While acknowledging Kazakhstan adopted a majority of the recommendations made at its recent UPR, Human Rights Watch is concerned that the government did not support several key recommendations.
We regret that Kazakhstan did not support the recommendation that persons convicted of non-violent crimes be removed from its Financing Terrorism List. Human Rights Watch has documented serious, arbitrary consequences for people’s rights, such as unjustified financial restrictions, stemming from automatic inclusion on the list.
Nor did Kazakhstan support recommendations to revise its public assemblies’ law, claiming that its regulation of “the right to peaceful assembly is in line with international human rights norms and standards.” Human Rights Watch calls on the government to back up this dubious assertion by ending its routine rounding up of peaceful protesters for exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.
Human Rights Watch notes with concern that Kazakhstan did not support more than a dozen recommendations on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Human Rights Watch and others have documented that LGBT people in Kazakhstan face everyday harassment, discrimination, and threats of violence, and that calls for anti-LGBT propaganda legislation persist. The process for changing one’s legally recognized gender in Kazakhstan remains invasive and humiliating. Human Rights Watch reminds the Council that in June 2023, the Committee Against Torture called on Kazakhstan to “revoke the requirement of mandatory reassignment surgery.”
Recommendations to ratify the Rome Statute, allow full freedom for independent trade unions to operate, guarantee freedom of expression and media freedom, and abolish Kazakhstan’s discriminatory ‘foreign-funding register,’ were not supported by the government either.
Human Rights Watch urges the UN human rights system and member states to press the government of Kazakhstan to address these shortcomings and implement in full all the recommendations made to it during its UPR in order to bring about an end to ongoing human rights violations.
Thank you.
