On September 13, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed the new edition of the State Border Bill into Law. It has replaced the 1999 Law and took effect immediately. The Legislative Chamber passed the Bill on April 4, the Senate approved it on April 6.
The Law has been significantly expanded and supplemented with a number of basic concepts that were missing in the old document.
When discussing the Bill in the Senate in April, it was said that modern threats to international and regional security impose new demands on enhancing the efficiency of state border protection.
The presence of a number of legal shortcomings in the Law creates various problems, the senators noted. “In particular, due to the lack of basic concepts, they are interpreted differently by citizens, ministries and departments. And this causes a number of problems and misunderstandings in ensuring the security of the state border, its equipment, and the implementation by ministries and departments of tasks defined within their powers,” the Senate noted.
“The lack of classification of certain categories of offenses committed at the state border (state border regime, border regime, violators of the regime at checkpoints) creates a number of difficulties in taking legal measures against them,” it was also said during the discussion.
“In addition, people living in border zones and border territories face various difficulties due to the fact that clear standards for farming or livestock farming have not been established in the border territories,” the upper house of parliament reported.
The Law outlines the basic concepts in the field of establishing, changing, guarding and defending the state border, the procedure for crossing the state border by land, border rivers, lakes, airspace and other places by individuals and vehicles, defines the regime of the state border and checkpoints, regime requirements , the concept of their violation.
The Law is supplemented by a provision that consideration of issues of delimitation, demarcation and re-demarcation of the state border shall be performed by an intergovernmental commission consisting of representatives of Uzbekistan and neighboring states.
The Law establishes the procedure for entry (exit), travel, stay (residence), movement of citizens of Uzbekistan, foreign citizens and stateless persons and vehicles in the border zone and checkpoints, and also defines in detail the rules related to the implementation of economic and other activities, in in particular, with running a farm or engaging in livestock farming on the state border, in the border area and checkpoints.
The document also introduces the conditions and procedure for the use of weapons, military equipment, special means, physical force and service animals when guarding and defending the state border. In addition, standards are established for the social and legal protection of military personnel involved in the protection and defense of the state border.