After being reviewed by the UN Human Rights Council, the Kazakh authorities spoke only of achievements, ignoring UN experts’ recommendations.
The Republic of Kazakhstan underwent its fourth Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United Nations on January 23, 2025.
The UPR’s goal is to promote and protect human rights in each member country by, among other tasks, “assessing States’ human rights records and addressing human rights violations wherever they occur.” This year, 99 UN member countries performed these assessments and compiled a list of commendations and recommendations for Kazakhstan.
Media reports from the Kazakhstan government were overwhelmingly, even deceptively, positive. The Republic of Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a gloating article on the review, as did The Astana Times. Both focused exclusively on commendations from UN representatives, such as Kazakhstan’s progress in combating domestic violence, establishing a constitutional court, and abolishing the death penalty. They did not even mention the approximately 200 recommendations they received.
This selective reporting raises serious doubts about the Kazakh government’s commitment to applying the UN’s feedback and to human rights progress more generally.
Interesting recommendations included:
- Taking further measures against domestic violence, such as bringing the definition of rape to international standards. The current definition of rape in the Kazakhstan criminal code “is limited to penetrative vaginal intercourse,” and based on violence or threat of violence, rather than on the absence of consent.
- Ratifying and implementing further international treaties on the promotion of human rights, such as the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.
- Thoroughly reviewing educational access of persons with disabilities and ending segregated educational settings.
- Substantially narrowing the definition of terrorism in the Criminal Code, which currently justifies broad and egregious restrictions of freedom of religion, expression, assembly, and association. Indeed, just days before the UPR, Kazakh authorities used the very definitions in question to arrest Instagram influencer Temirlan Yesenbek for including an abrasive song in a social media post, accusing him of “incitement of ethnic hatred.” Yesenbek is still in confinement, awaiting his already twice-rescheduled day in court.
These tasks should be implemented by the next review in 2030 when Kazakhstan will receive a new bout of recommendations and commendations.
Other media sources were far less generous than Astana in their evaluations. Human Rights Watch, for example, emphasized the Kazakh government crackdown on civil and political freedoms since the January 2022 protests. They also criticized the government’s failure to fulfill recommendations from the previous UPR in 2019, such as to protect the rights of LGBT people.
As usual, the Kazakh government’s brazenly positive portrayal of the human rights situation in Kazakhstan jars with the reality experienced by citizens and acknowledged by external observers. The KIBHR joins its voice with UN member nations in calling for greater transparency in government and reforms to protect the rights of all residents of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
