1.  The legal system of the Republic of Kazakhstan is based on the 1995 Constitution, which was initially adopted on the basis of a nationwide referendum and then amended several times, including the amendments made by a constitutional referendum in June 2022. The 1995 Constitution set up a unitary republic with a presidential form of Government and a bicameral legislature consisting of a Senate and an Assembly (Mazhilis). Working jointly, the two chambers can amend the Constitution, approve the budget, ratify treaties, and declare war. The state power in the Republic of Kazakhstan is unified and executed on the basis of the Constitution and laws.

2.  While the Constitution enshrines the division of state power into the legislative, executive, and judicial branches and the system of checks and balances that governs their interaction,¹ it places the President of the Republic above all three branches. The President is the Head of State, elected directly by the people. Most scholars agreed that the 1995 Constitution established a super-presidential system that governed the country during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the resignation in March 2019 of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who led Kazakhstan since 1989, and the subsequent election in June 2019 of his handpicked successor, Qasym-Zhomart Tokayev, to the presidency created an unprecedented duopoly in the 30 years since Kazakhstan’s independence.² This is because Nazarbayev retained the constitutional status of Yelbasy–—the leader of the nation, the leader of the ruling party, and the Chairperson of the National Security Council, in effect preserving key levers of power, until January 2022, when Tokayev thwarted the coup d’état.³ This report shows that this duopoly significantly impacted Kazakhstan’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.⁴

3.  The Government exercises the executive power of the Republic of Kazakhstan, heads the system of executive bodies and manages their activities, and is accountable to the President of the Republic and Parliament.⁵ The President, after consultations with the factions of political parties represented in the Mazhilis of the Parliament: recommends the candidacy of the Prime Minister of the Republic to the Mazhilis for approval; with the consent of the Mazhilis of the Parliament, appoints the Prime Minister of the Republic; dismisses the Prime Minister of the Republic; on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, determines the structure of the Government; on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, made after consultations with the Mazhilis of the Parliament, appoints members of the Government; independently appoints ministers of foreign affairs, defence, internal affairs; dismisses members of the Government from office; takes the oath of the members of the Government; and presides over meetings of the Government on particularly important issues.⁶ Overall, the Constitution ensures that the President dominates the executive branch.

4.  In Kazakhstan’s unitary system, local representatives and executive bodies responsible for the state of affairs in the relevant territory—a province or a large city—carry out local state administration.⁷ Importantly, local executive bodies (akimats), headed by governors (akims), are included in the unified system of executive bodies of the Republic of Kazakhstan and ensure the implementation of the statewide policy of the executive power in combination with the interests and development needs of the relevant territory.⁸ Governors (akims) of provinces and the capital city of Astana (called Nur-Sultan) between March 2019 and September 2022, and the two other largest cities of Almaty and Shymkent, serve as Presidential representatives. These governors (akims) are appointed to the post by the President on the advice of the Prime Minister, yet up until January 2022, President Tokayev had to share these appointment powers with Nazarbayev in the context of the duopoly. These governors (akims) develop socioeconomic forecasts of territorial development, programs, and their implementation; draft budgets, strategic plans and annual reports; manage communal property, and so on.⁹ The President has the power, at their own discretion, to dismiss these governors (akims).¹⁰ Even though the Constitution recognizes local self-government, ‘which provides for independent decision-making by the population regarding local issues’,¹¹ it does not operate in practice.¹²

5.  At the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2009 Code on public health and health care system,¹³ distributed public health responsibilities among the central, provincial, and local governments and set the overall guidance of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Kazakhstan and its subordinated field offices in provincial and municipal executive bodies (akimats) in the field of public health. That statute quickly proved unworkable during the Covid-19 pandemic. It was replaced by the new Code on public health and healthcare system of 7 July 2020,¹⁴ making protecting public health a national security concern. This formalized the role of Nazarbayev as a head of the Security Council in overseeing the official response to the pandemic and established a joint responsibility of the state, employers, and private individuals for maintaining and strengthening personal and public health. This Code, the 2003 Law on State of Emergency,¹⁵ and the 2014 Law on Civil Protection¹⁶ defined the mechanisms of handling the state of emergency. These three statutes formed the statutory basis for Kazakhstan’s official response to the Covid-19 pandemic at the central, provincial, and local levels.

6.  Kazakhstan’s response to the pandemic did not change the basic constitutional arrangements. Yet, in the wake of the January 2022 failed coup d’état, President Qasym-Zhomart Tokayev proposed constitutional changes in his State of the Union address on 16 March 2022. He promised to shift Kazakhstan from a ‘super-presidential form of government to a presidential republic with a strong parliament.’¹⁷ The constitutional referendum on 5 June 2022 ratified his constitutional reform package. From now on, only the Mazhilis can adopt the laws (disallowing the Senate from adopting laws), relatives of the President were banned from holding government positions, and the President had to seek approval from local assemblies before appointing governors (akims) of cities and provinces—stopping short of allowing the local residents to elect their own governors (akims).¹⁸ Notably, amendments to Article 61 of the Constitution required immediate consideration by Parliament of draft laws introduced by the Government ‘in order to promptly respond to the conditions that threaten the life and health of the population, the constitutional order, the protection of public order, and the economic security of the country’.¹⁹ These amendments empowered the Government ‘to adopt, under its own responsibility the temporary regulatory legal acts’ having the statutory force on these issues with the validity until ‘the entry into force of laws adopted by the Parliament or until the Parliament does not adopt the laws.’²⁰ As a result, the Parliament gained the power to adopt government-sponsored laws during a state of emergency in 24 hours.²¹ Overall, these constitutional changes seem to empower the executive in times of emergency and marginally reduce presidential power. At the same time, the referendum served as a rehearsal for Tokayev’s re-election in November 2022, with 81% of the popular vote.

7.  Similar to its Russian counterpart, the 1995 Kazakhstani Constitution recognizes two forms of exceptional regimes in response to extraordinary situations: martial law and state of emergency (Article 44). Unlike his Russian counterpart, President Tokayev declared a state of emergency in the country on 15 March 2020, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.²² Under Article 44 of the Constitution, ‘in case of a serious and immediate threat to the democratic institutions of the Republic, its independence and territorial integrity, political stability of the Republic, security of its citizens and the disruption of normal functioning of the Constitutional bodies of the state,’ the President has the power, after official consultations with the Prime Minister and Chairpersons of the Mazhilis and the Senate of the Parliament, to impose a state of emergency on the entire territory and in particular areas of Kazakhstan, and immediately inform the Parliament. The Constitution does not set any time limit for a state of emergency, nor does it mention any powers of the Parliament in a state of emergency except the prohibition of dissolving the Parliament during a state of emergency.²³ The Constitution also does not list which rights may be and/or may not be temporarily curtailed in a state of emergency. The Constitution does allow forced labour in a state of emergency, although it has never been implemented.²⁴

8.  The 1995 Constitution recognizes human rights and freedoms in the Republic of Kazakhstan as absolute, inalienable, and guaranteed.²⁵ The state may limit these rights and freedoms only by law and only to the extent necessary for the protection of the constitutional system, defence of public order, human rights and freedoms, and the health and morality of the population.²⁶ The Constitution explicitly prohibits the limitation of the right to life, judicial protection, state patronage abroad, respect for personal freedom and human dignity, freedom of conscience and language, and private property rights.²⁷

9.  Kazakhstan is a party to over 70 international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.²⁸ The Constitution recognizes the principles and norms of international law as an integral part of the Kazakhstani legal system, but establishes the priority of the national Constitution in the hierarchy of legal norms.²⁹ The ratified international agreements are superior to statutes, according to Article 4 of the Constitution, yet ‘the law of the Republic of Kazakhstan determines the order and conditions’ of implementing the ratified international agreements. On 5 November 2009, the Constitutional Council of the Republic of Kazakhstan declared that decisions of international institutions, which violated constitutional rights and freedoms, did not have a direct juridical force and a priority over statutes.³⁰

10.  There has been no decision to derogate from any international convention to which Kazakhstan is a party. To the contrary, Kazakhstan made several steps toward broader integration into various international human rights regimes. On 2 January 2021, the Kazakhstani Parliament ratified Optional Protocol II to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and abolished the death penalty on 29 December 2021.³¹ On 25 May 2022, Kazakhstan deposited with the International Labor Organization the instrument of ratification of the Part-Time Work Convention, 1994 (No. 175).³² On 7 June 2023, the Kazakhstani Parliament ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which allowed the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to consider complaints from individuals or groups who claim their rights under the Convention have been violated.³³

11.  Kazakhstan has been a World Health Organization (WHO) member since 1992. The WHO’s 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR) are implemented in Kazakhstan. The Ministry of Health of the Republic of Kazakhstan oversees public health policies, healthcare services, and the implementation of international health regulations. The Ministry collaborates with the WHO and other relevant national and international agencies to ensure compliance with the IHR and to enhance global health security.³⁴ During the Covid-19 pandemic, Kazakhstani authorities collaborated with the WHO via the WHO Country Office in Kazakhstan and followed the WHO guidance to address the pandemic. In fact, when President Tokayev declared a state of emergency on 15 March 2020 (see Part II.B below), he explicitly mentioned the WHO’s designation of the outbreak of Covid-19 as a pandemic as a basis for his decision.³⁵ He often referred to the WHO’s ‘positive assessments’ of the measures adopted by his administration in his speeches.³⁶

12.  The Parliament of Kazakhstan did not enact a new general law with emergency powers to respond to Covid-19. Instead, the initial legal response to the spread of the virus was primarily based on three pre-pandemic statutes: the 2009 Code on public health and health care system,³⁷ the 2003 Law on State of Emergency,³⁸ and the 2014 Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Civil Protection.³⁹ As mentioned in Part I above, these statutes proved unworkable for handling the pandemic nationwide. As a result, between March 2020 and April 2023, the Kazakhstani Parliament amended the Law on Civil Protection 20 times,⁴⁰ amended the Law on State of Emergency ten times,⁴¹ and adopted a new Code on public health and healthcare system. This Code made the protection of public health a national security concern, and among other things, introduced a vaccination regime and set better compensation for the health care workers. By April 2023, this Code had already been amended 28 times.⁴²

13.  Article 1 of the Law on Civil Protection defines an emergency situation as a ‘situation in a particular area, resulting from an accident, fire, the harmful effects of hazardous industrial factors, a hazardous natural phenomenon, catastrophe, natural or other disasters that may result in or resulted human losses, harm to human health or the environment, significant material damage and violation of living conditions of people.’⁴³ It further defines emergencies of a natural character as ‘emergencies resulting from hazardous natural phenomena (geophysical, geological, meteorological, agrometeorological, hydrogeological hazards), natural fires, epidemics, damage to agricultural plants and forests by diseases and pests.’⁴⁴ This Law charges the Emergency Situations Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with coordinating government agencies in emergency situations. Initially, this Law limited the Ministry of Health’s role in emergency situations solely to approving the importation of unregistered pharmaceuticals and medical items, such as humanitarian aid or emergency aid.⁴⁵ When, by early May 2020, the Kazakhstani authorities recognized the scale of the shortage of medical supplies needed to counteract the Covid-19 pandemic, they inserted Article 96-1 in this Law. This Article authorized the Ministry of Health to organize and manage the stockpile of medical supplies for the emergency reserve.⁴⁶ Article 15 of this Law makes local government bodies responsible for organizing health care and supplying medicines to the victims in the territory affected by the emergency.

14.  The Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan on State of Emergency of 8 February 2003 establishes the grounds, terms, order of introduction, and effect of the state of emergency on the entire territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan or in particular areas and defines the legal regime of emergency situation.⁴⁷ Article 1 of the Law defines a state of emergency as ‘a temporary measure, applied only to ensure the safety of citizens and the protection of the constitutional order of the Republic of Kazakhstan and represents a special legal regime of state bodies, organizations, allowing the establishment of specific restrictions on the rights and freedoms of citizens, foreigners and stateless persons, as well as the rights of legal entities and imposing additional responsibilities on them.’⁴⁸ Article 4 of the Law mentions epidemics as the possible basis for declaring a state of emergency while Article 16 authorizes the use of ‘quarantine, sanitary and anti-epidemic measures’ to handle the emergency. However, the term ‘quarantine’ is not defined in any legislation.

15.  Moreover, the Law on State of Emergency does not mention the authority of public health officers, which are called ‘chief state sanitary doctors’ in other regulatory acts. Articles 2 and 6 of the Law require the President, when declaring a state of emergency, to set its time-period and set up an interagency government commission responsible for dealing with the emergency. Importantly, Article 7 of the Law sets the 30-day limit for a nationwide state of emergency, which the President can extend repeatedly in one-month increments. Article 17 of the Law sets another limit: ‘[m]easures and restrictions applied in the state of emergency must not contradict the international treaties on human rights, ratified by the Republic of Kazakhstan.’⁴⁹ On 16 May 2020, Article 15 of the Law was amended to authorize the President to implement these measures and restrictions in a broad range of socioeconomic situations ‘for the sake of providing economic security during the state of emergency’. Article 21 of the Law was amended to allow the President to extend these measures and restrictions beyond the period of the state of emergency.⁵⁰

16.  The new Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan on public health and healthcare system of 7 July 2020, that went into effect on 19 July 2020, was hastily adopted in a clear response to the challenges and hardships brought by the Covid-19 pandemic to patients and doctors.⁵¹ Article 104 of the Code expanded the powers of chief state sanitary doctors and empowered them to introduce mandatory restrictions and quarantines.⁵² Under previously existing legislation, these public health officials lacked these powers, their orders were legal acts of one-time application, and most were unpublished. Article 7 of the Code vested the Ministry of Healthcare with the comprehensive competence to determine the procedure to organize the provision of medical care during a state of emergency under the Law on the State of Emergency described above.⁵³ This new competence codified the Ministry of Healthcare’s coordinating role in managing Kazakhstan’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, Article 10 of the 2016 Law on Legal Acts does not mention the place of the orders of the chief state sanitary doctors in the hierarchy of legal acts.⁵⁴ This omission complicated the enforcement of decisions of the key public health officials in the country.

17.  The Code also laid out the legislative framework for vaccination. Article 38 empowered the Chief State Sanitary Doctor to proclaim mandatory vaccination, while Article 13 charged provincial executive bodies (akimats) with organizing and carrying out preventive vaccinations for the population.⁵⁵ At the same time, Article 77 granted the right to Kazakhstani citizens to give informed consent or refuse treatment and other medical interventions, including preventive vaccinations. Article 85 of the Code defined the vaccination procedures for children in kindergartens. It disallowed children who had not received routine preventive vaccinations from being admitted to preschool institutions unless the threshold-level of herd immunity in the preschool institution had been achieved. The same Article of the Code divided the vaccination protocols into mandatory and voluntary. According to this Article, absent contraindications, ‘individuals permanently residing in the Republic of Kazakhstan are subject to mandatory prophylactic immunization against infectious and parasitic diseases.’⁵⁶ The Code also authorized the Government to approve the list of vaccines obligatory for Kazakhstan citizens living in the country.

18.  Finally, Articles 103–105 of the Code cover the sanitary protection of Kazakhstan’s territory and define the responsibilities of the Chief State Sanitary Doctor and mechanisms for monitoring the epidemiological situation in the country and imposing restrictions, including quarantine, to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.⁵⁷ Article 104 of the Code authorizes the creation of monitoring groups of officials in provincial executive bodies (akimats). These groups observe how individuals and legal entities comply with public order, anti-epidemic, sanitary, and preventive and restrictive measures, including quarantine, and send their observation reports with photo and video evidence to the state sanitary doctors. These groups are not allowed to interfere in the work or business activity of those whom they monitor and are not authorized to initiate an administrative offence case.

19.  Under the amendments to the Code of Administrative Offences made on 7 July 2020, the province-level sanitary doctors and their deputies were authorized to initiate the administrative offenses and to impose administrative liability for violations of anti-epidemic, sanitary, preventive, and restrictive measures, including quarantine (Article 701).⁵⁸ The same amendments were inserted in Article 80-1 ‘[h]indering the lawful activity of medical and pharmaceutical personnel’ which imposed various fines and/or administrative detention for up to 15 days for disrespectful behaviour in person or online towards medical and pharmaceutical employees.⁵⁹

20.  As should be clear by now, the Parliament remained active during the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to amending the existing statutes and adopting new ones, which were directly connected to the pandemic, the Parliament adopted the Law on the procedure for organizing and holding peaceful assemblies in the Republic of Kazakhstan of 25 May 2020,⁶⁰ the Administrative Procedure and Proceedings Code in June 2020,⁶¹ and the Environmental Code on 2 January 2021.⁶²

21.  According to Article 45 of the Constitution, the President, ‘on the basis of and for the exercise of the Constitution and the laws, shall issue decrees and resolutions which are binding on the entire territory of the country.⁶³ According to Article 69 of the Constitution, ‘[g]overnment decrees and orders of the Prime Minister must not contradict the Constitution, legislative acts, or decrees and orders of the President of the Republic.⁶⁴ In practice, the President and the Government enjoy broad rule-making powers while the President has the power to repeal the acts of the Government.

22.  According to Article 87 of the Constitution, governors (akims) of provinces and municipalities belong to the single system of the executive branch of state power.⁶⁵ Until June 2022, the decisions and orders of governors (akims) could be cancelled, respectively, by the President, Government or a higher governor (akim), as well as by the court decision (Article 88 of the Constitution). The June 2022 constitutional amendments relieved President from this responsibility.⁶⁶

23.  During the Covid-19 crisis, executive rule-making played a dominant role, albeit the Nazarbayev-Tokayev duopoly, the inter-agency rivalries, as well as the competition between the well-connected industry leaders, made playing this role extremely complicated. On 26 January 2020, President Tokayev, who is fluent in English, French, and Mandarin, tweeted that he had ordered the government to take ‘decisive organizational measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus from China in Kazakhstan.’⁶⁷ On 27 January 2020, Prime Minister Askar Mamin created an Interdepartmental Commission under the Kazakhstani government to prepare an Action Plan by 1 February 2020, and to coordinate activities to prevent Covid-19. He appointed Deputy Prime Minister Berdibek Saparbayev to chair the Commission, the Minister of Healthcare Yelzhan Birtanov to serve as the Vice-Chair of the Commission, and Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor Zhandarbek Bekshin to serve as the Commission’s Secretary. The latter two individuals were expected to do the bulk of the work of this Commission, which also included vice-ministers of all ministries and vice-governors of the provinces and cities of Astana (Nur-Sultan), Alma-Ata, and Shymkent.⁶⁸ This Commission banned direct flights from the People’s Republic of China on 4 February 2020 and ordered the evacuation of Kazakhstani citizens from there, set up sanitary checkpoints for arriving passengers at the international airports, allocated several hundred hospital beds for those arriving with Covid-19 symptoms, and arranged to send the mucus samples of those hospitalized to the only properly equipped laboratory—the central reference laboratory of the National Scientific Centre for Particularly Dangerous Infections in Almaty.⁶⁹

24.  On 12 March 2020, President Tokayev held a meeting with the Ministers during which the nation’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor introduced a much broader and more restrictive resolution. It required the following: secondary and higher education institutions to hold a two-week spring vacation and then switch to online learning, to the extent possible; banned, as of 13 March, mass (200 or more persons) events (festivals, concerts, cultural and sporting events, conferences/seminars, cinemas, children’s playgrounds at shopping and entertainment complexes, etc); as well as visits to facilities for particularly vulnerable persons (the elderly, persons with disabilities, etc), and ordered those facilities to have enhanced sanitation and disinfection measures.⁷⁰

25.  The following day, the President held a meeting of the Operational Response Team, which was attended by the Cabinet members and senior officials of his administration. He allocated $13.4 billion USD towards social assistance, healthcare, and employment through infrastructure maintenance projects,⁷¹ banned business trips abroad for civil servants, ordered medicines to be supplied to medical institutions and citizens, called for inventory checks of medical supplies in the country and for checkups of the preparedness of medical facilities for the influx of infected patients, asked provincial akims to control prices in their territories, required employers to provide pay for employed parents who have to stay with children during the extended vacation (see Part II.C above), and urged all government officials to persuade citizens that the state had sufficient reserves of medical supplies and consumer products.⁷²

26.  These measures did not prevent the arrival and spread of Covid-19 in Kazakhstan. Two days after the first two cases of Covid-19 had been confirmed in Almaty, on 15 March 2020, President Tokayev declared—for the first time in Kazakhstan’s history—a nationwide state of emergency from 16 March to 15 April 2020, and then extended it until 11 May 2020.⁷³ Tokayev’s initial state of emergency decree created a separate State Commission on the state of emergency, consisting of ministers and heads of his administration, and appointed Prime Minister Askar Mamin as its head.⁷⁴ Tokayev did not extend a state of emergency despite the spike in new Covid-19 cases. Yet on 18 June 2020, it was reported that another lockdown was to be reintroduced on 20 June 2020, following the spike in new Covid-19 cases. However, on 29 June 2020, President Tokayev admonished central and provincial government officials for taking uncoordinated measures against the spread of Covid-19 and ordered all decisions to be taken under the directives of the State Commission on the state of emergency.⁷⁵ The State Commission on the state of emergency reintroduced the lockdown on 5 July 2020, a day before Nazarbayev’s birthday, for two weeks and then extended it until 17 August.⁷⁶

27.  On 16 March 2020, President Tokayev issued a Decree on measures to ensure socio-economic stability, which authorized him to regulate the socio-economic sphere and required the rest of the central and local government units to issue regulations implementing his orders and directives. He ordered the state social insurance fund to pay 42,500 tenge ($100 USD) per month to some 4.5 million working citizens of Kazakhstan who had lost income during the state of emergency by being forced to leave their jobs without pay. A total of 476.3 billion tenge was spent for this purpose. Tokayev also ordered the Prime Minister—within one month—to draft legislation implementing the state of emergency decree.⁷⁷

28.  The state of emergency and the stringent lockdown measures included stay-at-home orders, a quarantine and large-scale sanitary and anti-epidemic measures, a ban on domestic and international travel by all modes of public transport with the roadblocks and checkpoints manned by police and the Ministry of Defence, a switch to online-only classes in schools and universities, closure of stores and shopping centres (except grocery stores and pharmacies), and ban on all public gatherings. This led to the cancellations of the popular national holidays of Nowruz in March 2020 and the military parade on Victory Day on 9 May 2020 and to the inability to celebrate the religious holidays Kurban Ait (or Eid al-Adha) and Easter with family and friends (see Part IV.A.3 on restrictions of religious activities). Tokayev’s state of emergency decree did not mention the consequences for not complying with these restrictions. However, it charged the Prosecutor General with ensuring the implementation of this decree in accordance with the legislation. Executive decrees are not subject to parliamentary scrutiny.

