UNITED NATIONS EXPERT WELCOMES KAZAKHSTAN’S OPENNESS TO FURTHER REFORMS

UNITED NATIONS EXPERT WELCOMES KAZAKHSTAN’S OPENNESS TO FURTHER REFORMS

(Reissued as received.)

GENEVA, 21 June (UN Information Service) -- The Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Leandro Despouy, ended a visit to Kazakhstan on 17 June.  The following note from the Special Rapporteur is from a news briefing in Astana held to provide local media with an overview of his mission.

The Special Rapporteur thanked the Government of Kazakhstan for its warm welcome and for the opportunity to meet with every person he had requested to meet with.  He also expressed gratitude to the various local organizations of judges and lawyers with whom he met for the important insight they provided.  He further thanked the numerous international organizations and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who met with him and the cooperation they extended.  “All these organizations play an important role in the protection of human rights and have provided me with valuable information for my report”, stated Mr. Despouy.

The Special Rapporteur indicated that he now had “a more comprehensive picture of the country and the issues related to my mandate”, in as much as was possible after a seven-day visit.  He then made a number of preliminary observations:

-- Kazakhstan has made considerable progress in economic reforms and he noted that all actors in the country appeared to be aware of the importance of furthering institutional reforms, in particular judicial reforms, that were needed to match [accompany] the economic achievements;

-- All his interlocutors showed how conscious they were of the importance of having professional judges and wanted to increase the quality of judicial training; and

-- All three key parties in the courtroom -- the judge, the prosecutor and the lawyer -- spoke about the difficulties they each encounter and were very open about the shortcomings of the legal system and proposed a number of changes to ensure a more transparent and effective judiciary in the very near future.

The Special Rapporteur ended the press briefing by saying, “My overall impression is that the judicial and legal community are very aware of the progress that has already been made and they are also very aware of the necessity for further reforms in the near future”.

The Special Rapporteur began his mission in Almaty where he had meetings with United Nation agencies including the United Nations Development Programme, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Organization for the Security and Co-operation for Europe, the European Union, the United States Agency for International Development, the American Bar Association Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative and other national and international non-governmental organizations and academics.

Thereafter, the Special Rapporteur travelled to Astana where he met with the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Justice and the Interior, and the Deputy Minister of Education.  He also had extensive consultations with the President of the Supreme Court, the President of the Constitutional Council, the Deputy Prosecutor General, the Ombudsmen, the National Commission on Family Issues, the National Commission on Human Rights and a number of other judges and lawyers.

The Special Rapporteur will present his findings, conclusions and recommendations in a report to the sixty-first session of the Commission on Human Rights in April 2005.

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