Uzbekistan's Exit Visa: The Last One in the Former USSR

Until the last day of 2018, an Uzbek citizen holding a valid passport and a ticket to Istanbul could be stopped at Tashkent airport for want of one sticker. It carried the traveller's name and passport number, it came from the Interior Ministry, and without it you weren't leaving for anywhere outside the former Soviet Union.

Everyone called it the OVIR, after the ministry's visa and registration office that issued it. It was abolished on 1 January 2019. By then, according to The Diplomat and The Times of Central Asia, Uzbekistan was the only former Soviet state still running an exit visa system.

How the sticker worked

The most detailed picture comes from a January 2017 research response by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, which pulled together reports from the International Crisis Group, the IOM, the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights (UGF) and a Tashkent-based researcher. Their accounts line up closely.

Where it applied: travel outside the CIS. Trips to Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and other CIS countries didn't need one, but under a CIS arrangement an Uzbek citizen couldn't fly onward from there to a third country without it.
How long it lasted: two years.
Cost: an official fee reported at $20 to $25, depending on the source. One researcher added that an "unofficial" $10 was usual on top.
Waiting time: the law set a decision deadline of 15 days. In practice, the UGF reported 20 to 30 days, and the Crisis Group said at least a month, sometimes several.
Paperwork: application forms, photos, the passport and, for men, a military service certificate.

Then came the extras. The same researcher listed documents officials could ask for on top: a husband's consent for his wife to travel, a parent's consent for a daughter, and a medical certificate for sexually transmitted diseases, which he said was often requested from young women. The US State Department's human rights report for 2015 recorded that male relatives of women aged 18 to 35 had to sign a statement promising the women wouldn't engage in illegal behaviour, including prostitution, while abroad.

Leaving without the right papers was a crime. Article 223 of the Criminal Code, as quoted by the Canadian board in 2017, punished illegal exit with a fine of 50 to 100 minimum monthly wages or three to five years in prison.

What the government said it was for

Security, mostly. RFE/RL and the UGF both reported that authorities defended the regime as protection against terrorism.

The legal grounds for refusing a sticker were set out by the government itself in a 2008 report to the UN Human Rights Committee: holding state secrets, facing criminal or civil proceedings, being under police supervision, dodging a court obligation, giving false information, or being liable for military call-up. There was a right of appeal, though two of the grounds, criminal proceedings and conscription, couldn't be appealed. Men also needed their military service settled; today that can be done through a paid 28-day training route instead of a full year.

On paper, that's a list you'd find in plenty of countries. The difference is that most of them apply it to a small number of named people, not by making every citizen apply in advance.

What rights groups said it was used for

The UGF's 2015 report was direct: in many cases officials issued exit visas only after receiving bribes, and in others delayed or refused them on political grounds, to stop human rights defenders, independent journalists, opposition members and activists travelling to conferences or seeking asylum. Refusals sometimes came with explanations like a trip being "not advisable", or a claimed shortage of stickers.

Other reports pointed the same way. RFE/RL said in September 2016 that relatives of its staff had been questioned about their family members' journalism and in several cases refused exit visas. Forum 18 reported arbitrary refusals for people trying to make the hajj. In July 2015 the UN Human Rights Committee called for the system to be abolished, and Human Rights Watch repeated the call in an October 2017 review of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev's first year in office.

Two years from promise to practice

Mirziyoyev became president in late 2016, after Islam Karimov's death. Within weeks the exit visa was on the table.

Date	Step
January 2017	A draft presidential decree proposes scrapping exit visas in the third quarter of 2017.
August 2017	Mirziyoyev signs a decree ordering biometric passports for foreign travel and the end of exit visas from 1 January 2019. The stated aim, per RFE/RL, was to rule out bureaucratic hurdles and corruption.
August 2018	Draft rules for the new system published for public comment.
1 January 2019	Exit stickers stop being issued. Citizens travel on a biometric international passport instead.

The new passport, according to the Uzbek embassy in Washington, runs for 10 years for anyone 16 or older, 5 years for children aged 1 to 16, and 2 years for babies under one. Reports at the time said existing passports would remain usable through 2021.

The 2017 draft's timetable slipped by more than a year. Compared with the Tashkent propiska, whose first abolition deadline was missed by more than seven years, that counts as brisk.

Last in the former USSR, with an asterisk

Was Uzbekistan really the last? For a formal, universal exit visa, yes: The Diplomat, The Times of Central Asia and Reason all say so. Its neighbour complicates the picture a little. Turkmenistan dropped its exit visas in January 2004, but Human Rights Watch reported that year that thousands of people were on "black lists" and still denied the right to leave. So Uzbekistan was the last to require everyone to ask permission, not necessarily the last place where leaving could be blocked.

The comparison with Cuba, which often comes up, needs a small correction. Havana announced the end of its exit permit on 16 October 2012, but the change took effect on 14 January 2013. So Uzbekistan's reform arrived six years after Cuba's, not seven.

Which reform mattered more, the tourist visa changes or this one? Foreign coverage mostly went to the first: e-visas, visa-free lists, a country opening its doors. In early 2018 Catherine Putz of The Diplomat called visa reform for foreigners "low-hanging fruit" and the exit visa the more meaningful benchmark. We agree. Letting tourists in costs a government nothing. Letting its own citizens out without asking means giving up a lever it had used for decades.

The other half of the Soviet system

The Soviet state controlled movement at two levels. The propiska tied you to an address at home; the exit permit decided whether you could cross the border at all. Uzbekistan kept both long after 1991, and dismantled them years apart: the exit sticker went in 2019, and the Tashkent residence list only in October 2025.

A trace of the system survives in the rules foreign visitors meet today. The registration slip your hotel hands you comes from the same habit of recording where everyone is, even if the stakes are now far lower.

If you're travelling with Uzbek friends or family, there's nothing extra for them to arrange now. A valid international passport and whatever visa the destination requires is enough, the same as for you. For your own entry rules, see our Uzbekistan visa guide.

Sources

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.