29.  On 19 March 2020, the State Commission on a state of emergency imposed lockdowns in the two largest cities, Almaty and Nur-Sultan. In the following weeks, governors (akims) of certain provinces and other cities imposed similar lockdowns, including banning public transportation and closing shops and public places. Most of the time, writing these province-level and city-level regulations involved a lot of copy-pasting instead of effectively reacting to the rapidly spreading coronavirus on the ground. Some provinces, where the official infection rate remained high, maintained strict lockdowns even after the nationwide lockdown had been lifted.

30.  Before the Covid-19 pandemic, imposing restrictions, including quarantine, was regulated by the 2015 Order of the Minister of National Economy, which contained a list of six infectious diseases, including cholera, yellow fever, and flu.⁷⁸ The Minister of Healthcare added the Covid-19 virus to this list on 6 May 2020.⁷⁹ This addition authorized chief state sanitary doctors to exercise broad powers. On 21 December 2020, the Minister of Healthcare repealed the 2015 Order and adopted rules for implementing restrictive measures, including quarantine, on the basis of the July 2020 Code on public health and healthcare system, mentioned in Part II.B above.⁸⁰ On 27 May 2021, the acting Minister of Healthcare adopted ‘[s]anitary and epidemiological requirements for the organization and conduct of sanitary-contra epidemic, sanitary-preventive measures for acute respiratory viral infections, flu and their complications (pneumonia), meningococcal infection, coronavirus infection COVID-19, wind smallpox and scarlet fever,’ which specified the algorithm for handling the infection, including quarantine.⁸¹

31.  Restrictive measures adopted by the central, provincial, and local government bodies are subject to judicial scrutiny as of July 2021. As mentioned in Part II.B above, the newly enacted Administrative Procedure and Proceedings Code that went into force on 1 July 2021 formalized the orders of the chief state sanitary doctors as legal acts and made it possible to contest them in the administrative courts. In summary, courts of various jurisdictions demonstrated a high degree of deference to the orders of central, provincial, and local authorities enacting public health and lockdown measures.

32.  The Kazakhstani Government established two Centres for Coordination and Centralization of the Media Work and for Covid-19 Monitoring and Accounting to coordinate and centralize the work of the media, maintain social stability, combat fake news and misinformation, and monitor and register Covid-19 patients. It also launched a website called ‘Coronavirus2020.kz’, where all official Covid19-related information and guidance was published until 11 October 2022.⁸² The website contained daily official statistical updates, recommendations to the patients and volunteers, news from the World Health Organization, Q&As, and fact-checking reports of various myths about the pandemic. The Operational Response Team of the State Commission on the State of Emergency initially published the daily report on the current state of affairs regarding the epidemiological situation in Kazakhstan as a whole and in the provinces and Nur-Sultan, Almaty, and Shymkent cities based on the data provided by operational headquarters. Once the state of emergency was lifted in August 2020, the Interdepartmental Commission under the Kazakhstani government published these reports.

33.  Similarly to his counterpart in Russia, President Tokayev became very concerned about maintaining effective coordination among the central, provincial, and local executive authorities and other involved agencies as well as about the growing risk of embezzlement of additional funds allocated for combatting the pandemic. On 8 July 2020, Tokayev admonished unknown persons for engaging in ‘political games’ instead of combatting the Covid-19 and blamed the former Healthcare Minister for ‘systemic errors’ and provincial governors (akims) for ‘sluggishness’ in mitigating the harm from the pandemic.⁸³ On 10 July 2020, he scolded the Cabinet for ‘gross mistakes’ and fired the heads of the mandatory medical insurance fund and the state-owned pharmaceutical distribution company.⁸⁴ On 1 April 2021, President Tokayev threatened to fire the Cabinet for the slow rate of vaccination and blamed the interagency monitoring groups in localities for haphazard monitoring of businesses with regard to their compliance with the Covid-19-related restrictions.⁸⁵

34.  Until the start of the second lockdown in July 2020, it was not clear what authority—State Commission on the State of Emergency under President Tokayev, the Operational Response Team, the Interdepartmental Commission under Prime Minister Mamin, or Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor—had the power to adopt binding orders or mere recommendations. Similar problems arose in provinces, where residents and businesses were confused over newly imposed (often unpublished) restrictions.⁸⁶ The Healthcare Ministry and its provincial offices extensively used soft law to regulate official responses to the pandemic. For example, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor adopted and revised several times recommendations on vaccination against Covid-19, and, in April 2023, eventually renamed them to ‘algorithms’ in order to get rid of their recommendatory notion.⁸⁷ While the public health officials scrambled to use soft law, other government officials, businesspersons, and ordinary people could not distinguish between binding orders and recommendations on Covid-19-related matters. While the public health officials translated the WHO guidelines into Kazakh and Russian to compile and publicize the WHO recommendations about anti-viral hygiene, coronavirus symptoms, contact tracing, and PCR testing, many ordinary citizens could not follow these recommendations because they faced an acute shortage of hospital beds, PCR tests, medicines, and masks.

35.  As mentioned in Part I above, the national Parliament lacks meaningful mechanisms to supervise the regulatory activity of the President and the Government. The existing mechanisms include the power of the Parliament to discuss and approve the report of the Government about the execution of the annual budget, with the failure to approve it resulting in a vote of non-confidence in the Government,⁸⁸ the right of each Chamber of the Parliament to hear the reports of the Minister on their performance and to send a binding request to the President to remove from office the Minister who failed to comply with the legislation of the Republic,⁸⁹ the right of individual Member of Parliament to address their questions to the Government, individual ministers and other officials,⁹⁰ and the right of the Mazhilis to put the non-confidence motion in the Government to a vote.⁹¹ In practice, like in Russia, these mechanisms do not make the executive accountable to the legislature. Except for the Nazarbayev-Tokayev duopoly in 2019–2021, the President holds the real powers of control and supervision of the executive branch through the ability to remove the Government and its members from office and to repeal the Government’s regulations.⁹²

36.  Provincial and local assemblies (maslikhats) also lack effective mechanisms to supervise the regulatory activity of governors (akims). Similar to the national level, local assemblies (maslikhats) have the right to discuss and approve the reports of governors (akims) and to express no confidence in the governors and raise the issue of a governor’s dismissal from the position, respectively, before the President of the Republic in relation to governors of provinces, cities of Astana, Almaty, and Shymkent, or by a province-level governors in relation to local governors.⁹³ Individual members of assemblies (maslikhats) have the right to address their questions to governors and other government officials.⁹⁴

37.  During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Parliament did not gain any special powers to scrutinize or confirm the executive acts addressing the pandemic, and the legislature deferred to the executive instead of supervising it. As in Russia, the members of Parliament discussed the executive response to the pandemic during the ‘Government Hour in the Mazhilis’, at the parliamentary committee meetings and the plenary lawmaking sessions on the Covid-19-related bills introduced by the Government, and during the declaration of agreement with the nomination of the Healthcare Minister on 25 June 2020,⁹⁵ and on 11 January 2022.

38.  Provincial and local assemblies neither reviewed nor questioned the decisions of governors (akims) regarding the Covid-19 restrictions. On the contrary, they were expected to explain the necessity and lawfulness of the state of emergency, quarantine, lockdown, vaccination, and other measures to their constituents.

39.  The Covid-19 pandemic has changed but has not interrupted the activity of national legislature and provincial and local assemblies (maslikhats). Even during the state of emergency, the Parliament continued to adopt laws and its committees conducted their activities, while assemblies carried out theirs. On 18 March 2020, three days after President Tokayev’s imposition of a state of emergency, Mazhilis held its plenary meeting in person with its participants not wearing masks and not maintaining social distancing. At the end of that meeting, the Chairman of Mazhilis announced that the Chamber will be working online and using videoconferencing software like Skype except in the plenary meetings until the end of the state of emergency.⁹⁶ On 26 March 2020, Mazhilis members, except those aged 65 and older, attended the plenary session. Most of them wore masks and sat at least one metre away from one another.⁹⁷ Mazhilis held 30 more sessions in 2020, 40 sessions in 2021, and 39 sessions in 2022, all streamed live on its official YouTube channel. However, the bylaws of the Mazhilis have not been changed to allow remote or online meetings.⁹⁸

40.  The Senate, whose chairwoman was Nazarbayev’s oldest daughter, Dariga, held a regular session on 19 March 2020, four days after the imposition of a state of emergency. At that session, she announced that the Senate would switch to the online and videoconferencing working mode except in the plenary meetings until the end of the state of emergency.⁹⁹ She was perceived as having presidential ambitions, emerged as a vocal critic of the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic at the Senate sessions, and even requested the Constitutional Council to expand the prerogatives of the legislature at the expense of the executive branch through the clarification of Article 61 of the Constitution. Meanwhile, President Tokayev quietly removed her from her Senate seat on 4 May 2020, and had her request from the Constitutional Council withdrawn, thus, weakening the duopoly in his favour.¹⁰⁰ Following her removal, the Senate held seven sessions in the rest of 2020, 24 sessions in 2021, and 37 sessions in 2022, all streamed live on its official YouTube channel.¹⁰¹

41.  As was mentioned in Part II.B above, during the state of emergency, the Parliament adopted the Administrative Procedure and Proceedings Code, the Code on the public health and the healthcare system, the Law on the procedure for organizing and holding peaceful assemblies, and amended the laws on state of emergency, martial law, veterans, elections, on issues of parliamentary opposition, regulation of digital technologies, and improving the business climate. Members of parliament postponed many roundtables and meetings of working groups and other events with outside experts until they could be conducted online. Following the January 2021 parliamentary elections, the newly elected Mazhilis worked on 264 legislative bills until its pre-term dissolution on 19 January 2023. President Tokayev signed 190 legislative bills into laws during this period.¹⁰²

42.  While the members of Parliament from semi-opposition parties voted for the Covid-19-related bills, some used the parliamentary debates and the ‘Government Hour’ in the parliament to publicly criticize various ministers for botched responses to the pandemic. For example, in June 2020, one MP from the Aq Zhol political party used the plenary session of Mazhilis to scold the Healthcare Minister that the official statistics about the preparedness of the healthcare facilities, availability of hospital beds, and availability of PCR tests (especially in rural areas), and provoked criticism among ordinary citizens. She demanded the introduction of a nationwide lockdown.¹⁰³ In September 2020, several MPs from the People’s Party of Kazakhstan criticized the Education Ministry for delaying the return to in-person classes in secondary schools, which both hampered the quality of education and denied schoolchildren from poor families the right to education.¹⁰⁴ In November 2020, MPs from the Aq Zhol political party criticized the work of the monitoring groups responsible for checking the compliance of individuals and organizations with anti-epidemic, restrictive, and quarantine measures in localities because of arbitrariness and corruption risks in the work of these groups (see Part IV.B.1 below, on the work of these groups).¹⁰⁵ In May 2021, one month after President Tokayev’s threat to sack the Cabinet for the vaccination delay,¹⁰⁶ the MP from the ruling Nur Otan party admonished the Healthcare Minister at the Mazhilis plenary session for manipulating statistics about the number of vaccinated persons in Kazakhstan.¹⁰⁷

43.  According to Article 75 of the Constitution, ‘judicial power is exercised through civil, criminal and other forms of legal proceedings established by law’ by ‘the Supreme Court of the Republic and local and other courts of the Republic established by law.’¹⁰⁸ Article 3 of the Constitutional Law on Judicial System and Status of Judges in the Republic of Kazakhstan allows the creation of ‘specialized courts (military, commercial, administrative, juvenile, and others).’¹⁰⁹ Before the Covid-19 pandemic, 390 civil, criminal, commercial, juvenile courts, and courts on administrative offenses functioned in Kazakhstan. Moreover, the 2020 World Bank Doing Business index ranked Kazakhstan’s ‘quality of judicial processes’ as the first in the world.¹¹⁰ As mentioned in Part II.B above, the adoption of the Administrative Procedure and Proceedings Code in June 2020 resulted in the activation of administrative courts on 1 July 2021. Courts of all jurisdictions continued to operate during the pandemic even though the initial stages of the Covid-19 pandemic caused temporary disruptions and required a prompt switch to online proceedings. The pre-existing procedural codes and the Supreme Court online platform allowed the filing of electronic applications and, under certain circumstances, using audio-video conferencing technology during oral court hearings.

44.  On 16 March 2020, a day after the declaration of a state of emergency, the Supreme Court ordered courts to stop accepting new lawsuits, suspend consideration of all court cases, ban the physical presence of court users in court buildings, and recommended holding all oral hearings via videoconference, including the TRUECONF application or via any other application or gadget.¹¹¹ The Supreme Court had to act quickly as it dealt with the public outrage over the news that the first coronavirus cases were brought to Kazakhstan on 13 March 2020, by the chairperson of the capital city court and his family, who had been infected in Germany and returned to Kazakhstan on a private business jet that formally belonged to a local multimillionaire.¹¹² Following the imposition of the quarantine in Kazakhstan’s major cities, the Supreme Court recommended keeping the minimum required number of court staff in order: (1) to consider cases on the violation of the emergency regime, and (2) to handle urgent cases regarding national security.¹¹³

45.  Four days after President had lifted a state of emergency, on 15 May 2020, the Supreme Court sent a letter to every court allowing court proceedings to restart and urging strict compliance with the Decree of Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor No. 36.¹¹⁴ It maintained the online working mode of court trials even in those places where the quarantine had not been imposed. It allowed criminal court hearings with the parties’ physical presence in the courthouse only in exceptional cases. It asked judges to prioritize the following four categories of cases: (1) those involving the interests of an indefinite circle of persons, as well as socially protected categories of citizens and labour collectives; (2) those related to the violations of Covid-19-related restrictive measures (quarantine); (3) those with summary proceedings and uncontested court orders; and (4) employment-related cases, alimony cases, and cases related to healthcare workers.¹¹⁵ This Supreme Court letter did not specify when courthouses would reopen for the public, leaving this decision to the chairpersons of specific courts, who would have to abide by the decrees of the state sanitary doctors. However, these decrees did not mention courthouses, allowing courts to conduct online trials as late January 2022.¹¹⁶ Human rights activists publicly complained to President Tokayev on 2 November 2021 that holding criminal trials online seriously harmed the rights of criminal defendants and their counsel.¹¹⁷ The Supreme Court officials rebutted that it was up to the parties to request the in-person court hearing and that the presiding judge had the final say on whether to hold the trial online or in person.¹¹⁸

46.  In practice, Kazakhstani courts actively embraced video conferencing to simplify their work and limit the risk of contamination. By the end of summer 2020, the Supreme Court more than doubled the number of mobile video conferencing servers (from 67 to 152) and expanded data storage capacity and the bandwidth of communication channels. At that time, it reported that 75% of three million communications were sent to courts electronically, that 92.5% of court proceedings were recorded on video, and that the average daily number of online court proceedings had skyrocketed from 150 before the pandemic to 4,500—a 30-fold increase.¹¹⁹ Judges and court personnel quickly discovered that the TrueConf videoconferencing software was less reliable than expected for holding trials and had to replace it with Skype, a free version of Zoom, FaceTime, and WhatsApp, using the smartphones of court clerks. While the judge and the court clerk had to be present inside the courtroom during the trial, other participants of the court hearing could join it from any location, including a pretrial detention facility, depending on their access to reliable high-speed internet. Those without such access could not, in effect, access the courts.

47.  A group of citizens sued the Minister of Healthcare for imposing public health restrictions in the fall of 2020. They alleged that mandatory mask-wearing (see Part IV.A.6 below) and the ban on those aged over 65 being outdoors (see Part IV.A.1 below) violated constitutional rights. However, on 3 November 2020, the Esil District court in Astana nixed their lawsuit on the grounds that these rights could be limited to protect public health and that the Minister of Healthcare acted within his competence.¹²⁰ The appellate court affirmed this judgment on 25 December 2020.¹²¹

48.  Kazakhstanis gained an effective court remedy only on 1 July 2021, when the aforementioned Code of Administrative Procedure and Proceedings entered into legal force. Before that, those complaining against the illegality of decisions of government officials had a 15% chance of winning their cases. For example, in April 2021, in Karaganda city, one person and four small business owners unsuccessfully sued the province Chief State Sanitary Doctor for violating constitutional freedom of movement and discrimination: imposing restrictions on some forms of employment but not others, and on some businesses but not others.¹²² The Code of Administrative Procedure and Proceedings allowed citizens and businesses to contest the decrees of the state sanitary doctors or other government officials while placing the burden of proof on these state officials. For example, in September 2021, three persons in Aqtobe city and 35 persons in the capital city unsuccessfully sued the country’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor for allowing employers to bar unvaccinated employees from the workplace.¹²³ Courts upheld the legality of the decree of the country’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor by arguing that the unvaccinated employees could work online at the employer’s discretion, and therefore, their labour rights were not violated.¹²⁴ By early November 2021, the number of plaintiffs in this category of lawsuits against mandatory vaccination surpassed 100, while judges routinely upheld its legality using a superficial argument that vaccination was not, in fact, mandatory since employers could allow unvaccinated employees to work online.¹²⁵ In response to this growing number of lawsuits, judges in the capital city administrative court formally admonished the Healthcare Minister for ‘weak explanatory work on measures to prevent coronavirus infection among the population’ at least twice, on 5 November 2021 and 2 December 2021.¹²⁶ President Tokayev removed the Healthcare Minister from his post on 20 December 2021.

49.  In short, physical access to courthouses has been severely restricted during the pandemic. Courts played a largely superficial role in checking the legality of central and local government decisions imposing Covid-19-related restrictions. Judges upheld these restrictions wholesale and deferred to the executive authorities, even when the legal basis for these restrictions did not exist.

