Ahead of the 35th anniversary of Uzbekistan's independence, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has signed a decree granting citizenship to 264 people, the Uzbekistan 24 TV channel reported in a story.
In the story aired by the channel, Khursanoy Jumaboyeva said she had been born in Tajikistan and had lived in Tashkent province for 26 years.
"I moved here in 2000. For many years, I wasn't able to travel to Tajikistan. When my mother died, I couldn't attend her funeral," she said.
Another woman featured in the story, Robiya Qahhorova, said she had waited 40 years to receive citizenship.
Otabek Rasulov described the toll of living without citizenship: "When you don't have citizenship, life is hard. For ten years, we carried around 'Form 4' [a residency document for stateless persons]... Then we were told we'd be granted citizenship. I came home from work one evening, and my nephew came running up to me and said, 'Uncle, I have news.' I cried out with joy."
Of the 264 people granted citizenship, 90 live in Surkhandarya province.
Between 1991 — when Uzbekistan declared independence — and 2007, citizenship was granted to 482 stateless individuals. No citizenship was granted between 2007 and 2016.
Since 2016, when the country's leadership changed, roughly 26,000 people have been granted citizenship. A separate mechanism for recognizing citizenship has additionally resulted in more than 60,000 people being formally recognized as Uzbek citizens.
President Mirziyoyev's first decree granting citizenship, issued in December 2016, covered 179 people. In 2017, ten decrees granted citizenship to 1,064 people; in 2018, 15 decrees extended citizenship to 2,759 stateless individuals. In 2019, reports indicated that 25 decrees had granted citizenship to a total of 5,441 people.
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