at least five Turkmen citizens who permanently live in the country and have a minimum membership of 51, the AP reported on Wednesday. President Saparmurat Niyazov had previously ordered that religious organisations must have at least 500 members to obtain formal registration. But he scrapped that rule earlier this month, after meeting visiting US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lynn Pascoe. Niyazov also signed amendments to the law that require all non-registered religious organizations to sign up with the Justice Ministry and declare their financial assets, or face fines. The US State Department criticised the energy-rich Central Asian state in a report on religious freedom in December. It said people practicing any faith other than Sunni Islam or Russian Orthodox Christianity risked detention and confiscation of religious literature and materials.

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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