Central Asia Program

Central Asia Program The Central Asia Program (CAP) promotes academic and policy research on contemporary Central Asia.

Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of GW University. The Central Asia Program focuses on the wider Central Asian space, which includes the five post-Soviet Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Xinjiang, Mongolia, as well as the Volga-Ural region, Kashmir, and Balochistan. The program calls for a multidisciplinary approach combining the fields of political science, sociology, anthropology, economics, history, globalization studies, and security studies. It provides a platform for different, and even sometimes contradictory, points of view on contemporary Central Asia. Research on Central Asia tends to be carried out all too often by geographically compartmentalized groups. Central Asia Program strives to bring together counterparts from the United States, Europe, Russia, Asia, and Central Asia by promoting various forms of interaction and initiating joint projects. Recognizing the increasing importance of Central Asia in the 21st Century, the Central Asia Program is a dynamic initiative that seeks to be at the forefront of the debate on the region.

07/09/2026

Nozimjon Ortiqov, Uzbekistan Program Fellow:

Since 2017, Uzbekistan has made higher-education expansion a central part of its development strategy. New universities, branch campuses, and enrollment growth have created opportunities that were much more limited a decade ago. This matters in Uzbekistan, where a large youth population is entering the labor market and demand for higher-level skills is rising.

Capacity is not the same as equality of opportunity. New places reduce inequality only if students from less advantaged families and lower-access regions can prepare for admission, receive clear information about programs and costs, finance study, relocate when necessary, remain enrolled, and complete degrees. If these barriers remain, expansion may increase the number of students while leaving the social pattern of access largely unchanged.

This brief asks whether Uzbekistan’s rapid higher-education expansion has been accompanied by broader opportunity. The answer is cautious. The system has grown substantially, but family background remains closely linked to who reaches higher education, while regional access remains uneven. The next phase of reform should therefore judge success not only by the number of institutions and seats, but by whether first-generation, rural, and lower-income students can use the new capacity.

https://centralasiaprogram.org/cap-uzbekistan-publications/uzbekistan-expanded-higher-education-did-equality-of-opportunity-follow-evidence-from-2010-2023/

07/09/2026

Alouddin Komilov, Uzbekistan Program Fellow:

The central policy problem is not urbanization itself. A common but misleading explanation is that Uzbekistan’s road-safety crisis is the inevitable result of urban growth. Urbanization and motorization do increase exposure to traffic risk, but they do not automatically produce high fatality rates. Fatalities rise when demand for expanding mobility is governed by fragmented institutions, non-integrated data, and road-investment systems that do not make safety a binding condition. In Uzbekistan, the decisive issue is not simply that more people live in cities or travel more frequently. It is that state capacity in road management, vehicle regulation,
enforcement, emergency response, and urban transport has not kept pace with the scale and speed of mobility growth.

The problem should therefore be defined not as “too much urbanization,” but as a governance failure within urbanization.

https://centralasiaprogram.org/cap-uzbekistan-publications/road-safety-as-a-test-of-urban-governance-why-uzbekistans-problem-is-not-urbanization-but-how-it-is-managed/

06/15/2026

This policy brief summarizes the key features of women’s empowerment in Uzbekistan’s labor market, focusing on employment, self-employment, and educational attainment. It highlights how labor market informality and unpaid care responsibilities constrain women’s economic empowerment. Addressing these structural barriers and aligning women’s empowerment policies with national development goals—specifically by supporting entrepreneurship, improving childcare infrastructure, and advancing digital and financial inclusion—can help transform Uzbekistan’s demographic trends into a driver of national prosperity.

By Olga Popova and Vladimir Otrachshenko

https://centralasiaprogram.org/cap-uzbekistan-publications/womens-empowerment-in-uzbekistan-challenges-and-opportunities-for-the-labor-market/

06/03/2026

Our CAP Uzbekistan Program Fellow Dostonbek Eshpulatov writes:

"Retail investor participation in Uzbekistan’s stock market remains low not because household capital is absent, but because behavioral and institutional barriers continue to prevent broad public engagement.

Financial illiteracy, risk aversion, institutional distrust, weak perceived benefit, and religious concerns limit participation, while state dominance, outdated infrastructure, low liquidity, and weak minority protections reinforce these problems."

https://centralasiaprogram.org/cap-uzbekistan-publications/activating-retail-investors-in-uzbekistan-bridging-behavioral-barriers-and-structural-challenges/

06/03/2026

New publication from our fellow Shoirakhon Nurdinova:

Uzbekistan has undergone a significant transformation since 2017, with the government committing to gender equality as a pillar of its modernization agenda. Yet beneath the headline indicators of reform, structural barriers continue to limit women’s full and equal participation in the labor market. This policy brief examines four interconnected domains: access to higher education; the gender wage gap and care penalty; workplace sexual harassment; and social norms, domestic violence, and institutional response. Across these areas, the brief distinguishes between institutional barriers — those found in laws, administrative practices, and organizational culture, and cultural barriers – those based on attitudes, social norms, and gender expectations, because effective policy needs to address both together and step by step.

https://centralasiaprogram.org/cap-uzbekistan-publications/impact-of-reforms-on-women-economic-empowerment-in-uzbekistan/

06/03/2026

April 28, 2026 Central Asia Program George Washington University

05/22/2026

Farrukh Irnazarov: Tashkent is growing quickly and changing spatially. The city’s permanent population rose from 2.694 million in 2021 to 3.113 million in 2025, reaching 3.178 million by early 2026. At the same time, new housing growth in peripheral districts such as Sergeli and Yangi Hayot, together with stronger metropolitan linkages to Kibray and the wider fringe, is reorganizing everyday movement across the capital. This means more long-distance commuting, more radial flows into central employment and service areas, and more daily interaction among cars, buses, taxis, and pedestrians.

The key policy implication is that road safety in Tashkent is not just a transport-enforcement issue. It is a metropolitan development issue. As the city expands, travel demand is rising faster than safe multimodal access. Where wide roads, high operating speeds, incomplete pedestrian facilities, and heavy bus-stop activity overlap, ordinary trips become riskier. In that sense, road trauma is one of the ways in which uneven urban growth becomes visible.

https://centralasiaprogram.org/cap-uzbekistan-publications/from-urban-growth-to-road-risk-a-safer-mobility-agenda-for-tashkent/

02/25/2026

CAP UZBEKISTAN POLICY BRIEF by Éva Berde and Myassar Kurbanova, February 11, 2026

Uzbekistan’s youth are not a problem to be managed but a resource to be mobilized. The Deadweight Loss of Emigration framework demonstrates that the economic consequences of emigration depend critically on who leaves, under what conditions, and within which institutional environment. While low-skilled emigration may appear beneficial in the short run, it signals structural weakness. High and medium-skilled emigration, by contrast, represents a clear and lasting economic loss.

The central policy challenge is therefore not to maximize remittances, but to minimize deadweight loss by creating an economy in which young people can and want to build their futures at home. The demographic window is open, but it will close. Decisions taken now will determine whether Uzbekistan enters the next phase of its demographic transition with a strong productive base or with a lasting legacy of missed opportunity.

More: https://centralasiaprogram.org/cap-uzbekistan-publications/the-deadweight-loss-of-emigration-in-uzbekistan-and-the-potential-of-youth-to-unlock-the-demographic-dividend/

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