DUSHANBE, September 23, 2011, Asia-Plus -- On September 19-22, Baroness Vivien Stern, Member of the British House of Lords, visited Dushanbe, undertaking a three day program of calls, the British Embassy in Dushanbe reports.

During her visit, Baroness Stern  met  the  Chairmen of the Human Rights Committees of both the Majlisi Milli and the Majlisi Namoyandagon of the Majlisi Oli of the Republic of Tajikistan; the Ombudsman of Tajikistan, Mr. Zarif Alizoda; Deputy Minister of Justice General Isatullo Sharipov; the Dushanbe Office of the OSCE;  and others involved in human rights issues in Tajikistan.

Her visit followed her earlier successful visit to Tajikistan in December 2010 and built on the good relations she established with many Tajiks on that occasion, whilst also further developing and strengthening relations between our two parliaments, with specific focus on human rights issues.  Baroness Stern also had a lively discussion on human rights in a meeting with members of the Law Faculty of the Tajik National University.

Baroness Vivien Stern is Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for Prison studies (ICPS) at King’s College, London, a university centre dedicated to the study of imprisonment and its uses around the world.  She is also an Honorary President of Penal Reform International (PRI), an NGO promoting penal reform throughout the world, of which she was a founder member and Secretary-General from 1989-2005.

In 1999 she was appointed an independent member of the House of Lords. She is currently a member of the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. From 1999-2003 she was a member of the European Union committee of the House of Lords. She is also a member of the UK Parliament’s All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Tajikistan.

In 2003 Baroness Stern became the Convenor of the Scottish Consortium on Crime and Criminal Justice. She is also a member of the Scottish National Advisory board on Offender Management, which advises the Scottish Executive (the government of Scotland) on penal policy.

From 1977 to 1996 she was director of a British non-governmental organization, the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders.

She has written many books on penal matters.  She has a particular interest in health care in prisons and in 1999 she edited Sentenced to Die? The problem of TB in prisons in Eastern and Central Asia, published by ICPS and available in English and Russian.

She has studied alternatives to prison around the world and in 2002 she produced Developing Alternatives to Prison in East and Central Europe and Central Asia (published by COLPI, Budapest in English and Russian).  Her other books include A Sin Against the Future: Imprisonment in the World (1998) and Creating Criminals: People and Prisons in a Market society (Zed Books) 2006.