50.  During the Covid-19 pandemic, Kazakhstan held three nationwide elections and a constitutional referendum, and all of them related to the transition of actual power from Nazarbayev to President Tokayev. None have been declared free and fair by the election observation missions of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.¹²⁷ The parliamentary elections with in-person voting were held, as planned, after the expiration of the five-year term of the Mazhilis on 10 January 2021.¹²⁸ Throughout the two-month-long election campaign, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor recommended that the Central Election Commission ensure everyone at the campaign meetings and polling stations ‘wears masks and gloves, uses hand sanitizers, keeps a distance of not less than 1.5 meters, and uses personal pens. The elections commission members, proxies, and observers in red and yellow zone regions will have to test for COVID-19 no earlier than five days before the elections.’¹²⁹ In Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, the election officials did not recognize the PCR-test results of independent election observers as valid and, as a result, did not allow the observers to be present at the polling stations. Moreover, the social distancing requirement meant fewer observers would be present at the polling stations.¹³⁰ The ruling Nur Otan party won these elections, in which the officially recorded turnout stood at 63%, with 71% of the vote.

51.  President Tokayev’s quelling of the January 2022 unrest led to the gradual removal of Nazarbayev’s circle from power. Following the 77% approval of the hastily arranged constitutional referendum of 5 June 2022, Kazakhstani citizens—the official turnout figure was 69%—re-elected President Tokayev on 20 November 2022, with 81.3% of the vote. He then dissolved Mazhilis, which had many Nazarbayev loyalists, and new parliamentary elections were held on 19 March 2023.¹³¹ These elections, in which the officially recorded turnout stood at 53%, resulted in an unsurprising victory for the ruling party, which was renamed Amanat: 53% of the party-list vote and 79% of the single-mandate districts.¹³² Campaigning and voting procedures during these elections and referendum were not affected by Covid-19-related restrictions.

52.  In addition, on 25 July 2021, Kazakhstan held elections of rural governors (akims) for the first time as a part of Tokayev’s democratization agenda. In provinces with high Covid-19 contagion rates, election officials, journalists, and election observers had to have a recent valid negative PCR test or a vaccination record to be allowed at the polling stations. All participants in the electoral process would be provided with personal protective equipment and required to maintain social distancing. A special isolation room would be in place if a person reported feeling symptoms of Covid-19.¹³³ The officially recorded turnout varied from province to province, and it stood at 79% for the whole country, with the ruling Nur Otan party gaining 86% of the vote.¹³⁴

53.  Overall, the Covid-19-related restrictions hindered independent observation of elections and raised the potential for electoral manipulation by the authorities.

54.  While the Kazakhstani authorities did not create a special expert commission or set up a transparent expert review of proposed anti-pandemic measures, President Tokayev officially praised Kazakhstani scientists for combatting Covid-19. On 25 March 2020, he visited the Astana-based National Centre for Biotechnology to learn about the PCR testing system developed in the Centre. He said the ‘virus itself and its spread have shown that the state should pay more attention to the activities of biological laboratories and medical and sanitary services.’¹³⁵ On 28 October 2020, he met with the Director of the Kazakhstan Research Institute for Biological Safety Problems and discussed the progress on developing five platforms for a Covid-19 candidate vaccine.¹³⁶ This Institute produced the first batch of 50,000 doses of one of these vaccines, called QazVac, in April 2021 and distributed among the healthcare departments nationwide.¹³⁷ Throughout 2021, President Tokayev insisted that Kazakhstan was among the few countries that could make and produce its own QazVac vaccine against Covid-19 thanks to its scientific capacity and that Kazakhstan was ‘willing to rev up its vaccine production against COVID-19 and export it abroad’ after WHO approval.¹³⁸ The WHO registration of this vaccine is yet to happen.

55.  Kazakhstan does not require governmental bodies to base their regulations on scientific advice. However, scientists translated the WHO guidelines into Kazakh and Russian to compile and publicize the WHO recommendations about anti-viral hygiene, coronavirus symptoms, contact tracing and PCR testing, and vaccination. These recommendations and the informal advice from the United States’, Russia’s, and China’s epidemiologists formed the government-sanctioned protocols for combating the pandemic.

56.  The declaration of a nationwide state of emergency on 15 March 2020 severely restricted the already meagre ability of the mass media to deliver accurate news. According to several experts, ‘the boundaries of the information vacuum began to expand from the first days of the pandemic. Media organizations had to make many efforts to provide important information to different segments of society as members of the public felt completely at a loss about the scope of the situation and what to do about it. This was a period of information starvation as government officials intentionally refused to fully disclose what they knew about the virus and about how the government, medical professionals, and the pharmaceutical industry could respond.’¹³⁹

57.  At the same time, on 23 March 2020, President Tokayev called on the intelligence services, the public prosecutor’s office, and the information ministry to ‘pay close attention to the dissemination of rumours and provocative reports’ to ‘identify and punish’ those responsible. Under Article 274-2 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan, dissemination of knowingly false information through the media and information and communication networks is punishable by a fine of up to $24,000 USD, or corrective labour in the same amount, or community service for up to 800 hours, or restraint of liberty for a term up to three years, or imprisonment for the same term.¹⁴⁰ On 3 April 2020, the Minister of Information and Public Development announced that police investigated 41 criminal cases of such rumours and promised that all of those who were guilty would be punished.¹⁴¹ According to human rights activists, the authorities exploited the state of emergency to crack down on any dissent online or on the streets. As one judge in Almaty told one blogger, whom she had punished by three years of restriction of freedom, speech, and political activity for criticizing the ruling party’s response to Covid-19 on Facebook: ‘[c]onsidering the situation with coronavirus at a time when people were literally panicking, your posts, of course, had a negative effect. Therefore, we concluded that you are guilty.’¹⁴²

58.  At the same time, the authorities handled the activities of numerous anti-vaxxers more leniently. Only one of them was jailed for 10 days for the administrative offence of petty hooliganism at the end of October 2021 for live-streaming her own storming of a school building, in which she had alleged schoolchildren had been vaccinated without parental consent.¹⁴³

59.  By the end of April 2020, several journalists made it public that they had been officially warned for violating the quarantine while reporting from the dire conditions in hospitals, while others had faced threats of criminal prosecution for spreading rumours about the pandemic.¹⁴⁴ One chief editor ridiculed the government’s inability to combat rumours promptly and complained that according to the law, ‘you need to apply with an official letter to find out whether the information disseminated is correct or not. First, the request goes to the office, then to the minister. A response will be received in at least three days. This is determined by law—the answer is provided within three to seven days.’¹⁴⁵ By the summer of 2020, the press reported cases of persecution and prosecution of activists, citizens, bloggers, medical workers, and journalists who had exercised their right to expression, including short-term administrative arrests of journalists who had covered the government-introduced quarantine measures. In June 2020 alone, the Adil Soz, the International Foundation for Protection of Freedom of Speech (a Kazakhstani media watchdog), recorded ‘seven criminal charges and nine civil claims filed concerning exercising the right to freedom of expression. In most of these cases, journalists and bloggers were accused of violating the honour, dignity, and business reputation of others.’¹⁴⁶ According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the authorities also used Covid-19related restrictions to harass at least seven journalists who wanted to enter the polling stations during January 2021 legislative elections.¹⁴⁷

60.  At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Kazakhstan had the High Commissioner for Human Rights (Ombudsman) and the High Commissioner for Children’s Rights (Children Ombudsman). At that time, both were activated and staffed by presidential decrees, even though the Children Ombudsman was created by the 2016 Law on introducing amendments and additions to some legislative acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan on the protection of the rights of the child.¹⁴⁸ On 29 December 2021, President Tokayev signed the Law on the Human Rights Commissioner in the Republic of Kazakhstan as a part of his democratization agenda.¹⁴⁹ Following the June 2022 constitutional referendum, President Tokayev repealed this law and signed the new Law on the Human Rights Ombudsman in the Republic of Kazakhstan of 5 November 2022.¹⁵⁰ These laws expanded the powers of the Ombudsman, including the power to appoint its province-level representatives, some of whom began working at the end of October 2022. Both Ombudsmen are to ensure that the State and local authorities observe, respect, and protect the fundamental rights of the citizens and children. In practice, as the Ombudsman complained in its annual 2020 report, it has powers to send requests to and negotiate on the phone with government agencies. As a result, ‘in most cases, based on the results of the review, the Ombudsman's office receives formal responses from state bodies with a recommendation to go to court.’¹⁵¹

61.  Unlike in Russia, the Kazakhstani Ombudsman did not publish a separate report on the Covid-19 pandemic. Instead, this Ombudsman produced annual reports about its activities and spoke to the media several times about Covid-19-related restrictions. Throughout the pandemic, the Ombudsman warned the government about violating the digital rights of persons with disabilities. Officially, there are about 700,000 persons with disabilities in the country. In 2020, the Ombudsman complained about the lack of access to the internet and telecommunications inside housing units for people with disabilities and about the lack of interface on the governmental and banking websites and apps for the visually impaired.¹⁵² In 2021, the Ombudsman complained about these barriers again.¹⁵³ In 2022, the Ombudsman complained that the government websites and apps did not support the text-to-speech conversion of Kazakh language, thus denying access of Kazakh-speaking visually impaired persons to government services online.¹⁵⁴

62.  In 2020, the Ombudsman received two complaints about these restrictions and religious freedoms (see Part IV.A.3 below). Having contacted the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the country, the Ombudsman reported that this official did not ban collective religious rituals and was considering whether to allow participants in religious services not to wear protective gloves during these services (see Part IV.A.3 below, on restrictions of religious activities).¹⁵⁵ The Ombudsman also received 27 complaints about the right to health protection in the same year. Only a few of them dealt with the new rules about mandatory vaccination and the powers of the chief state sanitary doctors granted by the June 2020 Healthcare Code. The Ombudsman supported both of these rules. Eight complaints came from prisoners who had been denied medical treatment in non-prison hospitals or medicines due to Covid19-related restrictions.¹⁵⁶ When the Ombudsman asked the Healthcare Ministry not to require mandatory mask wearing for persons with disabilities, persons with contraindications, and minors with health problems, the official representative of the Ministry of Healthcare replied that wearing masks for these categories was not mandatory. Yet the Ministry did not change this requirement while the Ombudsman insisted on changing it.¹⁵⁷ The Ombudsman also received 22 complaints about the denial of social assistance benefits, which President Tokayev had ordered to be paid to the poor and unemployed during the state of emergency. The Ombudsman also received several complaints from medical personnel who had not been paid additional amounts for working with the Covid-19 patients.¹⁵⁸

63.  In 2021, the Ombudsman received 69 complaints about the right to health protection, including a few complaints about the denial of or delay in providing medical service under the pretext of overloaded healthcare facilities. Ten complaints were about mandatory vaccination and PCR testing. Most of the latter complaints concerned the high cost of the weekly mandatory PCR testing for unvaccinated employees (see Part IV.A.8 below), as per two decrees of Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor of 1 July 2021,¹⁵⁹ and 2 September 2021,¹⁶⁰ respectively. At the end of 2021, the price for a single PCR test was about $17 USD, while the median monthly salary at that time was about $383 USD. Meanwhile, employers faced a minimum fine of $800 USD for allowing unvaccinated and untested employees to perform in-person work. The Ombudsman reported that this PCR-testing requirement caused outrage among owners of small and medium-sized businesses and citizens whose income did not allow them to allocate funds for a PCR test weekly.¹⁶¹ Citing the examples from different countries, the Ombudsman requested the Ministry of Healthcare to administer PCR tests to more categories of persons free of charge, but the Ministry of Healthcare refused to do so because the current regulations were clear, and no funds were available to expand eligibility for free PCR tests.

64.  The Ombudsman also oversaw the National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) and regularly received complaints from inmates in jails and prisons.¹⁶² In 2020, the Ombudsman visited penitentiaries in Almaty City and three provinces, while the NPM groups made 516 visits to check prison conditions and medical treatment of inmates.¹⁶³ In 2021, the Ombudsman inspected one women’s prison in Almaty province, while the NPM groups made 116 visits to jails and prisons.¹⁶⁴ In 2022, the NPM groups made 277 visits to jails and prisons, including those with detainees from the January 2022 unrest.¹⁶⁵

65.  Throughout the pandemic, the Children Ombudsman exposed numerous cases of corruption and cruel treatment of children in orphanages, which became closed to outside observers due to Covid-19related restrictions, worked to overcome domestic and international travel restrictions for doctors and underage patients, and collected donations for buying medicines.¹⁶⁶

66.  No special oversight bodies—for example, a special reviewer of legislation—were created to monitor the public response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

67.  The official response of Kazakhstan to the Covid-19 pandemic, which officially ‘arrived’ in the country on 13 March 2020 when the first two patients were diagnosed with Covid-19, may be divided into five stages. First, a nationwide state of emergency (closure of venues, restrictions on free movement, remote schooling and work, etc) was imposed by President Tokayev from 16 March to 15 April 2020 and then extended until 11 May 2020.¹⁶⁷ Even though he ended the state of emergency, the government kept quarantine restrictions in Astana and Almaty cities and in the oil-producing provinces of Mangystau and Atyrau in the west of the country because the number of infected persons steadily grew and surpassed 5,000 on 10 May. During that period, the Ministry of Healthcare included both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases in the total count but excluded pneumonia cases. On 2 June, the Ministry announced that they would exclude asymptomatic cases from the daily count, but the number of reported cases still grew at an average of 2.5% a day.¹⁶⁸

68.  Second, following a spike in new Covid-19 cases, the Government introduced a lighter nationwide lockdown on 20 June 2020, that lasted until 17 August 2020. To justify this lockdown, President Tokayev blamed citizens for mass non-compliance with Covid-19-related restrictions yet assured them that the authorities controlled the situation with the virus.¹⁶⁹ The Ministry of Healthcare re-added asymptomatic cases to the total count of Covid-19 infections on 1 July 2020, doubling the number of cases. The Ministry also started reporting all pneumonia cases on 1 August. In July 2020, excess mortality peaked in the country: it more than doubled compared to July 2019 and reached about 16,000 cases.¹⁷⁰ By the end of this stage, the total number of cases surpassed 120,000, while the daily rate of Covid-19 infections dropped from 4% to 0.5%.

69.  Third, in early October 2020, several provinces reintroduced the lockdown due to the growing number of Covid-19 cases. According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre, the total count of these cases reached 150,000 on 1 November.¹⁷¹ The government announced a nationwide lockdown between 25 December 2020 and 5 January 2021, to prevent contagion during mass celebrations of the popular New Year holiday. This lockdown, in effect, was softened on 1 March 2021.¹⁷² By that date, Kazakhstan had a total of 263,000 Covid-19 cases.

70.  Fourth, following the detection of the Delta variant of Covid-19 in Astana at the end of June 2021, the chief state sanitary doctors reintroduced restrictions in nine provinces and Almaty and Astana cities.¹⁷³ In addition to previous quarantine restrictions, the Interdepartmental Commission imposed a new nationwide requirement of partially compulsory vaccination for retail sector employees and firms with more than 20 employees.¹⁷⁴ On 7 July 2021, a total count of 502,000 Covid-19 cases was reported. On 25 August 2021, when the total count of these cases reached 830,000, the Government announced that Covid-19 measures would be eased nationwide starting on 28 August while the city of Almaty would relax them a week after that. The Healthcare Ministry reported that the number of Covid-19related deaths (4,401) peaked in July 2021, while their total official count by the end of 2021 was 15,081.¹⁷⁵

71.  Fifth, following the detection of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 in Almaty and Astana cities in early January 2022, the Chief State Sanitary Doctors in both cities brought back restrictions on 12 January, such as online-only schooling until 31 January, remote work, a ban on mass gatherings, and closure of venues.¹⁷⁶ Both officials blamed the public for non-compliance with the Covid-19 restrictions even though the Ministry of Education officially criticized the return to online-only schooling, a measure that had previously worsened the quality of education.¹⁷⁷ These measures overlapped with the state of emergency introduced by President Tokayev on 5 January 2022 and lifted on 19 January, to quell the major unrest in the country. On 19 January 2022, the daily number of infections peaked at 15,996.¹⁷⁸ The Interdepartmental Commission lifted these restrictions and international travel restrictions on 17 February 2022.¹⁷⁹ By that time, 1,384,317 Covid-19 cases had been reported in the country.¹⁸⁰

72.  The first social group affected by the individual mobility restrictions comprised persons with suspected Covid-19-like symptoms and their neighbours in Almaty city. On 20 March 2020, several residential complexes and high-rise buildings were isolated in Almaty after detection of the virus in residents. Territories of houses were cordoned off, a checkpoint was installed around the perimeter, and no residents could leave the residential complex or receive guests.¹⁸¹ Many executive bodies (akimats) across the country followed this practice, and some even physically locked the residential buildings from the outside, causing outrage among the residents and belated criticism from the Human Rights Ombudsman.

73.  Next, senior residents (65 years old and older) and people with chronic diseases were ordered to stay home. Kazakhstan’s chief state sanitary doctor ordered city executive bodies (akimats) of Almaty and Astana to isolate these people at home and provide them with food and medicines as of 22 March 2020.¹⁸² These executive bodies had no actual capacity to do so.

74.  On 24 March 2020, the Ministry of Healthcare recommended that Almaty residents limit their movement around the city and stay home during quarantine. On 28 March 2020, the State Commission for the state of emergency ordered residents of Astana and Almaty to stay home except to purchase food and medicine in the nearby stores and pharmacies—without specifying the ‘nearby distance’—and go to work—only if they were given a special pass.¹⁸³ While banning personal and public transportation, the government did not announce a curfew in both cities. On 13 April 2020, the official representative of the Ministry of Healthcare explained that no more than two adults were allowed to accompany one child on the street under the condition that both adults and the child wore gloves and masks, but the Vice-governor (akim) of the North Kazakhstan province explained that walking with children outside was not allowed.¹⁸⁴

75.  The East Kazakhstan province imposed the strictest individual mobility restrictions. As of 6 April 2020, residents of Semey and Ust-Kamenogorsk cities (each with about 300,000 residents) were allowed to be outside only three days a week, only if they had special passes, and only in the nearby zone. Semey was divided into 202 zones, while Ust-Kamenogorsk in 200 zones.¹⁸⁵ Provincial authorities created two types of passes. The first, a red-coloured pass, was for employees of organizations and services that ensured the vital functions of cities. A second type of pass was issued for each family and provided the right to visit only nearby grocery stores, pharmacies, banks, and medical facilities three times a week: a green-coloured pass allowed such visits on even days of the month, and a white-coloured pass allowed such visits on odd days of the month. The provincial authorities gave residents five days to obtain these passes, a short period that led to massive crowds around and inside housing offices.¹⁸⁶ On 18 April 2020, the governor (akim) of the province announced that there were 11,000 fake passes in circulation and expanded the list of enterprises that had to switch to online work yet keep paying salaries to their employees.¹⁸⁷ These restrictions were lifted with the cancellation of the state of emergency on 11 May but were re-imposed on 27 June 2020, until 11 July, and included the ban on using personal transport between 22:00 and 05:00 on workdays and 24 hours on the weekends.¹⁸⁸

76.  On 27 April 2020, the authorities in Astana and Almaty allowed adults—in groups of no more than three persons—to walk outside while maintaining a distance of at least two metres. In Astana, people were allowed to enjoy the outdoors between 6:00 and 20:00, while in Almaty they were allowed the same between 5:00 and 21:00.¹⁸⁹ On 4 May 2020, individual physical training outdoors was allowed.

77.  In the wake of the climbing rate of Covid-19 infections, Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor introduced the nationwide stay-at-home order and ban on public transportation on 3 July 2020.¹⁹⁰ The Interdepartmental Commission under the Prime Minister extended this restriction until 2 August 2020.¹⁹¹ After that date, senior residents (65 years old and older) and people with chronic diseases had to stay home during weekends while all others could be outside while maintaining social distance. These mobility restrictions were gradually lifted throughout September 2020.

