Empowering Abandoned Families of Labour Migrants — Tajikistan

Between 2013/2014 and 2016, UN Women and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) implemented 'Empowering Abandoned Families of Labour Migrants in Tajikistan', funded by Norway's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the Rasht Valley (including Jirgatol district) and Khatlon region. The programme responded to a large-scale social problem: with roughly 1.5 million Tajik citizens — mostly men — working abroad each year, hundreds of thousands of 'left-behind' wives faced informal abandonment or divorce and loss of income and social protection, often remaining dependent on their husband's extended family for housing under local custom.

The project combined livelihood training, microenterprise support, legal aid and psychosocial services delivered through community-based women's self-help groups, working with local NGOs Fidokor (business development) and Surkhob (legal support). By its conclusion it had formed 387 self-help groups and 30 joint economic initiatives — including the 'Asamat' dairy cooperative in the Rasht Valley — delivered livelihood training to 3,000 abandoned wives, and provided free legal support to nearly 4,500 women. A significant policy outcome was Tajik Government Decree No. 448 (2 July 2015), which for the first time formally recognised abandoned wives and children of labour migrants as a socially vulnerable category entitled to state support services.

Independent commentary from OSCE/ODIHR and the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) confirms the scale and persistence of the underlying problem but also highlights unresolved gaps: weak legal enforcement against absent husbands (only around 100 prosecution cases had been brought as of 2017), a 2013 legislative proposal for a migrant-tracking database that the government rejected, and continuing cultural norms that leave women dependent on in-laws. No independently audited impact evaluation of the programme's outcomes was located; all quantitative figures derive from UN Women's own programme reporting, and the reach — a few thousand women — remains modest relative to an estimated 230,000–300,000 affected households nationwide.

Read the full analysis: https://weblog.iom.int/un-women-iom-project-empowers-abandoned-women-migrant-families-tajikistan