Kazakhstan Must Enact Urgent Reforms to Uphold OSCE Promises

A new Freedom House report finds that Kazakhstan’s government needs to take immediate action if it intends to bring its laws on elections, political parties, local self-government and the media into compliance with international standards as it promised to do by year’s end.

At the November 2007 Ministerial Meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Kazakhstan’s foreign minister vowed to undertake far-reaching reforms to improve the country’s record on key political and civil rights issues prior to his country assuming the OSCE chairmanship in 2010.  However, a new Freedom House report, Kazakhstan’s Record on Human Rights, Democratization and Fulfilling Its OSCE Chairmanship Commitments, shows that Kazakhstan has made little progress in honoring this commitment during the first half of 2008.  The report outlines several key reforms that Kazakhstan should adopt by the end of the year. 

“Kazakhstan needs to implement the reforms its own government has promised in order to demonstrate that it has the moral authority to represent the 56 OSCE participating states on issues of human rights and democracy,” said Freedom House Executive Director Jennifer Windsor. “So far, Freedom House has seen little evidence that Kazakhstan is taking the steps necessary to uphold the principles enshrined in the OSCE charter.”

Despite its promises to the OSCE, Kazakhstan’s government recently blocked access for several weeks to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s website and conducted targeted raids on religious minorities.

Freedom House has documented a steady, broad-based decline in the protection of basic rights in Kazakhstan since at least 1999.  Since that time, Kazakhstan’s scores in Freedom House’s annual survey Nations in Transit declined significantly in all categories, with particularly large decreases in the areas of governance and of judicial framework and independence.  

“Half-way through the year, the commitments Kazakhstan made to carry out significant legislative reforms by the end of 2008 remain largely on paper,” said Windsor. 

Kazakhstan is ranked Not Free in the 2008 edition of Freedom in the World, Freedom House's survey of political rights and civil liberties, and in the 2008 version of Freedom of the Press.

For more information on Kazakhstan, visit:
 
Freedom in the World 2008: Kazakhstan
Freedom of the Press 2008: Kazakhstan

Freedom House, an independent nongovernmental organization that supports the expansion of freedom in the world, has been monitoring political rights and civil liberties in Kazakhstan since 1990.
 
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