78.  Several provinces’ chief state sanitary doctors introduced curfews as a part of the anti-pandemic response. On 6 April 2020, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor in the oil-rich Atyrau province banned the movement of persons in Atyrau city between 21:00 and 6:00 without calling this ban a curfew and specifying the duration of the ban.¹⁹² On 25 May 2020, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor in Western Kazakhstan province, where the giant oil field Karachaganak is located, ordered an effective 19:00—7:00 curfew at camps where Karachaganak workers resided after a confirmed Covid-19 case there.¹⁹³ On 27 June the same official imposed a province-wide 23:00 to 6:00 curfew that lasted 48 hours. On 24 June 2020, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the Akmola province, which surrounds the capital city, imposed a 22:00 to 6:00 curfew in the towns of Kokshetau and Stepnogorsk.¹⁹⁴ On 26 June 2020, the Baikonur city administration announced a 21:00 to 6:00 curfew until 5 July 2020.¹⁹⁵ Following the spike in Covid-19 cases in November 2020, on 28 November 2020, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the Akmola province imposed a province-wide 23:00 to 6:00 curfew and a 21:00 to 6:00 curfew in the towns of Kokshetau and Stepnogorsk.¹⁹⁶ On 4 December 2020, a province-wide curfew was expanded to 21:00 until 6:00.¹⁹⁷ On 15 January 2021, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the Atyrau province introduced a curfew for all shift camps at the Tengiz Chevroil oil field from 22:00 to 5:00.¹⁹⁸

79.  In short, different chief state sanitary doctors used different curfew durations. As a rule, the decrees of chief state sanitary doctors did not specify the end date of the curfew, albeit they contained a vague statement about ‘improving the sanitary-epidemiological situation’ as a condition for lifting the curfew. This vagueness allowed the authorities to follow the Ministry of Healthcare’s orders and impose tighter restrictions when they saw fit.

80.  Kazakhstan’s first Covid-19-related international travel restrictions concerned travel to and from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). On 26 January 2020, President Tokayev ordered the implementation of decisive organizational measures to prevent Covid-19 transmission from China into Kazakhstan. On the same day, Prime Minister Mamin ordered a temporary—until 15 February 2020—closure of the international centre for cross-border Kazakhstan-China cooperation, known as ‘Khorgos’, along with all checkpoints along the state border with China.¹⁹⁹ The Interdepartmental Commission also suspended passenger travel to and from China by bus from 29 January 2020, by train from 1 February 2020, and by air from 3 February 2020. It also suspended the 72-hour visa-free transit for PRC citizens and the issuance of visas to them.²⁰⁰

81.  On 12 March 2020, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs suspended issuing visas to and banned the entry of citizens from high-risk countries (the PRC, South Korea, Iran, Italy, France, Germany, and Spain) and foreigners who had visited these countries in the previous 30 days.²⁰¹

82.  On 26 March 2020, the State Commission on the state of emergency closed the international airport of Shymkent city.²⁰² On 1 April 2020, the airports of Astana and Almaty were closed for flights to and from abroad, with the airport in Karaganda closed the following day. Soon thereafter, only flights returning Kazakhstani citizens from abroad and transporting foreign citizens out of the country and humanitarian aid were allowed to operate in Kazakhstan.

83.  After a state of emergency ended, on 11 May 2020, the National Security Committee announced on its official Facebook page that (1) foreigners would be allowed to enter the country only if they had special governmental permission, or Kazakhstani citizens as close relatives, or scheduled medical treatment, or study in Kazakhstan; and (2) Kazakhstani citizens would not be allowed to leave the country unless they had a confirmation from a foreign educational institution, a special pass, or permanent resident status in another country—with the limit of leaving Kazakhstan no more than once a month.²⁰³

84.  At the same time, the Kazakhstani Civil Aviation Committee followed the decisions of the Interdepartmental Commission under the Prime Minister, recommendations of the Ministry of Healthcare Ministry, and the level of the epidemiological threat according to the World Health Organization map to decide whether to resume international flights. On 20 June 2020, flights to China, Georgia, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and Turkey were resumed. Passengers arriving from Turkey had no restrictions upon the negative PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test result taken no fewer than five days before they entered Kazakhstan.²⁰⁴ The Committee allowed resuming international flights to the United Arab Emirates, Belarus, Germany, the Netherlands, Egypt, Ukraine, and Russia from 17 August.²⁰⁵

85.  On 24 June 2020, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the country announced a new classification of countries. As a result, it divided countries into three groups. The first group included low-risk countries: China, South Korea, Japan, Georgia, Thailand, Hungary, India, Germany, Czech Republic, and Malaysia. The second group included medium-risk countries: Turkey, Egypt, Ukraine, Poland, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan—their citizens had to present a negative PCR test result taken not more than five days prior to arrival. In case they did not have a PCR test certificate, they were required to undergo PCR testing at the place of stay (for foreigners) within 48 hours from the date of arrival, at the place of residence (for citizens of Kazakhstan), or remain quarantined at home for 14 days. The remaining world countries were included in the third group of high-risk countries, with which regular flights were prohibited.²⁰⁶

86.  On 15 August 2020, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the country added Belarus, Egypt, the Netherlands, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates, to the list of the first group countries—all of them previously had direct flights with Kazakhstan. It kept Poland, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in the second group.²⁰⁷ A month later, on 16 September, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the country added Azerbaijan, Hong Kong, Mongolia, and Singapore to the first group but moved the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates to the second group. It added Armenia, Austria, Greece, India, Italy, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom to the second group.²⁰⁸

87.  On 6 October 2020, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the country ordered all foreigners arriving in Kazakhstan by any transportation to have a negative PCR test taken not earlier than 72 hours before the flight. Kazakhstani citizens were also required to provide a negative Covid-19 test result that was taken within 72 hours prior to their arrival. Failure to do so would result in a mandatory two-day quarantine until a Covid-19 test was passed. If the test result was positive, the individual would be sent to an infectious diseases hospital. Transit passengers who did not have a Covid-19 test result would also be placed in a two-day quarantine. Any passenger with a high temperature would be isolated in an infectious disease hospital, regardless of their test result.²⁰⁹

88.  Kazakhstan’s first Covid-19-related internal travel restrictions were an essential part of the state of emergency imposed by President Toqyaev’s decree on 15 March 2020. On 19 March 2020, the cities of Almaty and Astana were closed to non-residents and divided into sectors that residents would not be allowed to leave. On 28 March, the third largest city in the country, Shymkent, and the city of Aqtau on the Caspian Sea shore, were closed to non-residents. On 30 March, the oil-producing Atyrau, centrally-located Karaganda, and its suburbs were also locked down. Meanwhile, public long-distance travel by bus, rail, and air was suspended, while the entrances to towns and cities were equipped with multiple roadblocks and sanitary checkpoints.

89.  By early May 2020, Kazakhstan’s government began lifting these restrictions. Flights between Almaty and Astana were allowed to resume on 1 May for passengers with a negative PCR-test result. This PCR-testing requirement was abolished on 11 May. On 1 June, more domestic passenger flights and trains were resumed while the roadblocks and checkpoints at the city boundaries had been removed.

90.  Facing the skyrocketing number of Covid-19 infections, on 2 July 2020, the Interdepartmental Commission under Prime Minister announced a lockdown from 5 July, a substitute for the existing quarantine. This lockdown included suspending interprovincial bus transportation but did not bring back the roadblocks and checkpoints. On 16 July, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of Almaty City banned public transportation and visits to the mountainous suburbs on the weekends. His decree allowed visiting mountainous suburbs only on foot, by bicycle, and on weekdays but did not restrict visiting food establishments within the city limits. Authorities in other cities imposed similar domestic travel restrictions on the weekends to reduce the risk of overcrowded buses and trains.

91.  In September 2020, the Ministry of Healthcare informally started to divide large cities and provinces into three kinds of zones: red, yellow, and green, using the following two indicators: (1) basic reproduction or transmission number of infection from a sick person to a contact person; and (2) the Covid-19 incidence rate per 100,000 people over the past seven days. Red zones were areas in which the first indicator was greater than one and which had an incidence rate of more than 50 per 100,000 inhabitants. Yellow zones were areas in which either the first indicator was below one and the incidence rate was fewer than 50 per 100,000 people or the first indicator was greater than one and the incidence rate was between 20–50 per 100,000 people. Green zones were areas in which the first indicator was below one and the incidence rate was fewer than 20 per 100,000 people.²¹⁰ At the end of October 2020, the Ministry explained this methodology to the public while the authorities imposed the harshest restrictions in red zones, including internal travel restrictions. By early December 2020, the central government came up with a list of types of businesses that could operate in certain types of zones, with interprovincial buses and suburban trains banned in red zones.²¹¹

92.  For example, the transportation Chief State Sanitary Doctor declared that as of 2 November 2020, passengers aged five years and older traveling from the East Kazakhstan province to other parts of Kazakhstan by air or rail would need to show a negative PCR test result taken not more than three days before departure.²¹² This restriction lasted until 6 January 2021. The same official announced the same restriction for passengers traveling from the North Kazakhstan province from 9 November 2020.²¹³ He cancelled this restriction on 14 December 2020. On 1 November 2020, the governor (akim) of the Karaganda province announced that as of 4 November, three checkpoints would be installed at the provincial boundaries, and drivers would have to obtain passes to cross them by registering at a special website and waiting for the pass for about three days, albeit without the need to show a negative PCR test result.²¹⁴ The Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the province removed this restriction on 18 December 2020.

93.  Throughout 2021 and 2022, the authorities reimposed internal travel restrictions in red zones.²¹⁵

94.  Kazakhstani authorities began restricting public gatherings due to Covid-19 shortly before declaring a state of emergency. On 2 March 2020, President Tokayev announced via Twitter that he had cancelled the public celebration of the 8 March International Women’s Day ‘due to the spread of the coronavirus around the world.’²¹⁶ On 12 March 2020, he instructed the Government to temporarily ban all public events, including concerts, sports tournaments, conferences, fairs, and exhibitions.²¹⁷ On 15 March 2020, President Tokayev decreed a state of emergency that banned all public gatherings and events, including peaceful protests, and family and commemorative gatherings.²¹⁸

95.  On 28 March 2020, the authorities prohibited holding religious services in religious buildings. Soon thereafter, the two largest religious authorities—the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Kazakhstan (SAMK/DUMK), and the Metropolitan Area of the Russian Orthodox Church in Kazakhstan—made statements supporting the Covid-19-related restrictions and stressed the necessity to undertake preventive measures, to follow sanitary requirements, and to maintain social distancing during collective prayers and to perform collective rituals online.²¹⁹ To Muslims, these restrictions pertained to the observance of the holy month of Ramadan (23 April 2020–23 May 2020), during which gatherings for iftar––the nightly meal served to break the fast––as well as collective celebration of Eid al-Adha at the end of Ramadan were banned.²²⁰ To Christians, these restrictions involved cancelling the week-long Easter celebrations (19–25 April) inside churches.²²¹

96.  In the wake of the lifted state of emergency on 11 May 2020, places of religious worship resumed service in compliance with sanitary standards (masks, social distancing, and individual prayers) using no more than 30% of capacity as of 18 May 2020, as per the decree of Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor. However, following an outbreak of Covid-19 infections, the Interdepartmental Commission suspended the operation of places of religious worship on 5 July 2020.²²² This suspension lasted until 31 August 2020, when individual prayers were allowed to resume. On 2 November the Interdepartmental Commission permitted a collective prayer in mosques with the exception of the Friday prayer for no more than 100 people inside with a two-metre social distance, masking regime, thermometry, and disinfection mode.²²³ Throughout 2020 and 2021, depending on the spread of the virus and related restrictions, Friday prayers were either totally banned or allowed in mosques’ courtyards subject to 50% capacity and for not more than 60 minutes or subject to 25% capacity but not more than 150 people in rural areas only.²²⁴

97.  On 25 May 2020, President Tokayev signed the Law on the procedure for organizing and holding peaceful assemblies in the Republic of Kazakhstan.²²⁵ Domestic and international human rights experts criticized it for non-compliance with international human rights standards and the quick adoption during a state of emergency.²²⁶ Two unregistered groups held public protests against this law and against Covid-19-related restrictions on 6 June 2020, when this law entered into force. The Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that 53 people were detained for participating in an unauthorized protest throughout the country on that day. Eight of them were fined or officially warned, while two faced criminal liability for ‘insulting and using violence against a representative of the authorities.’²²⁷

98.  Overall, the number of civic protests has rapidly grown in Kazakhstan: from 254 in 2020, to 548 in the first half of 2021.²²⁸ Observers noted that the authorities manipulated Covid-19-related restrictions to stifle protest activity.²²⁹ For example, on 28 February 2021, just hours before anti-government rallies were due to take place in the country’s capital, the city authorities announced that the epidemiological situation had worsened and designated the city as a red zone (see Part IV.A.2 above). This meant a ban on outdoor public gatherings. Within a day, the city authority reverted to the yellow zone designation.²³⁰ On that day, roughly 50 protesters calling for the release of political prisoners in line with a resolution passed by the European Parliament were detained in the largest city Almaty before they could gather near a city park. The European Parliament’s non-binding 11 February 2021 resolution said ‘systemic shortcomings in relation to respect for freedom of association, assembly and expression’ persisted in Kazakhstan.²³¹

99.  Since June 2020, police had been using a three to ten-hour ‘kettling’ technique—surrounding a protest group to confine it to limited space without charging it with a crime or misdemeanour—to disperse anti-regime public rallies instead of the usual detention in the police precincts. Police officials considered it more humane than violent dispersal, albeit they could not cite legislation that justified kettling or explain how it complied with the ban against outdoor gatherings of more than three persons.²³² At the same time, observers noted that police did not disperse unauthorized public protests related to labour disputes, social benefit claims, or imported car registration fees.²³³

100.  Peaceful protests over the rising fuel costs in early January 2022 triggered a violent government response, another state of emergency, and the arrival of troops from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, whom Tokayev invited to thwart the coup against him and to restore law and order in the country. On 4 January, Tokayev declared a two-week state of emergency in Mangystau province, where these peaceful protests began, and in Almaty city.²³⁴ On 5 January, Tokayev announced that he had taken over the chairmanship of the Security Council, thus removing his predecessor Nazarbayev from this key post, and extended a two-week state of emergency to the rest of the country by issuing specific decrees for each province and cities of Astana and Shymkent.²³⁵ A state of emergency included a curfew from 23:00 to 07:00, temporary restrictions on movement, and a ban against all public gatherings and events, including peaceful protests. On 7 January, Tokayev announced a shoot-to-kill order to quell the unrest. Between 12–19 January, he gradually, province by province, lifted a state of emergency in the country. The authorities reported that 238 persons—demonstrators, rioters, police, and passers-by—died and 4,353 were wounded due to these clashes and that the law enforcement agencies registered 6966 administrative offenses and 494 criminal cases,²³⁶ and detained over 9,900 persons in connection with the protests.²³⁷ Human rights activists documented how Kazakhstan’s law enforcement authorities used torture and ill-treatment against civilians and failed to conduct impartial and effective investigations of the allegations of torture and ill-treatment by officials.²³⁸

101.  Throughout the five waves of responses to Covid-19 mentioned in Part IV above, the authorities imposed bans and restrictions on private gatherings through a state of emergency and then through various lockdown regimes followed by restrictions in the ‘red’ zones described above (see Part IV.A.2 above). The chief state sanitary doctors repeatedly banned holding ‘family rituals associated with birth, marriage, and death’ to combat the pandemic. For example, on 1 March 2021, Astana’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor banned holding and participating in family gatherings and commemorative events, including at home (banquets, weddings, anniversaries, and commemorations).²³⁹

102.  On 13 April 2021, after several unsuccessful attempts at utilizing contract-tracing apps, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor authorized the nationwide launching of a privately-developed smartphone application, ‘Openness’ (Ashyq) in Almaty, Karaganda, and Astana, to ensure that businesses, including cafes, restaurants, and banquet halls (for up to 50 customers), continued their operations during the lockdown period, minimized the spread of Covid-19, and reduced the number of contacts leading to transmission.²⁴⁰ Using a QR code and integration with the general database of the Ministry of Healthcare, Openness could determine the current viral status of an individual based on the four colour risk ratings from the government data before being allowed to enter public settings. The red code indicated a confirmed case with a positive PCR test result. The yellow code meant a contact with confirmed Covid-19 cases. The blue code was for individuals who had not had contact with confirmed cases but had not completed a PCR test. The green code was for persons with a recent negative PCR test result or a full two-dose vaccination—they were allowed to be physically present in private gatherings in food establishments. On 3 June 2021, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the country allowed private gatherings of individuals with green-coloured status in Openness in these establishments, except for self-service canteens.²⁴¹ On 29 July 2021, the official representative of the Ministry of Healthcare announced that people vaccinated with one component of the Covid-19 vaccine would be assigned a green status in Openness in order to incentivize people to get the vaccine and to reduce the number of persons with blue status.²⁴²

103.  Article 104 of the Health Care Code, adopted in May 2020, authorized the creation of monitoring groups of officials in provincial executive bodies (akimats) (see Part II.B above) in charge of monitoring compliance with these restrictions. These groups observed how individuals and legal entities comply with public order, anti-epidemic, sanitary, and preventive and restrictive measures, including quarantine, and sent their observation reports with photo and video evidence to the state sanitary doctors. These groups were not allowed to interfere in the work or business activity of those they monitored and were not authorized to initiate administrative offense cases.²⁴³ These monitoring groups conducted checks of food establishments, which were allowed to host private gatherings, and participants of those gatherings with the Openness app.

