Timely Expansion of Legal Advice Provision

Government plans to expand the network of legal services in Turkmenistan should be accompanied by other measures, including the provision of educative literature and advice centres in remote parts of the country, say NBCentralAsia observers.



At an August 6 meeting of the State Security Council, Turkmen president Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov stressed the need to make legal advice more readily available to the population.

He gave an order for the ministry of justice to open branches in all velayats, or regions, as well as to establish local notaries’ offices.



Current provision of legal advice across the country is poor.

For example, in Turkmenbashi, the administrative centre of Balkan velayat, there is only one notary office to serve a population of over 100,000.



NBCentralAsia observers in Turkmenistan say the dearth of legal advice means that transactions can be lengthy and stressful procedures.



One resident from Ashgabat preparing to emigrate to Russia complained of the time it was taking to process the sale of the family home. “We have to leave urgently, but its taking us weeks to finalise the property sale,” he said.



Lawyers who wish to work in the private sector report experiencing significant problems in obtaining a license from the ministry of justice.



Local observers welcome the authorities’ decision to extend the network of legal services in the country, saying the expansion is desperately needed. But they say the population also needs to have a better grasp of legal matters, something that could be achieved with the provision of informative literature. Few bookshops and public libraries stock legal texts and reference books.



An NBCentralAsia analyst in Balkan said public consultation services and advice centres should additionally be set up in remote regions.



An observer from Ashgabat said that in some cases, people’s ignorance of legal procedure had resulted in them losing their properties. “Many Turkmen citizens have lost homes because of their ignorance of property rights – because at present there’s nowhere to get this information from,” he said.



(NBCentralAsia is an IWPR-funded project to create a multilingual news analysis and comment service for Central Asia, drawing on the expertise of a broad range of political observers across the region. The project ran from August 2006 to September 2007, covering all five regional states. With new funding, the service is resuming, covering only Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan for the moment).