Polygamy Law in Uzbekistan: Banned Since the 1920s

Thirty-eight men. That's how many were convicted of polygamy in Uzbekistan between 2018 and mid-2023, according to figures the Supreme Court's press secretary released in August 2023: 34 over five years, then four more in the first half of 2023. In a country of about 39 million where second families are an open topic on social media, that number says less about how common polygamy is than about how hard it is to prove.

The ban itself is old. What's new is that since October 2023 you can be fined or jailed for a fortnight just for promoting the idea.

What Article 126 actually says

The Criminal Code's Article 126 describes polygamy as "cohabitation with two or more women on the basis of a common household." The current sanction, set by a December 2019 amendment, is a fine of 50 to 100 base calculation values (BCV), correctional labour of up to three years, restriction of liberty of one to three years, or imprisonment of up to three years.

At the BCV of 440,000 som in force since 1 September 2026, the fine works out to 22 million to 44 million som. Media reports from 2023 converted it into dollars at the rate of the time; those figures are now out of date, so we've left them out.

Notice what the definition doesn't require. There's no mention of marriage, registered or religious. The test is a shared household, and that's broader than it sounds. The Diplomat, citing a 2018 legal commentary by M. Kh. Rustambaev, explains that the wives don't have to live under one roof. If a man pays for the second family's utility bills, the children's schooling or repairs to their flat, a court can treat that as a common household.

The flip side is odd. A man living with a mistress, without any religious ceremony, isn't caught in the same way, while a man who has taken a second wife by nikah (the Islamic marriage rite) is. Human rights advocates quoted by The Diplomat argue this could be read as penalising religious belief rather than conduct.

A Soviet law that outlived the Soviet Union

None of this began with independence. In the late 1920s, Soviet law in Uzbekistan treated polygyny, bride price (qalin) and under-age marriage as "crimes based on custom", a category aimed specifically at Central Asian practices. The historian Douglas Northrop, writing in Slavic Review in 2001, shows how hard these rules were to enforce. Bride price survived by being renamed as gifts, and the legal definition of polygyny kept being contested.

That was the same period as the Hujum, the 1927 campaign to unveil Uzbek women. Family law was part of one project: remaking the household from the outside. Independent Uzbekistan kept the polygamy offence in its 1994 Criminal Code. Nearly a century later, the wording has changed but the offence is still on the books.

The 2023 twist: talking about it

Law No. ZRU-874, dated 31 October 2023, added Article 47-8 to the Code of Administrative Responsibility. It targets "promoting cohabitation with two or more wives", spreading views, ideas or calls with that content, and encouraging such behaviour. The penalty is 15 to 30 BCV (6.6 million to 13.2 million som at today's value) or up to 15 days of administrative arrest.

Why a speech offence? The immediate trigger was online. In August 2023 an Instagram blogger posted a video in which she "gave" her husband a second wife as a birthday present. It went viral, drew a backlash, and she was taken to court for disturbing public order. She said it was a joke and got a warning. Around the same time, influencers were joking about second wives or presenting them as a religious ideal.

The same law went further than slogans. It also amended the rules on religious marriage:

Performing a religious marriage rite for a couple whose marriage isn't registered with the state, including where one partner is under age, now brings a fine of 15 to 30 BCV under Article 47-3 of the administrative code.
Doing it again after that penalty is a crime under Article 125-1 of the Criminal Code: 75 to 150 BCV (33 million to 66 million som), 360 to 400 hours of community service, or two to three years of correctional labour.

The October package also created offences for promoting discrimination by sex (including openly denying that women and men have equal rights) and for covering the face in public so that a person can't be identified.

Here's our view, for what it's worth: the ban on promotion is the weaker of these tools. It polices what people say on Instagram. The rule on imams goes after the mechanism, because a second wife almost always arrives by nikah, not by a trip to the civil registry.

The government's case: children and property

Officials frame the issue around women's and children's rights rather than morals. Shahnoza Kholmakhmatova, a deputy in the Legislative Chamber, told a local outlet in 2023 that the rise in unregistered marriages, most of them men taking second or third wives, leaves women and children unable to claim child support, establish paternity or inherit. The Diplomat reported, citing her interview, that single mothers registered over 16,000 births in 2020 and about 19,000 the following year.

A nikah has no civil effect. If the marriage ends by talaq, the husband's repudiation, the second wife can't claim property or support. If he dies, she has no inheritance rights. The researcher Nargis Kosimova, speaking to CABAR.asia, pointed to the same gap for children of unofficial marriages: weaker social protection, no property rights and difficulty even registering the father's surname.

Does punishing the husband help her? Not directly. A conviction under Article 126 doesn't turn the second marriage into a legal one. That's why the registration rules matter more than the conviction count.

Marriage age: the related reform that worked on paper

Polygamy and child marriage share a hiding place, the unregistered religious ceremony, so the two are regulated together. In 2013 the legal marriage age was 18 for men and 17 for women, and local governors could lower it by up to a year. A 2019 amendment to the Family Code raised it to 18 for women too.

It isn't an absolute rule. According to The Diplomat, the age can still be reduced by one year in rare cases, such as pregnancy, the birth of a child or a minor's emancipation, with a city hakim's permission.

The registered numbers collapsed. Officially registered marriages of girls under 18 fell from 8,223 in 2010 to 68 in 2023. The same reporting is blunt about the catch: many families simply switched to nikah-only weddings, which leave no trace in the statistics. That's the gap the October 2023 rules on imams are meant to close.

How the penalties compare

Conduct	Provision	Penalty	Fine at 440,000 som BCV
Polygamy (shared household with two or more women)	Criminal Code, Art. 126	50–100 BCV, or up to 3 years' correctional labour, 1–3 years' restriction of liberty, or up to 3 years' prison	22–44 million som
Promoting or encouraging cohabitation with two or more wives	Administrative Code, Art. 47-8	15–30 BCV or up to 15 days' arrest	6.6–13.2 million som
Religious marriage rite for an unregistered couple	Administrative Code, Art. 47-3	15–30 BCV	6.6–13.2 million som
Same, repeated after an administrative penalty	Criminal Code, Art. 125-1	75–150 BCV, 360–400 hours' community service, or 2–3 years' correctional labour	33–66 million som

What it means in practice

For most people passing through, nothing. You won't be asked about anyone's marital status at a hotel desk. If you're curious how weddings work, our piece on Uzbek wedding traditions explains the split between the nikah and civil registration at the ZAGS, and the legal weight sits entirely with the second. Our overview of laws and customs covers the rules that are more likely to affect a visitor.

One thing worth knowing if you post from Uzbekistan: the wording of Article 47-8 doesn't distinguish between citizens and foreigners. A joking video about a second wife is exactly the kind of content it was written for.

The Diplomat's reporter concluded in 2023 that the promotion ban might make social media users more careful without reducing polygamy itself. Three years on, the published conviction data haven't settled that question either way.

Sources

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