104.  As mentioned in Part II.C above, the nationwide state of emergency that President Tokayev imposed from 16 March to 15 April 2020, and then extended until 11 May 2020, involved the closure of schools, businesses, airports, train stations, and parks.²⁴⁴ On 16 March 2020, all schoolchildren and college students in the country were sent on pre-term spring break and continued remote schooling thereafter. This led to the complete closure of schools for ten weeks until the summer break (1 June–31 August 2020). On 14 July 2020, the Minister of Healthcare proposed the continuation of remote schooling throughout the first two months (September–October) of the 2021–2022 academic year. But on 4 August 2020, the Cabinet of Ministers decided that only 157,000 out of 3.3 million schoolchildren would start the academic year in person and only in small-sized classes (up to 15 pupils) in elementary and rural schools which did not have internet connectivity.²⁴⁵ On 26 October, the Interdepartmental Commission announced that small urban and rural schools (up to 300 students) would reopen in November, and that, at the request of parents, students in grades one to five (and up to grade seven in international schools) could attend certain classes in person. This meant that schools were partially closed for eight months and three weeks in the 2021–2022 academic year.²⁴⁶ On 25 August 2021, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the country allowed the 2021–2022 academic year to begin in person in schools, colleges, and universities with the required 100% vaccination rate of personnel, use of the Openness app, and wearing masks.²⁴⁷

105.  Under a state of emergency, shopping malls, retail businesses, cinemas, and theatres were closed except for grocery stores and pharmacies. However, the Ministry of Trade and the Ministry of Healthcare issued a joint order on 22 March 2020, in which shopping malls were allowed to be reopened between 10:00 and 18:00.²⁴⁸ However, the activities of all enterprises and organizations, with the exception of central, provincial, and local government agencies, law enforcement agencies, healthcare organizations, the mass media, grocery stores, pharmacies, and life support organizations, were suspended first in Almaty on 26 March 2020, and then in Astana on 1 April 2020.²⁴⁹ On 15 April 2020, the main city hospital of Almaty was shut down in which 546 personnel and 16 patients tested positive for Covid-19.²⁵⁰

106.  The chief state sanitary doctors began allowing the gradual reopening of retail businesses at the end of April 2020. On 27 April, 2020, car mechanic shops and carwashes in provinces with a low rate of Covid-19 infections were allowed to resume their operations. From 4 May, individual sports and training outdoors and in the parks was allowed; non-food stores with an area of up to 500m², photo salons, flower kiosks, hairdressing centres, medical centres, dental clinics, real estate companies, advertising agencies, lawyers, notaries, microfinance organizations, insurance companies, pawnshops, currency exchange offices, and information and communication technology companies were reopened. On 11 May, non-food stores with an area of up to 2000m2, beauty salons, and children’s centres were also allowed to resume their functioning. On 18 May, the activities of outdoor cafes with a capacity of up to 30 seats were allowed to resume, but with no more than three people at the same table (excluding families) and with at least a two-metre distance between the tables. Retail businesses in Almaty were allowed to reopen on 25 May 2020.²⁵¹

107.  Relaxation of these restrictions facilitated the spread of Covid-19 in the country. On 18 June 2020, the Interdepartmental Commission under Prime Minister decided that the following businesses would be closed on the upcoming weekend (20–21 June): shopping and entertainment centres, trading houses, chain stores, indoor food and non-food markets, bazaars, parks, squares, embankments, beaches, water parks, tourist areas, and fitness centres in the cities of Nur-Sultan, Almaty, Karaganda, Shymkent, Pavlodar, and Ekibastuz; and parks, squares, embankments, and water parks in settlements of over 50,000.²⁵²

108.  On 2 July 2020, facing a growth of Covid-19 cases, the Interdepartmental Commission under Prime Minister announced that, starting on 5 July 2020, all businesses had to close their doors to customers for two weeks, however this suspension was lifted only at the end of August 2020. First, as of 5 August 2020, the Interdepartmental Commission decided to allow the functioning of the following businesses on weekends: beauty salons, fitness centres, spas, saunas, pools, national parks, and religious sites for individual visits.²⁵³ But on the same day, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor suspended their operation on the weekends while authorizing the reopening of schools with a contingent of 5–180 people, with the number of children in classes permitted up to 15 people.²⁵⁴ On 16 September, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of Kazakhstan permitted the activities of retail branches of banks, open-air cinemas, theatres, and food establishments with a capacity of up to 50 seats and a mandatory masking regime.²⁵⁵ Then, the Interdepartmental Commission gradually relaxed Covid-19-related restrictions in provinces with green zone status permitting shopping centres and indoor markets to resume functioning on Saturdays until 17:00 starting on 24 October 2020, and cinemas at 30% capacity starting on 26 October.²⁵⁶ This Commission announced on 17 November that, starting on 21 November, businesses which did not have direct contact with customers, such as takeaway food establishments, car washes and mechanics, tailors, dry cleaners, laundries, and facilities for the repair of household appliances, shoes, phones, computers, watches, would be reopened.²⁵⁷ By the end of December 2020, about 13,000 businesses were prohibited from operating due to Covid-19-related restrictions.²⁵⁸

109.  Starting from October 2020, following the division of the country into green, yellow, and red zones, chief state sanitary doctors in provinces and large cities with green status permitted the functioning of other types of businesses and suspended their functioning in the provinces and cities with red status. Businesses routinely complained about their unexpected closures and the lack of information about which types of businesses could reopen in yellow and green zones. For example, on 28 January 2021, after it became known that Almaty city had entered the red zone for Covid-19, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the city decreed that, as of 1 February, theatres and cinemas would not be permitted to open, shopping malls would be open only on weekdays until 20:00, restaurants in malls would only operate with delivery services, while standalone restaurants were allowed to work on the weekends, but only until 20:00. However, two days later, on 30 January, the city suddenly returned to the yellow zone. And a day later, on Sunday 31 January, the city returned to the green zone—until the new decree entered into force.²⁵⁹ The Chief State Sanitary Doctor of Almaty promptly repealed his decree by issuing another decree on 1 February, which permitted shopping malls to operate between 10:00 and 23:00 from Monday to Saturday. On Sunday, shops, except grocery stores and pharmacies, would be closed. Saunas, spa centres, and pools could also stay open from 6:00 to 21:00 from Monday to Saturday. Other stores, business centres, photo salons, fitness centres, gyms, and many other businesses were allowed to function.²⁶⁰

110.  The physical distancing requirement in Kazakhstan was named ‘social distancing’, as mentioned in the 2015 Order of the Minister of National Economy as a part of anti-pandemic measures (see Part II.C above).²⁶¹ However, the length of this social distance was not specified. Following President Tokayev’s introduction of a state of emergency, on 16 March 2020, the Minister of Trade announced that all retail businesses in the country must not allow queuing, and if a queue occurred, they had to ensure at least a one-metre distance between persons in the queue. The Minister did not distinguish between indoor and outdoor shopping queues or explain how sales managers had to enforce this requirement yet prevent shoppers from jumping queues.²⁶² On 29 March 2020, the Ministry of Healthcare released a TikTok video clip that indicated a mandatory two-metre distance between individuals indoors.²⁶³

111.  Various government agencies required public authorities, organizations, and businesses to create the conditions for citizens to fulfil this social distancing requirement (special access to premises, barriers, markings, etc). However, government agencies defined the length of social distance differently. On 27 March 2020, the Operational Headquarters of Almaty City mandated a two-metre distance between persons indoors and outdoors, no more than one person per 20 square metres indoors, no more than two persons simultaneously entering grocery stores and/or pharmacies, and not more than five persons queuing indoors and outdoors.²⁶⁴ Most provincial chief state sanitary doctors copied this requirement, but on 22 May 2020, the Baikonur city decreed a 1.5 metre social distance indoors and outdoors.²⁶⁵ Further, on 1 June 2020, Astana’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor ordered a 1.5 metre social distance in indoor tourist facilities and a two-metre social distance between persons in outdoor markets, those walking outdoors, and visiting swimming pools. It also ordered cinemas and theatres to have an empty seat between spectators for social distancing.²⁶⁶ This was despite the one-metre social distance requirement for indoors imposed by the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the country on 22 May 2020.²⁶⁷ The length was eventually defined as ‘the distance between people at a distance of 1.5 meters, ensuring a reduction in the risk of infection’, in the order of the Minister of Healthcare adopted on 27 May 2021.²⁶⁸

112.  On 11 March 2022, the Interdepartmental Commission under Prime Minister abolished the social distancing requirement in provinces and cities with green and yellow status.²⁶⁹ On 14 March 2022, Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor abolished the social distancing requirement indoors in educational organizations in ‘yellow’ and ‘green’ zones.²⁷⁰

113.  Like the physical distancing requirement, the legal regulation for covering the face and using personal protective equipment (PPE) confused many in Kazakhstan, albeit this confusion was worsened due to the initial shortage of protective masks. Following President Tokayev’s introduction of a state of emergency, on 16 March 2020, the Minister of Trade announced that all retail businesses had to install sanitizers with a multifunctional antiseptic substance with prolonged antimicrobial effect for hand treatment or provide disposable gloves for their employees. Also, the large indoor retail shopping facilities had to require customers to wear face coverings and provide them with face coverings free of charge if they did not have them.²⁷¹ A day later, when the large shopping centres were ordered to suspend their operation, the Ministry of Trade and the Ministry of Healthcare adopted joint recommendations for all retail stores to require customers to wear face coverings and provide them with face coverings free of charge if they did not have them.²⁷²

114.  However, due to the initial massive shortage of masks in the country, many people, including medical personnel, did not have the ability to wear them. On 27 April 2020, the Chairman of the Committee for Quality Control and Safety of Goods and Services of the Ministry of Healthcare announced that it was obligatory for all persons to wear masks indoors and in transportation and recommended to anyone, regardless of their age, to wear masks outdoors.²⁷³ On 11 May 2020, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of Almaty made wearing masks mandatory indoors, on public transportation, and in the country house land plots.²⁷⁴

115.  On 26 June 2020, Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor made wearing masks mandatory: (1) indoors; (2) outdoors, with the exception of children under five years of age and persons engaged in individual or group (no more than five persons per group) sports activities: (3) for healthy individuals assisting a person suspected of being infected by Covid-19; and (4) for persons who have symptoms of disease similar to Covid-19 infection (fever, coughing, and sneezing).²⁷⁵ On 27 July 2020, Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor ordered mandatory mask-wearing for anyone, regardless of age, indoors and outdoors in the country.²⁷⁶ Both orders mentioned the binding nature of this requirement, a violation of which would incur administrative liability.

116.  However, on the same day, the official representative of the Ministry of Justice told journalists that if a group of two to three persons was found outdoors without wearing protective masks, then such actions would not constitute a violation of the requirements of sanitary rules and lead to no administrative liability.²⁷⁷

117.  On 30 July 2020, the Minister of Healthcare told journalists that wearing masks was required for anyone, regardless of age or sports activity, indoors and outdoors. However, the following day he issued an order that exempted children under the age of five from the mask-wearing requirement and exempted persons engaged in outdoor individual or group (no more than five persons per group) sports activities from the same requirement.²⁷⁸

118.  The Interdepartmental Commission under Prime Minister abolished the outdoor mask-wearing requirement in the country on 11 March 2022,²⁷⁹ and the indoor mask-wearing requirement in the country, except in healthcare facilities, on 24 March 2022.²⁸⁰

119.  Facing the growing number of Covid-19 infections, on 1 July 2022, Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor announced on TV that the authorities would bring back mandatory mask-wearing in the whole country on 5 July regardless of whether the locality was in the red, yellow, or green zone. However, on 5 July 2022, the official representative of the Ministry of Healthcare told journalists that mask-wearing would be recommended, not required.²⁸¹

120.  Even before the Covid-19 pandemic had officially reached Kazakhstan, the authorities took measures to isolate infected individuals and those suspected of infection in order to to slow down the spread of the new virus. On 2 February 2020, 83 Kazakhstani citizens were evacuated from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the Covid-19 pandemic began, and placed in quarantine for 14 days in a specially designated building at the multidisciplinary hospital located seven kilometres from Astana.

121.  On 20 February 2020, the Ministry of Healthcare divided all countries into three groups, depending on the number and rate of Covid-19 infections, and unilaterally updated the list of countries in each group. On 1 March 2020, public health monitors checked all persons arriving from abroad for Covid-19 symptoms. Persons arriving from Group 1a countries (high-risk countries including the PRC, South Korea, Iran, and Italy) began to be quarantined in special medical facilities for 14 days, and then they were under medical supervision for another ten days. Persons arriving from Group 1b countries (high-risk countries including France, Germany, and Spain) were placed in home quarantine for 14 days and could be sent to a special facility by the monitoring doctor. Persons who arrived from Group 2 countries (medium-risk countries including Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) were placed under medical supervision at home for 14 days, followed by a ten-day monitoring via doctor’s telephone calls. Persons who arrived from Group 3 countries (low-risk countries) were under remote telephone-based medical supervision for 24 days.²⁸² On 12 March 2020, the Ministry of Healthcare announced that persons arriving from the UK, the Netherlands, and Switzerland were subject to medical supervision at their place of residence (stay) by 14-day monitoring via doctor’s over the phone.²⁸³

122.  Shortly after the first officially recorded Covid-19 cases in Kazakhstan in mid-March 2020, the authorities realized that they could not keep all persons arriving from abroad in stationary quarantine because of the shortage of beds in medical facilities. On 26 March 2020, the Ministry of the Industry and Infrastructural Development announced that long-haul truck drivers from high-risk countries were exempted from the mandatory quarantine in special medical facilities at the state border and had to be quarantined at home or place of their final destination in Kazakhstan.²⁸⁴ On 1 April 2020, Kazakhstan’s chief state sanitary doctor ordered mandatory isolation for two days for those arriving from other countries to conduct testing for Covid-19, followed by home quarantine for 12 days if the PCR test results were negative.

123.  Right before the end of a state of emergency, on 10 May 2022, Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor decreed a rule for isolation of those with a risk of Covid-19 infection due to close contact or potential contact with an infected person. Close contacts were those who: (1) lived with an infected person in the same dwelling; (2) had direct unprotected contact with an infected person (handshaking, coughing, etc); (3) were in the same room with an infected person for 15 minutes or more; (4) worked as medical personnel servicing infected persons or working with biological samples; and (5) sat two seats away from an infected person on board a plane, bus, or train or were members of the crew that served the plane. Such contacts include those in contact with the infected person 14 days before the person showed any Covid-19 symptoms. Close contacts were subject to the mandatory rules of isolation of infected persons, except for a case where a close contact had a positive test result but did not have clear symptoms—in such cases, the close contact could isolate at home rather than being hospitalized.²⁸⁵

124.  Potential contacts were those who: (1) arrived from a country with registered Covid-19 cases; (2) were on the same plane, bus, or train with an infected person but were not close contacts; and (3) had any contact, other than close contact, with an infected person. Any potential contact with a positive PCR test result needed to be hospitalized. Meanwhile, potential contacts with a negative PCR test result did not have to be isolated. Instead, they had to sign a statement about the obligation to report Covid-19 symptoms and acknowledgment of the penalties for violating home quarantine, and leave it with an authorized person.²⁸⁶

125.  On 22 May 2020, Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor ordered isolation of all persons arriving from abroad in a stationary quarantine for PCR testing for up to two days, as well as persons arriving from Eurasian Economic Union countries and the Republic of Uzbekistan via railway transport and road crossings. Persons with a negative PCR test result had to be isolated at home for 12 days after the test result. On 24 June 2020, the same official ordered persons with an elevated body temperature to be isolated in a provisional hospital for up to two days for Covid-19 PCR testing, and persons with positive PCR test results were to be transferred to an infectious disease hospital.

126.  On 27 October 2020, Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor ordered citizens and permanent residents of Kazakhstan who had arrived from abroad without a negative result of a PCR test to be quarantined in hospitals for seven days while waiting for a PCR test result.²⁸⁷ On 25 December 2020, Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor ordered citizens and permanent residents of Kazakhstan who had arrived from abroad without a negative result of a PCR test taken 72 hours before arrival to be quarantined in hospitals. Meanwhile, persons with an elevated body temperature arriving from abroad were to be hospitalized for Covid-19 PCR testing.

127.  On 13 January 2022, Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor cancelled the mandatory seven-day self-isolation for persons who arrived in Kazakhstan or those who had visited the following countries in the previous 14 days: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Egypt, the UK, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands.²⁸⁸

128.  Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Kazakhstan had only one properly equipped laboratory—the central reference laboratory of the National Scientific Centre for Particularly Dangerous Infections in Almaty—to conduct PCR testing. By 30 April 2020, laboratories in nine out of 14 provincial centres—part of the influenza surveillance program—conducted PCR tests while the central reference laboratory conducted confirmatory tests. By that date, Kazakhstan had conducted about 250,000 tests free of charge for persons who: (1) had come from abroad; (2) were ill and had those who had been in contact with them; (3) continued to work during quarantine (doctors, military, communal services, trade, and etc); and (4) were held in nursing homes.²⁸⁹

129.  On 22 May 2020, Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor defined two types of tests for the Covid-19 virus—PCR tests and Covid-19 rapid IgG/IgM class antibodies tests²⁹⁰—and required PCR tests for the following three categories of persons: ²⁹¹

1. 1.  Based on epidemiological indications:

   • •  Persons hospitalized in a Covid-19 inpatient care facility;

   • •  Patients with ARVI (acute respiratory viral infection) and pneumonia;

   • •  Persons with close contacts with Covid-19-infected persons, up to 14 days (with home quarantine) from when the contact was established and after quarantine is completed;

   • •  Persons from among potential contacts with an infected person at establishment of the fact of contact;

   • •  Medical personnel with respiratory symptoms;

   • •  Covid-19 patients on outpatient treatment and under medical supervision of primary healthcare provider according to clinical protocol.

2. 2.  For preventive purposes:

   • •  Citizens entering Kazakhstan through the State Border Crossing Points at road and railroad crossings from the Eurasian Economic Union member states and Uzbekistan;

   • •  Persons arriving from abroad by air and placed in a quarantine facility;

   • •  Medical workers with increased risk of Covid-19 infection (working in infectious disease hospitals, pulmonary clinics (departments), inpatient isolators (for asymptomatic), quarantine facilities (for healthy), reception rooms of hospitals, filters of outpatient polyclinic organizations, ambulance crews, laboratory specialists performing PCR diagnostics, employees of sanitary and epidemiological service) once a month;

   • •  Social workers of primary healthcare institutions who serve their wards at home once;

   • •  Staff of medical and social institutions who provide services at home to wards;

   • •  Military conscripts.

3. 3.  For epidemiological surveillance purposes:

   • •  Patients in planned hospitalization;

   • •  Patients in emergency hospitalization;

   • •  Pregnant women and newborns in accordance with clinical protocol;

   • •  Patients undergoing haemodialysis;

   • •  Persons entering penal institutions (persons under investigation, accused, or convicted);

   • •  Persons newly admitted to medical and social institutions, once upon registration;

   • •  For epidemiological reasons in accordance with the decision of the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the respective territory.²⁹²

130.  The slow turnaround, quality, and cost of the PCR tests quickly became a concern for the authorities, medical personnel, and citizens, as the government used positive PCR test results to determine the nature, scope, and duration of Covid-19-related restrictions. On 29 June 2020, President Tokayev reported that, on average, 28,000 Covid-19 tests per day were conducted in the country, thus ranking Kazakhstan as fourth in the world for the number of tests per 100,000 population. Yet, due to the poor quality of testing, the detection rate for one case was almost eight times lower than in the United States, four-and-a-half times lower than in Italy and Russia, and three times lower than in Canada, according to him. He told the government officials that citizens ‘rightly’ complained about huge queues near PCR-testing laboratories and non-compliance with sanitary standards in them and ordered them to increase the number and capacity of PCR laboratories and the speed of medical supplies for them.²⁹³

131.  Another abrupt change in the Ministry of Healthcare concerned the official recording of Covid19 infections. In June 2020, following Russia’s example, it started recording asymptomatic infections separately from the official number of coronavirus cases. The Ministry claimed this was justified because symptomatic patients posed a greater epidemiological danger to others and required clinical observation. But on 1 July 2020, the Ministry of Healthcare updated daily Covid-19 statistics without dividing the cases into symptomatic and asymptomatic, boosting the official number of cases.²⁹⁴

132.  On 7 October 2020, President Tokayev scolded the government for the declining daily number of PCR tests—18,000 tests on average—and ordered the Prime Minister to lower the price of PCR tests, which ranged between 10,000 and 18,000 tenge at the time, which was ‘an unacceptable amount for a significant part of the population’, according to him.²⁹⁵ Still, at the end of 2021, the price for a single PCR test was about $17 USD, while the median monthly salary at that time was about $383 USD.

133.  At the end of October 2020, the Kazakhstani Prime Minister told the Mazhilis that the country had 134 labs, including 69 private ones, with the daily capacity to perform 67,248 PCR tests and expected to raise this capacity to 73,000 tests per day.²⁹⁶ Around the same time, a scandal broke out around falsified positive PCR tests in the East Kazakhstan province, which had the harshest Covid19-related restrictions (see Part IV.A.1 above). Citizens suspected that private testing labs reported more positive PCR test results to gain more income from the repeat tests. Meanwhile, doctors in this province complained that every other positive PCR test result was incorrect and that only 19 out of 100 positive results were confirmed. When scientists of the national scientific-practical medical examination centre and state healthcare officials began their investigation and tried to inspect the premises of one lab, they were not allowed to enter it. The authorities asked experts from the World Health Organization to develop an assessment of the quality and qualifications of private laboratories.²⁹⁷

134.  By June 2022, the country had 185 labs, including 88 private ones, which conducted PCR tests. In 2020, 5,570,389 PCR tests were conducted, with 15,207,462 conducted in 2021, and 3,374,864 in the first half of 2022.²⁹⁸

135.  Early on, the Ministry of Healthcare followed the WHO disease classification guidelines to treat Covid-19 infections. It changed patient diagnosis and treatment protocol ten times between February and July 2020.²⁹⁹ The July 2020 change of this protocol was a result of pressure brought by news spread by the PRC’s embassy in Kazakhstan about an outbreak in Kazakhstan of a novel type of pneumonia that was supposedly deadlier than Covid-19 and by the WHO’s official representative’s suggestion that it was an undiagnosed Covid-19 case, not pneumonia.³⁰⁰ The Ministry of Healthcare developed a separate protocol for diagnosing and treating adults in December 2020 and updated the relevant protocols throughout 2021.

