OSCE workshop focuses on income-generating activities to promote social rehabilitation of prisoners in Tajikistan

DUSHANBE, 18 December 2015 – A week-long workshop co-organized by the OSCE Office in Tajikistan and focusing on the re-socialization of prisoners through income-generating activities concluded today at the OSCE Office’s premises in Dushanbe.

The workshop, organized by the Prison Service of the Ministry of Justice of Tajikistan, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Penal Reform International and the OSCE Office, was delivered by national experts, who guided participants through the development of professional-quality business plans, in line with labour and industry standards.

Participants then presented their fully-developed business plans based on activities that will provide prisoners with vocational training and education, opportunities for socialization, and prepare them for a productive role in society upon their release.

Opening the workshop, Vera Tkachenko, International Manager of the UNODC in Central Asia, emphasized the importance of supporting released prisoners’ re-integration into society to address the rising numbers of prisoners and to reduce crime.

Central Asia Regional Director of Penal Reform International Azamat Shambilov noted that the workshop is tailored to the Tajik government’s five-year Programme of Labour and Industrial Production Management in Prisons, which was approved last year. Through income-generating activities and other initiatives, the Programme aims at reducing the overall prison population in Tajikistan and promotes compensation for victims of crime. 

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides that a main aim of the penitentiary system is a prisoner’s “reformation and social rehabilitation.” The Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners provide that persons serving sentences of confinement shall be provided with vocational training in “useful trades,” and should be assigned to work, subject to their physical and psychological fitness as determined by a medical professional. Such work should support a prisoner’s “ability to earn an honest living after release.”

During his closing remarks, OSCE Rule of Law Officer Charles Bolland noted recent successes in cooperation between Tajik prison authorities, the OSCE’s Office in Tajikistan and international partners.  Bolland included this workshop as one of many signs of positive things to come.