National Unity Day in 2024

When is Day of National Unity?

The Day of National Unity is a national holiday in Tajikistan, observed on June 27th each year. If June 27th falls on a weekend, a public holiday will be observed on the following Monday.

National Unity Day commemorates the signing of the national peace accord in 1997 which ended the civil war.

History of Day of National Unity

By the middle of the 19th century, Russian conquests in Central Asia brought most of modern-day Tajikistan under Tsarist control.

In 1924, Tajikistan was consolidated into a newly formed Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which was administratively part of the Uzbek SSR until the Tajik ASSR gained full-fledged republic status in 1929 when it acquired the territory of Khujand from Uzbek SSR.

During the Soviet period, and despite the efforts of the USSR to establish a Soviet collective culture, the Tajiks maintained a fierce sense of nationalism and pride in their own history and culture.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Supreme Soviet declared Tajikistan's independence from the Soviet Union on September 9th 1991.

Independence ripped off the sticking plaster that was Soviet rule over ethnic differences, leading almost immediately to Tajikistan descending into civil war.

The war was fought on regional lines, with rebels from the Garm and Gorno-Badakhshan regions rising up against the newly-formed government of President Rahmon Nabiyev, which was dominated by people from the Khujand and Kulyab regions.

In the five years of the conflict, an estimated 100,000 had died in the fighting, with around 10% of the population being refugees with the country.

With both sides having reached a military stalemate, a UN-sponsored armistice finally ended the war in 1997.

On June 27th 1997, the "General Agreement on the Establishment of Peace and National Accord in Tajikistan" and the "Moscow Protocol' were signed, bringing the war to an end.