136.  Kazakhstan kicked off its mass anti-Covid-19 vaccination on 1 February 2021, with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, produced at a Karaganda-based pharmaceutical plant. On that day, President Tokayev tweeted, ‘[w]e use the world’s experience against epidemics, and the vaccine is the only reliable means of overcoming a pandemic. All the costs of vaccinating citizens were borne by the state.’³⁰¹ The Ministry of Healthcare planned to vaccinate frontline medical workers, a total of 100,000 people, in February, followed by 150,000 educators and law enforcement and military personnel in March, and students in April.³⁰²

137.  Public health authorities began administering the two-dose QazVac vaccine developed by the Kazakh Biosafety Research Institute on 26 April 2021, the Sinopharm Hayat-Vax vaccine from Abu Dhabi on 30 April 2021, and CoronaVac from the PRC on 1 June 2021. On 10 July 2021, President Tokayev admonished the Minister of Healthcare for the delay in procuring the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, two million doses of which were planned to arrive in Kazakhstan in May of that year. The Ministry reported that the first 379,000 doses of this vaccine arrived in the country on 10 November 2021, and would be administered first to pregnant and breastfeeding women and children aged 12 and older, and then to elderly people over age 60 and then those over 50.³⁰³ The government initially planned to sell this vaccine to all who wanted to get vaccinated but dropped this plan soon after and offered it for free to anyone at the end of March 2022.³⁰⁴

138.  As of 11 May 2021, the first vaccine dose has been administered to 1,698,893 persons, including 625,753 who have received both doses, which was well below the Ministry of Healthcare’s planned figure of 2.3 million vaccinated by April.³⁰⁵

139.  Starting from 2 July 2021, employers of service organizations (hotels, banks, pharmacies, financial, insurance, and consulting organizations), healthcare and wholesale and retail trade facilities, passenger transportation, airports, and communication and telecommunication facilities were required to provide for their employees the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine by 15 July 2021, and the second dose by 15 August 2021. Unless vaccinated, employees in these firms would be allowed to work only if they did mandatory weekly PCR tests and obtained negative test results.³⁰⁶ This obligation appeared to expand the black market in Covid-19-related documents, with the price for forged vaccination documents of up to $70 USD.³⁰⁷

140.  On 10 November 2021, the Health Minister announced that revaccination against Covid-19 would begin on 22 November for health workers, teachers, personnel and patients of medical and social institutions, closed children’s institutions, and law enforcement officers.³⁰⁸ As of 29 July 2022, 10.5 million persons (56% of the population) had received two doses of the vaccine, and five million (27%) had received a booster shot.

141.  Vaccinated persons received a Covid-19 vaccine e-certificate that was accessible via an app on their smartphone and subsequently integrated into the Openness (Ashyq) app. According to the Ministry of Healthcare, by April 2022, 33 countries recognized the Kazakhstani vaccine e-certificate, thus making travel to these countries easier.³⁰⁹ Russia was not among these countries.

142.  Despite having a massive surveillance apparatus of security services, Kazakhstan lacked effective contact tracing procedures for pandemics because previous infectious disease outbreaks were local, and chief state sanitary doctors lacked mechanisms for tracing persons across localities. Therefore, a contact-tracing strategy was ‘in place but on a small scale, due to the scarce capacities of local public health services and legislative restrictions for personal data protection on the use of digital technologies such as mobile applications.’³¹⁰

143.  On 8 October 2020, the Minister of Digital Development, Innovations and Aerospace Development unveiled a contact tracing app called Saqbol. Using this app, a person with a positive Covid-19 test result could anonymously notify people with whom they have been in contact within the last 14 days, at a distance of two metres for more than 15 minutes.³¹¹ On 4 December 2020, the developer of this app reported that this app had been downloaded 100,000 times and 100 persons had received a notification.³¹² In the wake of such low usage, the authorities abandoned this app.

144.  On 13 April 2021, Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor authorized the nationwide use of the check-in four-colour-coded Openness (Ashyq) mobile app (see Part IIV.A.3 above), designed to allow organizations and businesses to operate during lockdowns. This app connected with the Ministry of Healthcare database to display citizens’ status when they scanned a QR code at a venue entrance. The yellow colour in the app identified a person who had had contact with someone infected with Covid-19 and was supposed to be quarantined. Organizations and businesses had to report such a person to the public health authorities, but no information about this reporting has been made public. The Minister of Healthcare reported that 1,658 businesses and over 378,000 users had this app as of 27 April 2021.³¹³

145.  The Openness app usage increased throughout 2021, while the information about the usage of this app somehow ended up in the hands of the tax authorities. Tax inspectors sent letters to some businesses across the country noting the discrepancy between the number of people entering their premises with the Openness app and the number of fiscal receipts issued. Having heard numerous complaints from businesses about the illegality of these letters, on 22 December 2021, the Deputy Prime Minister admitted that the letters sent out by tax officials were illegal and demanded that they be withdrawn.³¹⁴

146.  Kazakhstan’s Chief State Sanitary Doctor prohibited visits to and ordered an enhanced sanitary-disinfection regime at medical and social facilities for the elderly on 12 March 2020, three days before the state of emergency began.³¹⁵ Moreover, starting on 28 March 2020, people aged 65 years and older were instructed not to leave their homes unless absolutely necessary. The residents and the staff of the long-term facilities for the elderly were required to have PCR testing twice a month, once per two weeks. The authorities did not provide an internet connection to these facilities, and the staff informally used their smartphones to arrange communication between care recipients and the outside world. Food suppliers were required to present negative PCR test results, which was expensive and took a long time to deliver during the pandemic’s early stages.³¹⁶

147.  On 2 September 2021, the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the country allowed visits to long-term care facilities for the elderly by those with a recent (no more than three days old) negative Covid19 PCR test result, or a Covid-19 vaccination certificate, or a medical certificate of recovery from Covid-19 infection over the past three months.³¹⁷

148.  As in Russia, social and medical workers were required to reside on the premises of the care facilities, albeit not being provided with beds and food. As a result, they experienced burnout and many of them quit their jobs leading to a shortage of personnel.³¹⁸

149.  Kazakhstani authorities mainly used already existing administrative penalties, such as warnings and fines, to enforce the Covid-19-related regime. The authorities repeatedly warned citizens about the risk of criminal punishments but did not resort to them, except in cases of political activists (see Part II.F above) and a few corruption-related cases of procurement of medical supplies and equipment.

150.  The authorities relied on the following provisions of the Code of Administrative Offences to sanction violators of the Covid-19-related restrictions during a state of emergency from 15 March until 11 May 2020: (i) Article 476 ‘Violation of a state of emergency’, which specifically mentions quarantine and other ‘compulsory sanitary-epidemiological measures’; and (ii) Article 478 ‘Actions provoking the violation of legal order during a state of emergency’.³¹⁹

151.  Following the cancellation of a state of emergency, the authorities relied on the following provisions of the Code of Administrative Offences: (i) Article 425 ‘Violation of the requirements of the legislation in the field of sanitary and epidemiological well-being of the population, and also hygienic standards’; (ii) Article 430 ‘Avoidance of the treatment of the persons with the diseases representing danger for the broader public’; (iii) Article 431 ‘Concealment of the source of infection by the persons with diseases representing danger for the broader public and the persons being in contact with them’; and (iv) Article 462 ‘Impeding to civil servants of the state inspections and bodies of state control and supervision in performing their official duties, failure to perform the regulations, prescriptions, and other requirements’.

152.  As mentioned in Part II.A above, in July 2020, President Tokayev empowered the province-level sanitary doctors and their deputies to initiate administrative offenses and to impose administrative liability for violations of anti-epidemic, sanitary and preventive and restrictive measures, including quarantine, through the amendments to the Code of Administrative Offences (Article 701).³²⁰ The same amendments were inserted into Article 80-1 ‘Hindering the lawful activity of medical and pharmaceutical personnel’, which imposed various fines and/or administrative detention for up to 15 days for disrespectful behaviour in person or online towards medical and pharmaceutical employees.³²¹

153.  Following the rollout of the Openness (Ashyq) mobile app in April 2021, the Committee for Sanitary and Epidemiological Control of the Ministry of Healthcare warned citizens that starting on 10 June, the failure of those diagnosed with Covid-19 (red colour status in the Openness app) and those who have been in contact with infected persons (yellow colour status) to stay in self-isolation would entail an administrative fine of 87,510 tenge ($205 USD) under Article 425 of the Code of Administrative Offences.³²² Meanwhile, businesses that violated the regulations of the Openness mobile app would be liable under Article 462 of the Code of Administrative Offences.

154.  The provincial and local executive bodies (akimats), police, and field officials of the Committee for Sanitary and Epidemiological Control of the Ministry of Healthcare collaboratively secured the enforcement of anti-Covid-19 measures. Monitoring groups (see Part II.B above) consisted of local executive body (akimats) officials, police officers, and representatives of the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs and could include volunteers and activists. In July 2021, there were 1,860 monitoring groups in the country. These groups were not allowed to interfere in the work or business activity of those they monitored and were not authorized to initiate an administrative offense case. Instead, monitoring groups verified how individuals and legal entities complied with the anti-pandemic measures, including quarantine, and sent their observation reports with photo and video evidence and police-made protocol to the field office of the Committee for Sanitary and Epidemiological Control of the Ministry of Healthcare, whose official then visited potential violators and launched administrative offense proceedings.³²³ Monitoring groups also had the right to check spending on anti-pandemic measures and inspect premises with procured medical supplies and equipment. In case of discovered violations, police sent materials to the Anti-Corruption Agency for the initiation of the criminal case.

155.  In November 2020, MPs from the Aq Zhol political party criticized the work of the monitoring groups because of arbitrariness and corruption risks in the work of these groups. ³²⁴ On 1 April 2021, President Tokayev blamed monitoring groups in localities for haphazard monitoring of businesses with regard to their compliance with Covid-19-related restrictions.³²⁵

156.  Kazakhstan’s Defence Ministry controlled or monitored compliance with public health measures. In 2020, up to 13,000 military personnel assisted in carrying out a state of emergency, disinfecting up to 60 million square metres of public spaces, serving on more than 300 checkpoints and more than 1000 patrol routes, and recording up to 2000 violations of the anti-Covid-19 regime, including 80 violations recorded by the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).³²⁶

157.  Given the unprecedented nature of a state of emergency and the pandemic, officials at all levels were initially at a loss on how to enforce anti-Covid-19 restrictions. For example, during the state of emergency, local authorities throughout the country locked entrances to apartment buildings in which a Covid-19-infected person was detected, from the outside, erected fences around them, installed police-guarded checkpoints, and did not allow anyone except medical personnel to enter these buildings.³²⁷ At the same time, local social assistance offices were overcrowded because 4.5 million people rushed to receive payments of 42,500 tenge ($100 USD) (see Part II.C above) and because the guidelines on receiving the payments left potential applicants deeply confused and led them to seek support from local bureaucrats.³²⁸ The government promised not to criminally prosecute those who had applied for these payments without eligibility.

158.  Given that frequently changing and lengthy decrees of Chief State Sanitary Doctors were published only online, most citizens and businesses did not read them in full and relied on their short summaries published on social media. To justify the nationwide lockdown imposed on 20 June 2020, that lasted until 17 August 2020, President Tokayev blamed citizens for mass non-compliance with Covid-19-related restrictions yet assured them that the authorities were in control of the situation with Covid-19.³²⁹ By the end of this lockdown, Kazakhstani officials admitted that the physical distance requirement had had little impact.³³⁰

159.  In 2020, public health inspectors imposed some 37,000 fines in the total amount of 3.6 billion tenge ($8.5 million USD) for various violations of lockdown measures. The violators—businesses and consumers—received most of these fines (3 billion tenge), yet the Government was only able to collect about two-thirds of that amount.³³¹ Between 1 January and 24 July 2021, the authorities held 11,376 business entities and 7,650 individuals liable and collected fines worth more than 1.5 billion tenge for violating the Covid-19 regime.³³² Between 1 January and 16 September 2021, the police opened 156 criminal cases for falsifying vaccination passports and PCR test certificates and sent 20 of them to courts.³³³ Still, the black market for these documents appeared to be flourishing.³³⁴

160.  In 2020, President Tokayev repeatedly admonished government officials for misappropriating 5.9 trillion tenge ($13.9 billion USD) from the state budget on anti-pandemic measures and for corruption during the pandemic. In August 2020, he publicly told his subordinates that employees of the executive body (akimat) of Zhetysu district of Almaty City regularly received bribes for allowing citizens to pass through a checkpoint and that such data were observed in several regions. He assumed ‘that such facts happened everywhere’.³³⁵ In November 2020, he said at the Cabinet meeting: ‘[w]e faced corruption during the first wave. This is the overpricing of medical masks and medicines, violations at checkpoints, and corruption in the appointment of payments to doctors.’³³⁶ In April 2021, the special monitoring group of the anti-corruption agency discovered over 7,000 suits for construction workers, which were purchased as anti-plague suits for medical personnel for 90 million tenge.³³⁷ In September 2021, the Astana appellate court sentenced the former head of a single distributor for the purchase of medicines and medical devices for state-funded drug provision to three- and-half years in prison. He was accused of purchasing anti-plague suits for medical personnel at a cost of $19 million USD via a local company from China, which were never delivered.³³⁸

161.  Kazakhstan stands out amongst Central Asian countries in its response to the Covid-19 pandemic due to the financial aid it has given to its citizens and due to launching a cycle of economic, social, and educational reforms.³³⁹ On 16 March 2020, a day after declaring a nationwide state of emergency, President Tokayev issued two additional decrees to support citizens and the economy. The first Decree on measures to ensure socio-economic stability authorized him to regulate the socioeconomic sphere and required the rest of the central and local government units to issue regulations implementing his orders and directives. Article 1 of this Decree mentioned the President’s power to regulate ‘the formation of a system and conditions of remuneration, social protection of citizens, state social and medical support, medical and social insurance.’³⁴⁰ The second Decree on further measures to ensure socio-economic stability ordered the Prime Minister to set special tax exemptions, budgetary regulations, public procurement procedures, and price controls.³⁴¹ These decrees formed the legal basis for the Cabinet of Ministers to adopt the social and employment protection measures and to offer support for businesses during the state of emergency and subsequent Covid-19-related restrictions.

162.  On 23 March 2020, President Tokayev ordered monthly subsidies of one monthly minimum wage ($110 USD) to persons who had lost their income due to a state of emergency. He estimated that at least 1.5 million citizens would be eligible for this payment. On 26 March 2020, the Minister of Labor and Social Protection adopted Rules implementing this subsidy for ‘participants in the system of compulsory social insurance’ during a state of emergency.³⁴² These participants—employees of medium, small, and micro-businesses—had to be registered in the system of compulsory social insurance for at least three months in the 12 months preceding a state of emergency. On 29 March 2020, the Minister of Labor and Social Protection expanded eligibility for this subsidy to individual entrepreneurs and self-employed workers for whose income the tax agents paid mandatory pension contributions for at least three months in the 12 months preceding a state of emergency.³⁴³ According to these Rules, this subsidy was to be paid within three days of receipt of the completed application.

163.  However, the waiting period for this subsidy was several weeks for many applicants. It resulted in the denial of payment for some of them, prompting complaints to the Human Rights Ombudsperson (see Part III.G above). First, the rules for applying for and receiving this $110 USD subsidy were published online only, leading potential applicants to learn about them on social media. Second, the rules required both applicants and employers to obtain approvals from the field offices of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, operational headquarters of districts and municipalities, public reception centres, and the state Social Insurance Fund. Third, both employers and applicants had to complete a lengthy application form, print it, sign it, scan it, and send it electronically with a long list of necessary documents, including proof of the loss of income. Fourth, self-employed informal workers, who make up 30% of the workforce, had to make a one-time payment, a so-called ‘single aggregate payment’ (2,651 tenge for large city residents or 1,325 tenge for village and small-town residents), to get the subsidy. This was meant to compensate for tax payments, pension fund transfers, and medical insurance payments that the self-employed otherwise avoided.³⁴⁴ Finally, the IT infrastructure for processing these applications did not function properly; the 1414 telephone number of the government hotline was overwhelmed, while the overcrowded local branches of banks were unprepared to handle the skyrocketing number of potential customers rushing to open bank accounts to receive the subsidy. According to official data, around 37 per cent of applications were rejected, mostly due to incorrect personal details. These applicants had a chance to reapply, with further weeks of delay.³⁴⁵ Eventually, the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection simplified and automated the application process via a dedicated website, a Telegram bot, an online government service portal, smartphone apps, and websites of private banks.

164.  Overall, almost 4 million people—half the workforce—who lost income due to the Covid-19 pandemic for three months during spring–summer 2020 and for one month afterward received this subsidy.³⁴⁶ In August 2020, the subsidy’s value was halved from 42,500 to 21,250 tenge (approx. $89 and $44 USD, respectively) while the subsidy itself was abolished. Applications for this subsidy were accepted until 1 September 2020, and the government promised not to criminally prosecute those who had applied for this subsidy without eligibility.

165.  On 30 March 2020, the State Commission on the state of emergency under the Prime Minister unveiled a set of measures of financial support for about 26,000 medical workers in the country and ordered the Minister of Healthcare to provide life and health insurance to them. On 4 April 2020, the Minister of Healthcare adopted the rules on providing these measures to healthcare personnel.³⁴⁷ According to these rules, the heads of medical organizations had to submit a hard copy of the list of personnel for the approval of a special province-level commission consisting of the representatives of provincial akimat, the chief state sanitary doctor of the province, provincial healthcare and employment offices, the ruling political party Nur Otan, labour union, and the deputy director of the provincial branch of the national centre of electronic healthcare. This commission then sent the list to the Ministry of Healthcare for inclusion in the nationwide list, which was then sent to the State Corporation Government for Citizens for electronic processing. After that, the State Social Insurance Fund was supposed to disburse payments to medical workers on that list.

166.  All medical workers would be divided into three groups, depending on the severity of the risk of the Covid-19 infection, and receive monthly salary top-ups between 200,000 and 800,000 tenge ($515 USD and $2,060 USD). Medical workers infected with Covid-19 would receive a special onetime two million tenge ($5,150 USD) compensation. In comparison, immediate families of medical workers who died from Covid-19 would be entitled to a one-time payment of 10 million tenge (approx. $26,000 USD).³⁴⁸

167.  However, as mentioned in Part IV.A above, until July 2020 the Ministry of Healthcare tended to diagnose asymptomatic Covid-19 cases as pneumonia. As a result, most medical workers began receiving this salary top-up only at the end of July 2020, while some did not receive it at all. Only a few complained to the Human Rights Ombudsperson (see Part III.G above). None of the 546 medical personnel infected with Covid-19 in the main city hospital of Almaty that was shut down in April 2020 received the two million tenge compensation.³⁴⁹ The Ministry of Healthcare justified the delay by citing problems with IT infrastructure. The Ministry refused to pay top-ups and compensation under the pretext that medical workers failed to provide proof of Covid-19 infection during work.

168.  On 5 October 2020, the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection told journalists that 3,841 medical workers received the two million tenge compensation, while families of 37 medical workers who had died due to the Covid-19 infection received the 10 million tenge compensation.³⁵⁰ Two days later, President Tokayev scolded the Prime Minister for delays, manipulations, and the lack of transparency in paying out the salary top-ups and compensation to medical workers and ordered them to be paid within one week to families of 182 medical workers who had died due to Covid-19 infection. According to Tokayev, ‘medical workers may not be forced to beg for payments to which they are entitled’.³⁵¹

169.  On 20 October 2020, the Vice-Minister of Healthcare told journalists that a total of 12,983 medical workers got infected with Covid-19, while the province-level commissions confirmed eligibility for payment for 9,309 of those infected and 8,863 had already received this compensation. He also reported that families of 182 medical workers who had died due to the Covid-19 infection received the 10 million tenge compensation. He further announced that the government would no longer pay these salary top-ups and the 2 million tenge compensation to motivate healthcare organizations. He asked province akims to provide anti-Covid-19 protection equipment to employees and enforce Covid-19-related restrictions in the healthcare system.³⁵² However, the 10 million tenge compensation to families of medical workers who had died due to Covid-19 infection was retained and was paid to four more households as of April 2021.³⁵³

170.  Kazakhstan’s targeted social assistance (TSA) is the country’s largest poverty-targeting social protection program. In January 2000, it covered over 250,000 families out of 370,000 eligible ones with an annual expenditure of 17 billion tenge.³⁵⁴ However, as of 1 January 2021, it grew to cover over 2.4 million persons with a total budget expenditure of 153.5 billion tenge.³⁵⁵ On 25 March 2020, the Minister of Labor and Social Protection adopted Rules on providing certain public services in the social and labour sphere for a period of emergency and restrictive measures, which provided for processing cases of recipients online.³⁵⁶ On 31 March 2020, President Tokayev ordered a 10% raise for the monthly amounts of TSA, pensions, and all other state-funded benefits—a measure with a 200 billion tenge price tag.³⁵⁷ In the second quarter of 2020, the monthly amount of TSA was raised by 5% and extended to all recipients without requiring any income-related documentation from them. After that, the TSA was automatically prolonged for some 600,000 recipients until the end of 2022.³⁵⁸ Experts identified the TSA as being insufficient to guarantee an adequate standard of living and too low to pay for food, shelter, and water. ³⁵⁹ The average monthly amount of TSA was 6,500 tenge ($14 USD) in 2020 and 2021.

