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.