UPDATE: May 5, 2003. No further action is necessary. This action is posted here for archival purposes. Click here for a campaign update.
What You Can Do
Write a letter to
your minister of finance/treasury, or equivalent, as well as your minister of
foreign affairs, expressing concern about the EBRD's decision to hold its 2003
annual meeting in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and calling on them
to ensure that the Bank insists that the Uzbek government make concrete
progress in human rights before the meeting. You can refer to the Bank's
founding document (available at http://www.ebrd.com/about/index.htm under
Basic facts/Basic
documents/Agreement Establishing the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development) which makes clear that the Bank engages countries that respect
and apply the "fundamental principles of multiparty democracy, the rule of
law, respect
for human rights and market economics." Shareholder country ministers of
finance/treasury form part of the EBRD Board of Governors, the Bank's highest
decision-making body. A list of the shareholder countries and information
about the
Board of Governors and other aspects of the Bank structure are available at
http://www.ebrd.com/about/index.htm.
Contact members of your country's parliament, in particular those who are
members of those committees with oversight over economic affairs and/or
international financial institutions such as the EBRD, urging them to bring up
the
question of the political and human rights implications of the EBRD's decision
to hold its 2003 annual meeting in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In many countries,
members of parliament can put in written or oral questions to ministers on any
given issue falling under their competency, and the minister in question is
required to respond. Members of parliament may also raise the matter in
relevant parliamentary hearings.
Contact
journalists, investors, and other public figures who may be attending the
EBRD's annual meetings, and find out if they are planning to go to Tashkent
next May. If it turns out that they are, you can educate them about the human
rights situation in Uzbekistan and urge them to raise such concerns with
representatives of the EBRD, as well as with the Uzbek government, at the
meeting.
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