171.  These Rules also provided for a 5,566 tenge ($13 USD) food subsidy to some 1.1 million TSA recipients in March–May, July, and August 2020, with a total amount of 24.6 billion tenge allocated from the budget.³⁶⁰

172.  On 27 March 2020, the Prime Minister adopted a year-long 1 trillion tenge Employment Roadmap (ERM) to stabilize the economic situation, which had been negatively affected by the global pandemic, quarantine, and falling prices on the hydrocarbon market. The ERM consisted of several thousand infrastructure projects for repairing and constructing social facilities, engineering and transportation infrastructure, irrigation systems, housing and communal services, and the landscaping of settlements.³⁶¹ The government planned to employ 1.22 million people by the end of 2020 and extended the program in 2021, devoting around 800 billion tenge more to the ERM. By November 2021, the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection reported that 8,300 jobs were created with an average monthly wage of more than 92,000 tenge ($200 USD). ³⁶²

173.  As a part of the TSA, since January 2020, the government provided preschool children from low-income families with a guaranteed social package (GSP). In 2020, more than 218,000 preschool children were provided with food sets every month and hygiene products every quarter.³⁶³

174.  On 18 April 2020, the Minister of Industry and Infrastructural Development adopted Rules for reimbursement of payments of the population for payment of utilities in a state of emergency, which provided a 15,000 tenge ($39 USD) utility payment subsidy for April and May 2020 to people who applied for it and could show ownership of their property or an official rental agreement, and who were eligible for targeted social assistance.³⁶⁴ For example, 22,000 residents in Almaty city—which had a population of two million—were eligible for this assistance, which was paid directly to the utility company.³⁶⁵ On 9 May 2020, the Minister of Industry and Infrastructural Development extended this assistance until 25 June 2020.³⁶⁶

175.  Kazakhstani courts continued to apply Article 29 of the Law on Housing Relations, which provides for the forced termination of ownership and eviction of citizens without the provision of alternative housing or compensation in cases of foreclosure on the housing and associated plot of land for the debts of the owner or confiscation of the housing.³⁶⁷ On 3 September 2021, the Vice-Speaker of the Senate, a former Human Rights Ombudsperson, publicly complained to the Prime Minister that 866 families were forcibly evicted from their homes—10 of them received alternative housing—in 2020, and 415 families faced court-ordered evictions—7 of them received alternative housing—in January–June 2021.³⁶⁸

176.  Kazakhstan did not change the unemployment benefit policy in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Starting in April 2020, formally hired employees who lost jobs due to the economic situation could apply for unemployment assistance that provided up to 40 per cent of their former salaries for up to six months, until October 2020.³⁶⁹ In the first half of 2020, 42,300 Kazakhstanis applied for this benefit. The State Social Insurance Fund paid them a total of five billion tenge.³⁷⁰

177.  On 31 March 2020, President Tokayev told Kazakhstanis that uninsured citizens would be allowed to receive medical care in the compulsory social health insurance system, which was introduced from 1 January 2020,³⁷¹ until 1 July 2020. At that time, about 16.4 million persons were registered in the compulsory social health insurance system.³⁷² However, as mentioned in Part III.G above, many citizens, regardless of their social health insurance status, were denied access to healthcare facilities due to overloaded healthcare infrastructure.³⁷³

178.  Kazakhstan did not change its policies on paid sick leave or pensions and did not choose to waive or subsidize social security contributions.

179.  On 20 March 2020, the Cabinet of Ministers authorized business support measures.³⁷⁴ They included: (1) extension of the due date for all taxes paid by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for three months and eliminating all fees related to the delay of tax payments; (2) reduction of the value-added tax (VAT) rate for SMEs operating in agriculture and food processing industries; (3) elimination of the customs duties for imported essential goods for the duration of the state of emergency; (4) suspension of property tax for one year for SMEs in the service industry; (5) exemption of small and micro-businesses from taxes and deferral for these businesses of interest payments on existing loans; (6) exemption of oil refineries from the excise tax on exported gasoline and diesel fuel until 31 December 2020; and (7) a three-month suspension of rental fees levied by local governments and state-owned enterprises on SMEs.³⁷⁵

180.  To avoid credit contraction under downside economic risks, the Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market introduced several capital and liquidity relief measures for banks for 6–12 months. The government encouraged banks to support social solidarity efforts during the pandemic and to relieve the credit burden on citizens and SMEs affected by lockdowns. Banks arranged credit repayment holidays for these categories of borrowers from 16 March to 15 June 2020. Banks deferred loan payments for 41.5% of SMEs and 34% of individual borrowers as of June 2020. This measure was reintroduced for SMEs for 60 days from 3 August to 1 October 2020.³⁷⁶ On 30 October 2020, the Prime Minister extended some payroll tax relief measures for SMEs until 31 December 2020.³⁷⁷

181.  The government also increased credit subsidies for business development programs. The budget of the Economy of Simple Things Program was almost doubled to 1 trillion tenge ($2.38 billion USD), and the Business Roadmap Program grew by 84.5 billion tenge. Both programs envisaged a subsidized interest rate of 6%. In March 2020, the National Bank of Kazakhstan launched a short-term lending program to SMEs for working capital replenishment with a subsidized interest rate of 8%. The budget for this program has been raised to 800 billion tenge, which accounted for 20% of the outstanding amount of SME loans in the banking sector by September 2020. By that time, according to official data, banks had provided loans for 267 billion tenge under the Economy of Simple Things Program and 387 billion tenge for replenishment of working capital.³⁷⁸ The International Monetary Fund’s virtual mission to Kazakhstan in early November 2020 positively evaluated these measures. However, it warned that they ‘should be phased out’ as the economy recovered to ‘limit risks to financial sector soundness’.³⁷⁹ The government extended the Economy of Simple Things Program until the end of 2021, although it acknowledged its uneven impact across provinces.³⁸⁰

182.  Since 2011, Kazakhstan’s official unemployment rate hovered around 5%. However, this figure hides the large number of self-employed (a quarter of total employed persons) and informal workers (14% of total employed persons), as well as gender and interprovincial variation.³⁸¹ To tackle the unemployment problem and guarantee social stability during the Covid-19 pandemic, the government allocated additional funds to two pre-existing state-run employment programs: the Roadmap for Employment 2020–2021,³⁸² and the Productive Employment and Mass Entrepreneurship Development Program called ‘Enbek’.³⁸³

183.  After the pandemic, the Roadmap for Employment 2020–2021 was expanded to 1 trillion tenge ($2.38 billion USD). It was expected to employ 600,000 participants, who would receive 85,000 tenge as a sign-up bonus. These were mostly temporary and some permanent job opportunities on more than 7,000 projects, including infrastructural and construction projects aimed at modernizing the country’s transportation system and building new schools, hospitals, and other venues of public importance in urban and rural areas.³⁸⁴

184.  Kazakhstan did not adopt legal measures to limit workers’ labour rights and did not provide for auxiliary rights or procedural privileges for employers to change or terminate employment agreements unilaterally due to the pandemic.³⁸⁵ It also did not modify the existing law on dismissal of workers. Workers are especially vulnerable under Article 52(1)(2) of the Labour Code of Employment in Kazakhstan—a contract may be terminated with the employee at the initiative of the employer in the following cases: (1) liquidation of the company in which the employee works or termination of the activity of an individual entrepreneur for whom the employee works; and (2) a reduction in the number of staff or workers.³⁸⁶

185.  An International Labour Organization report stated that workers are most vulnerable in dismissals based on the provision on the reduction in the staff, as it does not require the employer to state a justification for the reduction, and the employers’ discretion on this cannot be contested in court. The court may only verify the validity of the dismissal procedure, not the legality.³⁸⁷ Data on the rise of mass dismissals during the pandemic are available, although official statistics do not include small businesses, which were greatly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.³⁸⁸

186.  The violation of workers’ rights to receive payments was impacted in relation to non-payment of wages and non-payment of bonuses,³⁸⁹ and allowances to public health sector workers (both medical and non-medical).³⁹⁰

187.  Changes to working conditions without the approval of the employee affected emergency workers, who were subjected to round-the-clock duties at hospitals, extreme fatigue, over-time, lack of availability of personal protective equipment (PPE), and deviations from proper application and use of PPE.³⁹¹

188.  There is no relevant information to report.

189.  As mentioned in Part V.B.2 above, the changes in working conditions for medical and non-medical workers in the public health sector resulted in situations of extreme overwork and failure to accommodate rest periods for medical workers due to lack of personnel.³⁹² By 13 April 2020, cases of Covid-19 infection among medical workers accounted for 20.5% of all cases across the entire country.³⁹³ However, there is no relevant information available to report here on changes to health and safety conditions, or special measures to tackle this issue.

190.  The government allocated an additional 50 billion tenge (approx. $90 million USD) to the Enbek program in April 2020. This funding was provided for short-term vocational training, grants to create temporary jobs, and microloans for large and low-income families, especially in rural areas. It also helped relocate citizens to northern provinces with job opportunities and housing.³⁹⁴

191.  On 6 May 2020, the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection announced that it had partnered with Coursera to offer free online courses to registered unemployed citizens—50,000 participants could choose from 298 courses in various disciplines, with the government covering the tuition fees. This initiative aimed to provide professional support and improve employment prospects for Kazakhstanis during and after the state of emergency.³⁹⁵ This partnership was extended from 31 October 2020 until 14 February 2021, during which 15,000 participants completed studies and earned certificates from Coursera.³⁹⁶

192.  There is no relevant information to report.

193.  There is no relevant information to report.

194.  As mentioned in Part II.A above, the 1995 Constitution recognizes human rights and freedoms as absolute, inalienable, and guaranteed, subject to limitation by statute only and only to the extent necessary for the protection of the constitutional system, defence of public order, human rights and freedoms, and the health and morality of the population.³⁹⁷ Similar to Russia’s Constitution, the 1995 Constitution contains an extensive catalogue of civil, political, and social rights, most of which can be enforced only when enabling legislation exists. However, international and domestic human rights NGOs have criticized Kazakhstan’s human rights record throughout its three decades of independence, including the government’s harsh response to the Covid-19 pandemic (see Part I above).³⁹⁸ This response was initially based on the state of emergency and severely restricted the freedoms of movement (see Part IIV.A.1 above), media (see Part II.F above), and assembly (see Part IV.A.3 above), the rights of the independent election observers during the January 2021 parliamentary elections (see Part III.D above), and suppressed free speech (see Part II.F above).³⁹⁹

195.  As Human Rights Watch concluded in its Annual World Report 2021, President Tokaev’s promises for reform, including a new peaceful assemblies law (see Part IV.A.3 above), ‘did not bring about meaningful improvements in Kazakhstan’s human rights record in 2020. Government critics faced harassment and prosecution, and free speech was suppressed, especially in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.’⁴⁰⁰ A year later, Human Rights Watch noted that ‘the Kazakh government continued to claim it is pursuing human rights reforms, despite the absence of meaningful improvements in its rights record. Authorities cracked down on government critics using overbroad “extremism” charges, restricted the right to peaceful protest, suppressed free speech, and failed to address impunity for domestic violence and torture.’⁴⁰¹

196.  In February 2021, the European Parliament issued a 27-point resolution addressing the human rights conditions in Kazakhstan. In particular, it noted that ‘in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government misused its pandemic restrictions as a pretext for intensifying the political repression of civil society, human rights activists, opposition voices and medical workers who denounced the government’s failures to contain the outbreak’ and that ‘COVID-19 has created a new obstacle for girls to equal access to information and education, according to the UN.’⁴⁰² Among other points of concern, the European Parliament urged the government of Kazakhstan to (1) stop the suppression of civil society, torture, freedom of expression, and politically driven oppression, all arbitrary detentions, retaliations, and intimidation against activists and other organizations; (2) to revise the recently implemented law on peaceful assembly; and (3) ‘to eradicate torture and ill treatment in prisons, respect prisoners’ rights, and ensure proper living conditions, hygiene and a safe environment in terms of addressing the threats posed by COVID-19.’⁴⁰³ In June 2021, the International Labour Organization published a report that included strong criticisms and suggestions for Kazakhstan to improve its human rights record that included strong criticisms and suggestions for Kazakhstan to improve its compliance with the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention (International Labour Organization Convention No 87). The report urged the government to cease using the judicial system to harass labour union leaders and to reevaluate specific union leaders’ situations.⁴⁰⁴

197.  The outbreak of Covid-19 in Kazakhstan has adversely impacted the protection of personal data and the right to privacy. The mass collection and storage of personal data gave the government unprecedented access to the personal information of Kazakhstanis.⁴⁰⁵ Critics argued that the switch to the online mode of delivering public and private goods and services, including health-related information, contact tracing, and video surveillance, revealed a poor application of law enforcement, pervasive corruption, and opaque public administration.⁴⁰⁶

198.  Article 18 of the Constitution states that ‘everyone shall have the right to inviolability of private life, personal or family secrets.’⁴⁰⁷ The heavily amended data protection law, adopted in 2013, sets up a general framework for protecting and retaining personal data.⁴⁰⁸ This Law does not contain a requirement to notify a personal data breach—ie the unauthorized release of protected personal data.

199.  The 2015 Law on Informatization, which was also heavily amended, regulates data protection in so-called ‘objects of informatization’, which include electronic information resources (eg, websites), computer software, Internet resources, and information and communication infrastructure.⁴⁰⁹ Article 7-3 of this Law contains a general notification requirement about ‘information security incidents’, defined as separately or serially occurring failures in the operation of information and communication infrastructure or its individual objects, which threaten their proper functioning and/or the conditions for illegally obtaining, copying, distributing, modifying, destroying, or blocking electronic information resources.⁴¹⁰ This broad definition could arguably include a personal data breach.⁴¹¹ According to the Freedom House, the June 2020 amendments to the Law on Informatization, which created the national video-monitoring system and biometric authentication of citizens, lacked precise regulation, public oversight, and data protection guarantees.⁴¹²

200.  Article 273 of the 2020 Code on Public Health and Healthcare System (see Part II.B above) defines a medical secret as personal medical data, information on the seeking of medical help, the health status of a citizen, the diagnosis of their illness, and other information obtained during their examination and/or treatment. Generally, a medical secret can only be shared with consent from the relevant subject. This Code does not require the reporting of any breach of medical secrets to a supervisory authority or the subject of the medical secret.⁴¹³

201.  Both individuals and legal entities may be subject to administrative or criminal penalties for leaking personal data. Article 79 of the Code of Administrative Offences stipulates that a monetary fine may be imposed for illegally collecting, processing, and releasing personal data.⁴¹⁴ Article 147 of the Criminal Code addresses privacy infringements and imposes criminal responsibility, which could lead to a monetary fine, imprisonment, or restriction of freedom based on the nature of the offense.⁴¹⁵ However, the 2020 Code on Public Health and Healthcare System introduced new concepts of ‘personal health data’ and ‘aggregator of personal health data’, both of which are not included in the definition of personal data, and, as a result, leaking them does not lead to charges under the aforementioned provisions of the Code of Administrative Offences and Criminal Code. Instead, Article 321 of the Criminal Code stipulates punishment—monetary fine, imprisonment, restriction of freedom, or imprisonment for up to four years—only for leaking medical secrets that caused grave consequences.⁴¹⁶ Official administrative offense and crime statistics showed a very small number of offenses and crimes registered under these Articles in 2020 and 2021.

202.  The Ministry of Internal Affairs is an authorized government agency responsible for personal data protection. Meanwhile, as of 25 June 2020, the Information Security Committee of the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry is an authorized electronic personal data protection and retention agency. However, the National Security Committee—the successor to the Soviet-era KGB—controls the State Technical Service, a body in charge of the country’s centralized management of telecommunication networks.⁴¹⁷ These three agencies compete and cooperate in using artificial intelligence in the country’s public and private information-communication technologies. But they could only handle citizen complaints about violations of their right to privacy with no capacity to file charges against perpetrators.⁴¹⁸

203.  Even before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, in October 2019, having returned from his official visit to the People’s Republic of China, President Tokayev held a meeting about the future development of Kazakhstan and spoke highly of China’s advancements in digital surveillance. He mentioned Hikvision, a prominent Chinese company specializing in surveillance technology, and praised their advanced techniques. He stated that Hikvision has digitalized major cities to a great extent: [y]ou click on the screen, the data on the person comes out, including literally everything. When he graduated from university, where he goes in his free time, and so on … We need to go in this direction.’⁴¹⁹

204.  To implement a state of emergency, on 16 March 2020, Kazakhstan’s chief state sanitary doctor banned audio, photo, and video filming in healthcare and quarantine facilities and of medical care done by medical workers at home.⁴²⁰ On 1 April 2020, Kazakhstan’s chief state sanitary doctor extended this ban to ambulances and places where medical workers conducted an epidemiological investigation into the outbreak and where they questioned patients and their contacts.⁴²¹ The Ministry of Healthcare officials insisted that this ban was necessary to protect the personal data of patients and medical personnel.

205.  However, human rights activists criticized this ban because the 2003 Law on the State of Emergency did not include a public health emergency in the grounds for such a ban.⁴²² The ban remained in force when the state of emergency was lifted on 10 May 2020. Many experts and human rights activists complained that this ban violated constitutional rights to obtain and spread information, restricted patients’ right to complain about the lack of medical care, and the right of medical staff to complain about dangerous working conditions, and that this ban had to be imposed by a statute, not by decree.⁴²³ Despite this ban, photos and videos from medical facilities circulated on social media.

206.  In December 2020, the Vice-Minister of Healthcare responded to these complaints by saying that people could take photos and record videos as evidence of rude treatment and illegal actions of medical personnel and attach them to their complaints submitted via a special online platform, Qoldau-24/7.⁴²⁴ On 2 September 2021, Kazakhstan’s chief state sanitary doctor renewed this ban on audio, video, and photo recording, only to remove it quietly on 17 September 2021.⁴²⁵

207.  On 15 July 2020, the private Centre for Analysis and Investigation of Cyber Attacks (TsARKA), a company that develops cybersecurity solutions and which became famous on social media for investigating vulnerabilities in government services and making them public,⁴²⁶ released a statement on their Telegram channel concerning a medical data leak. According to this statement, over 245,000 audio recordings of telephone conversations with patients and tens of gigabytes of personal data from the state database had been accessed by unauthorized users for more than six months and indexed in Google search.⁴²⁷ Despite these alarming revelations, the Vice-Minister of Healthcare responsible for the digitalization of health records claimed there was no evidence of a data breach, offered no additional insight or solution to the situation, and directed all questions to the Justice Ministry, which, in turn, denied any responsibility for the leak. No further public information has been released on the matter.⁴²⁸

208.  The Ministry of Healthcare also collected the medical records of quarantined persons through the Smart Astana and Smart Qostanay smartphone apps (see Part IV.A.7 above) and of other patients through the Damumed app and stored them on its servers. The Damumed app was launched in 2018 as part of the Digital Kazakhstan program initiated by former President Nursultan Nazarbayev to improve access to medical services by creating a unified resource for patients, medical practitioners, and the government. On 6 August 2020, the General Procurator’s Office reported that around 12,000 false entries were added to the Damumed digital database over six months, resulting in the state being overcharged $180,000 USD. The abuse was discovered after app users reported finding doctor appointments in their personal records that they had not requested or attended.⁴²⁹ The law-enforcement agencies recorded false entries in this app for $725,000 USD in 2020 and 4,000 false entries ($70,000 USD) in the first half of 2021.⁴³⁰ The Vice-Minister of Healthcare responsible for the Damumed app was arrested shortly after that and sentenced to four years of restriction of freedom in October 2022.

