Uzbekistan: Law on Mass Media article 19

Recommendations:
–
Uzbekistan should adopt a comprehensive freedom of information law. Alternatively, 
the Mass Media Law should be amended to provide that everyone has the right of 
access to information. Any restrictions on access to information should meet the 
requirements of international standards. 
Other restrictions
The final chapter, Chapter 6 (which remains unchanged through the April 2018, apart 
from Article 40), provides further regulation of certain aspects of the media outlets 
operations. These include provisions on “news agencies” and their legal status, provisions 
on international cooperation of media outlets, broad provisions on accreditation of media 
outlets and foreign media outlets and “liabilities” for violations of the Mass Media Law.
We note that some of these provisions are already addressed in other pieces of 
legislation (for example the provisions on accreditation are also enumerated in greater 
detail in the Law on Professional Activity of Journalists and in the extremely problematic 
Decree on Regulating Foreign Media
59
(amended March 2018
60
) and it is unclear to what 
58 
See ARTICLE 19, The Right to Know Principles, originally developed in 1999, and were updated in 
2015, Principle 4. See also the 2004 Joint Declaration of special mandates, 6 December 2004.
59 
The Decree on Regulating Foreign Media, February 2006, available (in Russian) at 
https://bit.ly/2NnbyMe
.
60 
The Amendments to the Decree on Regulating Foreign Media, March 2018, available (in Russian) 
at 
https://bit.ly/2GDZmGg
.

---

31
extent these provisions overlap or how they should be interpreted in case of conflict 
between different laws.
ARTICLE 19 suggests to remove this duplicity, while we highlight that some of the issues 
outlined in Chapter 6 should not be subject of statutory provisions in the first place. In