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This article examines the place of the NGOs in Uzbekistan. This country in Central Asia has since the break-up of the USSR been coming under strong Western pressure expressed through prescribed standards of good governance. The latter are nevertheless rarely put into practice but widely evoked. In this, the NGOs appear first as an opening between the closed interior world of a hard nationalist dictatorship ands the outside: the global, Western universe. Much broadcast standards, pressure and funds circulate. With them come certain concepts, such as those of civil society, rights and governance. The building of civil society was evoked by the NGOs in particularly, up to 1995. Since then, in the face of lack of results, the approach has been more pragmatic, more developmentalist. The NGOs therefore diffuse the precepts of civil society, rather than implement a true construction, in the face of a State that is vigilant and brutal. The NGOs consequently appear to be acting in the service of global governance as formulated by the Western countries. Leading these, the USA play a prime determining role in the strategies chosen and the resources allocated to the NGOs in Uzbekistan.