Kazaks Approve Rights Laws Ahead of OSCE Year

As Kazakstan heads toward its much-prized year as chair of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, it has been putting its house in order when it comes to human rights legislation, although experts say implementing conventions will be harder than signing them.

In February, President Nursultan Nazarbaev signed off on the ratification of the First Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ICCPR. The document gives individuals in Kazakstan the right to lodge allegations of human rights abuses with the United Nations Committee for Human Rights.

Kazakstan ratified the ICCPR, the basic world charter for human rights, in 2006 after signing it in 2003. The First Optional Protocol was signed by President Nursultan Nazarbaev in 2007.

For comparison, Kyrgyzstan ratified both basic document and the protocol in 1994, Uzbekistan did so the following year, Turkmenistan in 1997 and Tajikistan in 1999.

Although Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are seen as Central Asia’s worst offenders in the area of human rights, they are the only ones to have ratified the Second Optional Protocol, committing states to end the death penalty. This is despite the fact that capital punishment has been abolished or suspended in all five, including Kazakstan.

In another reform that may have been timed in advance of Kazakstan’s year at the OSCE, parliament amended the criminal code in March to abolish the death penalty for most crimes, in line with the Second Optional Protocol. Capital punishment still applies for certain crimes of war – an exclusion that is compatible with the protocol – and more controversially for crimes of terrorism. Since the latter category could encompass a wide range of offences, some experts warn that it could complicate ratification of the second protocol. (For more on this issue, see Kazak Death Penalty Reform Less Than it Seems, 07-May-09.)

Many analysts believe the leadership is making up for lost time in order to demonstrate a commitment to international human rights law.

Kazakstan’s bid to chair the OSCE, launched in 2003, was approved only after several delays. Some OSCE member states were concerned that a state where elections were judged as undemocratic, freedom of speech was curbed and political opponents mistreated should not be given this accolade. The Kazak application was finally approved in November 2007, amid pledges of further reform from the government.

“Kazakstan dragged out ratification of the protocol as long as it could, since doing so was not in the authorities’ interests,” said Nurul Rahimbek, head of the Society of Young Professionals of Kazakstan.

“If it hadn’t been for the OSCE chairmanship, Kazakstan would not have ratified the optional protocol,” said political scientist Dosym Satpaev, director of the Risk Assessment Group in Kazakstan.

Satpaev notes that the government has yet to notify the UN Human Rights Committee that it has ratified the document, and until this happens, citizens of the country will not be able to use the rights the document gives them.

Serik Temirbulatov, who sits on parliament’s committee for international affairs, defence and security, sees ratification as an important step, and explained that once it came into force, Kazakstan citizens would have the right to go to the UN Human Rights Committee if they failed to get satisfaction from national courts.

“If a person has appealed to all the judicial levels and believes his rights have not been protected in his home country, only then can he appeal to the UN Committee for Human Rights,” he said.

Lawyer Sergei Utkin thinks ratification is “a big step forward”.

“There are many cases in Kazakstan when people appeal to the Supreme Court but still do not obtain justice, and they don’t know what to do after that,” said Utkin. “Now they can make complaints to a higher authority.”

“Although the UN Human Rights Committee is not the Strasbourg court [European Court of Human Rights], decisions of which are legally binding, it is still a fairly effective mechanism,” he added.

Utkin said citizens would need help with preparing the documentation needed to file complaints at the UN committee.

“There will need to be several appeals to the UN committee that establish a precedent,” he said. “NGOs should be set up to advise [citizens] on these matters.”

At the moment, said Utkin, 90 per cent of all complaints sent to the Human Rights Committee are set aside because the documentation is inadequate.

Even if all these things are done, some analysts fear that having the theoretical right of access to the UN committee will not change much on the ground.

According to Rahimbek, “The UN Human Rights Committee has no levers of influence; it can only make recommendations”.

Satpaev, too, warned that ratification of international documents did not automatically translate into improved practice in the human rights observance by local institutions. “But it’s better than nothing,” he said of the protocol.

“The fact that Kazakstan, unlike other Central Asian states, understands that it needs to take such measures because of its status in the OSCE is a positive sign,” he said.

In any case, embedding the principles set out in the protocol is going to take time, according to Grishin.

“For a while, everybody will continue operating in the same old way, referring to the old legislation they are accustomed to,” he said. “From my own experience, I know that neither the courts nor the police recognise international standards.