Trip to Central Asia: Germany and Uzbekistan want to better manage migration

Travel to Central Asia
Germany and Uzbekistan want to better manage migration

"Pearl of the Orient" Samarkand is mentioned, the first stop on the Chancellor's Central Asia trip. Photo: Michael Kappeler/dpa

Samarkand is called the “Pearl of the Orient”, the first stop on the Chancellor’s Central Asia trip. Photo

© Michael Kappeler/dpa

The sixth migration agreement of the traffic light coalition will have little significance for the repatriation of people without the right to remain. But perhaps it will help with deportations to a neighboring country.

To kick off his During his trip to Central Asia, Chancellor Olaf Scholz agreed to work more closely with Uzbekistan to manage migration to Germany. An agreement to this effect was signed during his visit to the almost 3,000-year-old trading city of Samarkand on the Silk Road. It is intended to facilitate the influx of skilled workers, particularly in the care and health sector, and the repatriation of Uzbeks without the right to remain in Germany.

The latter point, however, only concerns around 200 people. That is less than 0.1 percent of all 225,000 migrants in Germany who are required to leave the country. A total of 13,700 Uzbeks live in Germany.

Central component of the traffic light migration policy

Agreements with individual countries of origin are a central part of the traffic light government’s migration policy. In order to negotiate them, it has appointed a special representative, Joachim Stamp.

Just last Friday, a migration agreement was signed with Kenya in Berlin, and similar agreements have been in place with India, Georgia, Morocco and Colombia for some time. Negotiations are already well advanced with Moldova and Kyrgyzstan, and talks are also underway with the Philippines and Ghana. The agreements are always based on two pillars: deportation of people without a right to remain and recruitment of skilled workers for the German labor market.

As Afghanistan’s neighbour, Uzbekistan is also one of the countries that could help with the deportation of criminals to Afghanistan. However, it is still unclear “whether and within what time frame this will materialise in practice,” according to government sources. The agreement does in principle also regulate the “transit” of citizens of third countries. But it does not contain a concrete agreement on this. Since the end of August, Germany has again been deporting criminals to Afghanistan, which is ruled by the Islamist Taliban. The first flight was organised with the help of Qatar.

“Pearl of the Orient”: Cultural programme to kick off

Scholz began his visit to Samarkand, also known as the “Pearl of the Orient”, with a walk through the Registan, one of the most magnificent squares in Asia. There he also visited the Tilla Kori Mosque from the 17th century.

The country, with a population of around 36 million, has been opening up to the West for years. Under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, it has implemented a number of liberal reforms, privatized parts of its state economy and thus attracted investors. Economic growth of over five percent is expected this year alone – thanks in part to the close trade relations with China and Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Uzbekistan in May and announced investments that Scholz can hardly keep up with: He promised help for the expansion of a gas pipeline and the construction of several hydroelectric and nuclear power plants.

Central Asia Summit in Kazakhstan

On Monday, Scholz will travel on to Kazakhstan, the largest and economically strongest country in Central Asia. A summit meeting is planned there with all five states in the region between Russia and China, which also include Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. Scholz wants to expand relations with these countries and to this end, a year ago in Berlin, he agreed a strategic partnership with them with a focus on the economy, energy, climate and the environment. This partnership is now to be brought to life.

The five Central Asian states have a total population of almost 80 million, which is slightly less than Germany. However, their area is eleven times larger than Germany and corresponds roughly to the area of ​​the entire European Union with its 27 member states. For a long time, from a German perspective, the region was in the shadow of the two superpowers China and Russia, on which the German economy focused its interest.

The Russian attack on Ukraine has changed that. Russia has long been Germany’s most important energy supplier. And economic dependence on China is now also to be reduced, mainly because of the bad experiences with Russia. The German government therefore wants to deepen existing partnerships with less economically strong countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia and find new partners.

Resource wealth and human rights violations

The raw material deposits in the Central Asian states are of particular interest to Germany. Kazakhstan, as the region’s strongest economy, already supplies the refinery in Schwedt, Brandenburg, with oil and compensates for the cut in Russian supplies. The German government is also interested in the region’s gas deposits. Kazakhstan also has uranium, iron ore, zinc, copper and gold and is considered a potential partner for the production of hydrogen obtained from renewable energies.

However, the authoritarian states in the region are internationally criticized for human rights violations. Gas-rich Turkmenistan, for example, is considered an isolated dictatorship similar to North Korea. The human rights organization Human Rights Watch called on Scholz before the trip to openly address grievances. “The German government cannot pretend that closer relations with Central Asia are possible without a significant improvement in the human rights situation in the region,” said regional director Hugh Williamson.

dpa

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