209.  At the end of April 2020, journalists reported that the leaks of personal medical data of people infected with Covid-19 on social media resulted in the stigmatization of these people and that police could not find the source of the leaks.⁴³¹

210.  Around the same time, the Ministry of Healthcare mapped the home addresses of those infected with Covid-19 and their contacts on various freely accessible websites, including ‘Coronavirus2020.kz’, where all official Covid-19-related information and guidance was published (see Part II.D above).⁴³² By early June 2020, the Ministry of Healthcare removed the home addresses of these persons from the map and replaced them with the total number of infected and their contacts in different locations.⁴³³

211.  On 21 July 2021, when the official number of Covid-19-related deaths peaked (see Part IV.A above), the Interdepartmental Commission under the Prime Minister decided to publish the names of persons who had been found with the red-colour status in their Openness (Ashyq) app (see Part IV.A.3 above) in the mass media.⁴³⁴ Two days later, the Department of Sanitary and Epidemiological Control of Almaty City published a list of 80 persons fined for appearing in public places with the red-colour status in their Ashyq app.⁴³⁵ By 29 September 2021, this department published the names of 2,024 such persons.⁴³⁶ Authorities in the rest of the country did not publish the names of such persons.

212.  The level of government surveillance in Kazakhstan is hard to determine. According to Freedom House, spyware has reportedly been used to target internet and smartphone users in the country. Various digital rights organizations have accused the Kazakh government of having a massive surveillance system.⁴³⁷ To aid in deep packet inspection and other operations, the government has adopted SORM technology, which was first introduced in Russia and is now used by many other former Soviet states. In July 2021, French nonprofit news outlet Forbidden Stories and a coalition of news organizations, including the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), identified almost 2,000 phone numbers linked to Kazakhstani oligarchs and political figures in a leaked dataset.⁴³⁸ The dataset was described as a list of people of interest to clients of Israeli surveillance company NSO Group, which sells Pegasus, a sophisticated spyware tool. During former president Nazarbayev’s rule, this list included 233 phone numbers belonging to President Tokayev, then-prime minister Askar Mamin, prominent political figures, oligarchs close to Nazarbayev, and opposition figures. The operator of the software appeared to be the government of Kazakhstan. The government has denied the allegations.⁴³⁹

213.  Kazakhstan did not adopt special legal measures related to gender relations during the Covid19 pandemic. Article 14 of the Constitution prohibits gender-based discrimination.⁴⁴⁰ On 12 October 2021, President Tokayev signed amendments to the Labor Code, which abolished the list of professions prohibited for women.⁴⁴¹ This list, which banned more than 200 jobs for women, had been inherited from Soviet Union labour law. Experts argued that the government hastily abolished this list to ‘whitewash its failure to adopt a draft law on domestic violence, which was shelved for revisions in January 2021 after yielding to demands of conservative groups’ (as discussed below), and to please Kazakhstan’s international partners, as Kazakhstan’s report on compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was due in November 2021.⁴⁴²

214.  According to an Asian Development Bank study, in 2020, women earned an average wage of 75% of what men earned. There is an unequal distribution of employment by gender in certain sectors of the economy. For example, women comprise only 21.5% of workers in the transport sector, 23.7% in construction, and 31.1% in the industry sector. Women also hold a low percentage of political and leadership positions in the government, key national companies, and commercial banks, ranging from 9% to 29% of the total workforce.⁴⁴³

215.  Foreign and domestic legal experts note numerous legislation and judicial decision-making deficiencies that prevent gender equality from taking root in the country.⁴⁴⁴ Meanwhile, a nationwide public opinion survey conducted in April 2020 indicated that a greater share of female respondents (26%) lost jobs than male ones (21%), and a greater share of female respondents (40%) have increased time spent on three or more types of household chores than male ones (26%). This gender gap was larger for respondents from rural areas.⁴⁴⁵

216.  The 2009 Law on Preventing Domestic Violence provides a general framework for the activities of government agencies in dealing with domestic violence.⁴⁴⁶ However, this Law lacks an effective mechanism for coordinating their activities. The Ministry of Internal Affairs deals only with the consequences of this violence.⁴⁴⁷ Moreover, this Law prioritizes preserving the family instead of protecting the victims. For example, it provides for the abuser’s eviction, but if he has no other housing he is allowed to keep living with his family. It also does not provide for any penalty to offenders who violate protective orders.⁴⁴⁸ Finally, this law goes against the normalization of domestic abuse of ethnic Kazakh women.⁴⁴⁹

217.  The Criminal Code does not list domestic violence as a separate crime. Abusers are instead prosecuted by the Code of Administrative Offenses, under Article 73-1 on ‘Causing minor bodily harm’ (up to 20 days in jail), Article 73-2 on ‘Battery’ (up to 15 days in jail), and Article 73 on ‘Illegal actions in the sphere of family relations’, which provides for liability for ‘abusive language, offensive harassment, humiliation, damage to domestic items and other actions expressing disrespect to the persons being in family relations with an offender, violating their calm, committed in an individual residential house’ (up to five days in jail for first-timers, and up to 10 days for repeat offenders).⁴⁵⁰

218.  Even though President Tokayev repeatedly mentioned that preventing and reducing domestic violence was his government’s priority, central government agencies and MPs did little to adopt a newly proposed law on countering domestic violence, which would criminalize assault, battery, and minor bodily harm and would impose additional responsibilities for prevention and reduction of domestic violence on other government agencies. This legislative proposal appeared on the Parliament website on 2 March 2020. The Mazhilis, the lower chamber of Parliament, approved it during the first reading on 23 September 2020, however, it was buried following a well-coordinated opposition campaign launched by a small group of lawyers and bloggers, who used ‘the rhetoric of the Russian alt-right NGOs who attacked a similar domestic violence bill in Russia in December 2019’.⁴⁵¹ One of their conspiratorial claims involved a reference to the government’s Covid-19 response: ‘[i]f a parent refuses to vaccinate their children or buy a smartphone or chocolate for their child, he/she will commit domestic violence, and the child will be taken away by juvenile police.’⁴⁵² The central government agencies did little to resist this rhetoric, while pro-women civil society activists launched an online petition supporting the adoption of this law. President Tokayev declared that the draft law on countering domestic violence required additional preparation and consideration of all opinions in January 2021. The Mazhilis removed the draft law from its website shortly after that.⁴⁵³

219.  Experts agree that domestic violence has widened and deepened during the lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the United Nations Population Fund office in Kazakhstan, one domestic violence hotline saw a significant increase in calls.⁴⁵⁴ From February 2020 to the first half of April 2020, calls increased by 50%. Moreover, 50% of young girls experienced violent forms of discipline within their own families, with 21% experiencing physical punishment and 45% experiencing psychological aggression and violence. Meanwhile, support services for women at risk faced ‘cuts and closures, with shelters often not being able to house new people due to the fear of infection and the limitations in the movement.’⁴⁵⁵

220.  According to the nationwide public opinion survey conducted in April 2020, about 15% of respondents were aware of increased domestic violence cases since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Of those who were aware of the facts of domestic violence, every ninth respondent was aware of the use of the hotline service, requests for psychological support, or reports to the police. Rural women and men were more likely than urban women to report domestic violence incidents.⁴⁵⁶

221.  Based on information from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, there was a 41.7% increase in domestic violence cases between 16 March and 31 July 2020, compared to the same period in 2019. In the first eight months of 2020, approximately 130,000 domestic violence reports were made to the police. However, only 30,000 reports resulted in administrative proceedings, and criminal proceedings were initiated in 2,500 cases. In other words, only a quarter of domestic violence cases went to court.⁴⁵⁷

222.  The ethnic composition of the country is about 70% Kazakhs, 15% Russians, 3% Uzbek, 2% Ukrainians, etc. Decrees of chief state sanitary doctors of the country were adopted in the Russian language only. The authorities did little to translate them into Kazakh and other languages. Most ethnic Kazakhs who had immigrated to Kazakhstan under the state-sponsored program did not know Russian and, therefore, lacked knowledge of Covid-19-related restrictions.

223.  Officially, at the time of the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic, there were about 674,200 persons with disabilities (44% women and 14% children) in the country. The United Nations Population Fund-sponsored rapid assessment of the needs of persons with disabilities amid the pandemic concluded that a lack of legal literacy and awareness about Covid-19, a lack of psychological counselling on the phone, and the unpreparedness of social workers, medical workers, and operators of the telephone hotlines exacerbated the victimization of persons with disabilities. This assessment was conducted in the spring of 2020. It included a survey of 76 adults (29 men and 47 women) with disabilities in Shymkent city and Turkestan province and in-depth interviews with surveyed female respondents.⁴⁵⁸ According to this survey, 23 respondents did not know about the pandemic, 29 reported deterioration of their family relationships due to loss of work and income, and 55 said they had no one to go to in case of abuse. Only 13 said that they knew their rights and faced no problems accessing social workers, the police, and medical workers.⁴⁵⁹

224.  The official number of university students with disabilities during the pandemic was 1,255. Experts argue that the pandemic has highlighted the lack of attention the Kazakh education system gave to students with disabilities.⁴⁶⁰ This was due to the absence of appropriate study materials and computer software for individuals with sensory impairments such as sight, hearing, and physical disabilities. Additionally, there was a shortage of adapted versions of commonly used applications, including Zoom, Moodle, and Microsoft Teams. Consequently, it has been more challenging to facilitate social integration for students with disabilities and enhance their digital literacy during the pandemic. Colleges and universities did not provide online counselling for students with mental health disabilities.⁴⁶¹

225.  Schoolchildren with disabilities faced similar problems. Experts noted a lack of a legal framework for children with mental health disabilities and autism and of an inclusive educational platform for children with disabilities and special learning needs.⁴⁶² Once a state of emergency was lifted, on 12 May 2020, this category of children was allowed to attend schools for children with disabilities subject to Covid-19-related restrictions.

226.  Institutionalized schoolchildren with disabilities faced even more problems, as they were exposed to the risk of abuse and violence by the staff, as visitors and inspections were barred as of 12 March 2020 (see Part II.C above). For example, in April 2020, four children in a state residential institution for children with disabilities in the East Kazakhstan province died, while a further 16 were hospitalized with measles and intestinal infections.⁴⁶³ The staff of that institution leaked this information to journalists. According to the Children’s Rights Ombudsperson, three of those who died had brain traumas. In May 2021, teachers in the same institution reportedly beat a teenage schoolboy with disabilities, and the institution’s psychiatrist leaked the news.⁴⁶⁴

227.  In February 2021, Kazakhstan adopted a Roadmap to ensure 100% barrier-free access for people with disabilities for 2021–2023. In July 2022, the Minister of Labor and Social Protection admitted that the authorities ‘have significantly decreased their activity’ on creating a ‘barrier-free’ environment due to the pandemic.⁴⁶⁵

228.  The authorities did not adopt special regulations for older adults during the Covid-19 pandemic. Article 27 of the Constitution specifies that ‘adult able-bodied children are obligated to take care of disabled parents’, which meant that during the pandemic, the primary responsibility of caring for older adults is on their non-disabled children or informal caregivers. However, as experts argue, the current healthcare regulation ignores the challenges and requirements of individuals providing home care for older adults. It lacks a legal framework addressing the identification, assessment, and provision of specialized medical and psychological assistance for these caregivers.⁴⁶⁶

229.  On 30 March 2020, the Prime Minister adopted the ‘2020-2023 Roadmap for Strengthening Protection of Children, Addressing Domestic Violence, and Preventing Suicides Among Adolescents’.⁴⁶⁷ According to experts, Covid-19-related lockdowns and home-schooling contributed to a spike in teen suicides, a problem that predated the pandemic. ‘In the first four months of 2021, suicides by minors jumped 15 percent in Kazakhstan compared to the year before.’⁴⁶⁸ Overall, the authorities registered 144 suicides and 303 suicidal attempts by minors in 2020, 175 suicides and 373 attempts in 2021, and 155 suicides and 309 attempts in 2022. According to official crime statistics, 833 minors were victims of crimes against the sexual inviolability of minors in 2020, 920 in 2021, and 719 in 2022.⁴⁶⁹

230.  To improve the process of psychological and pedagogical support for students, as well as to consolidate the mechanism for protecting children from bullying, the Ministry of Education adopted Rules for the activities of the psychological service in secondary education organizations,⁴⁷⁰ and Rules for the prevention of bullying of a child,⁴⁷¹ which for the first time defined the algorithm for the actions of educational organizations, akimats, and healthcare facilities in response to information received from victims of bullying.

231.  During the Covid-19 pandemic, under the heavily amended 1997 Law on the State Social Benefits for Disability and Loss of a Breadwinner in the Republic of Kazakhstan, children with disabilities had the right to state assistance in rehabilitation (habilitation), socialization, social adaptation, and social integration into normal living conditions, social services, upbringing and training in ordinary and special educational institutions, and health care.⁴⁷² According to the ‘Listening to Kazakhstan’ surveys administered by the World Bank and UNICEF between December 2020 and August 2022, 19% of adults and 22% of children lived in self-classified ‘poor’ families, with multichild families substantially more vulnerable to deprivation.⁴⁷³ The number of children receiving targeted social assistance decreased by 19% between 2020 and 2022.’⁴⁷⁴

232.  The 2021 amendments to the 2002 Law on Social and Medical-Pedagogical Correctional Support for Children with Disabilities changed the regulation of the activities of psychological, medical, and pedagogical consultations for these children and provided for a transition from a ‘medical’ to a ‘social and pedagogical’ model of activity of these consultations.⁴⁷⁵ At the beginning of the 2020–2021 academic year, the share of schools that created conditions for inclusive education was 74.9%.⁴⁷⁶

233.  On 17 August 2020, the Prime Minister approved a roadmap to provide services to children with disabilities from 2020–2023.⁴⁷⁷ However, in December 2022, eight MPs from the ruling party publicly complained to the Minister of Healthcare that this roadmap was not being implemented.⁴⁷⁸

234.  Article 92 of the 2020 Code on public health and healthcare system reduced the minimum age for adolescents to seek confidential medical, psychosocial, and reproductive health services from 18 to 16 years of age. Furthermore, the minimum age for legal access to tobacco products increased from 18 to 21 years of age. Article 78 of this Code also provided for continuous monitoring and free antiretroviral therapy medicine to children born to HIV-infected mothers with an unspecified diagnosis.⁴⁷⁹

235.  According to the UN-led assessment of the socio-economic impact of the pandemic on children, 56% of those in need could not access medical services. This percentage increased to 60.3% for children with disabilities. During the state of emergency—from 1 April to 11 May 2020—the Ministry of Healthcare temporarily suspended routine immunization in public healthcare centres. As of December 2020, only 73% of children under the age of one had received measles-containing vaccines, below traditional vaccination coverage rates.⁴⁸⁰

236.  On 7 February 2023, Kazakhstan signed the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a communications procedure, and the Kazakhstani Parliament ratified this instrument on 7 June 2023 (see Part II.A above).⁴⁸¹

237.  By the time Covid-19 arrived in Kazakhstan, the country’s prison population had steadily declined from 84,800 in 2002 to 29,400 in 2020, jails and prisons were sparsely occupied, and the penitentiary service had successfully reduced infectious diseases, like HIV and tuberculosis, among inmates.⁴⁸² Under Article 143 of the 2020 Code on Public Health and Healthcare System, ‘persons whose freedom is restricted, as well as persons serving a sentence by a court sentence in places of deprivation of liberty, detained, remanded in custody and placed in special institutions’ shall enjoy the rights of citizens when receiving medical care.⁴⁸³ Article 94 of the Penitentiary Code requires prison authorities to keep inmates who are ill with infectious diseases separately from healthy inmates.⁴⁸⁴

238.  However, most inmates were kept in large barracks, not cells, making separation impossible. Moreover, according to the analysis conducted by the Central Asia Office of Penal Reform International at the end of 2020, there was a serious shortage of highly trained medical personnel, an absence of epidemiologists on payroll of the penitentiary service, and a lack of proper medical equipment in all 67 medical facilities across the penitentiary system.⁴⁸⁵ On 19 July 2021, President Tokayev ordered a gradual transfer of all penitentiary medical facilities to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Healthcare.⁴⁸⁶

239.  Following the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country, the Penitentiary System Committee attached each jail and prison to a specific hospital to provide hospitalization for those inmates with symptoms of Covid-19 and/or pneumonia. On 22 May 2020, the country’s chief state sanitary doctor ordered penitentiary authorities, in case of the detection of Covid-19 infection among inmates, to implement anti-pandemic measures and to conduct laboratory testing for Covid-19 infection, treatment of patients, and medical observation of contacts of infected inmates and persons with asymptomatic Covid-19 and their isolation.⁴⁸⁷ By the end of 2020, penitentiary authorities recorded 162 Covid-19 infections, one death due to Covid-19, and four deaths due to pneumonia.⁴⁸⁸ On 4 October 2021, the Penitentiary Service Committee reported that the number of infections grew to 214 and that 96.7% of detainees and inmates had been vaccinated.⁴⁸⁹

240.  However, numerous complaints from inmates to the Human Rights Ombudsperson (see Part III.G above) and visits of the National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) to prisons revealed that the rights of inmates to healthcare had been ‘violated everywhere, and there are also violations of the principle of medical ethics; many of the inmates do not believe in the effectiveness of the NPM and the prosecutor’s office and, accordingly, do not write complaints’ about the denial of medical care.⁴⁹⁰ A survey of 462 prisoners in two provinces conducted by the Central Asia office of the Penal Reform International at the end of 2020 revealed that 86% rated medical care in their prisons as ‘effective’.⁴⁹¹

241.  During the pandemic, the authorities did not provide special habeas corpus measures for criminal suspects and did not allocate extra resources to pre-trial detention facilities and prisons. Based on the decree of the country’s chief state sanitary doctor, the penitentiary service suspended all inmate visitations, offering instead videoconferencing terminals for communications. For example, in January–February 2021, inmates were provided access to over 100,000 telephone conversations, 8,800 video calls lasting up to 15 minutes, and about 2,600 video meetings lasting up to two hours.⁴⁹²

242.  On 27 February 2021, the chief state sanitary doctor allowed prisons in green zones (see Part IV.A.2 above) to offer long-term visitations with one adult relative who must provide a valid negative Covid-19 PCR test while the inmate must be quarantined for 14 days after the end of the visitation.⁴⁹³

243.  It is estimated that about 3.5 million migrant workers are in Kazakhstan.⁴⁹⁴ Migrant workers were not eligible for Covid-19-related social (see Part V.A above) and employment protection measures (see Part V.B. above).

244.  According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as of July 2020, over 500 refugees—including 20 recognized under the UNHCR’s mandate—and 260 asylum-seekers were hosted in Kazakhstan. Of targeted households, 100% will have their basic needs met through multi-purpose cash assistance. While there were nearly 7,757 stateless persons known to the UNHCR, including 590 individuals with undetermined nationality registered by UNHCR partners, the actual number is expected to be higher. The number of people with undetermined nationality known to the UNHCR increases yearly, largely due to ongoing statelessness outreach initiatives conducted by the UNHCR and partners.⁴⁹⁵

245.  On 18 March 2020, the Minister of Healthcare ordered the provision of free medical care to foreigners and stateless persons temporarily staying in Kazakhstan who were infected with Covid-19.⁴⁹⁶ On 9 October 2020, the Minister of Healthcare included asylum seekers in this category.⁴⁹⁷

246.  Article 196 of the 2020 Code on Public Health and Healthcare System stipulates that citizens, refugees, foreigners, and stateless persons permanently residing in the country are guaranteed free medical care, while foreigners and stateless persons temporarily staying in Kazakhstan and asylum-seekers are guaranteed free medical care for diseases that pose a danger to others.⁴⁹⁸

247.  On 27 June 2022, Article 83 of the 2020 Code on Public Health and Healthcare System granted the right to receive free medical care to foreigners and stateless persons identified as victims of human trafficking on the territory of Kazakhstan.⁴⁹⁹

248.  According to the UNHCR, Kazakhstan’s legal framework on refugees and asylum-seekers does not align with the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees and/or its 1967 Protocol. In 2022, 100% of stateless persons, refugees, and asylum seekers resided in physically safe and secure settlements with access to basic facilities, while 92% of stateless persons and 14% of refugees and asylum seekers had access to healthcare facilities.⁵⁰⁰

249.  In 2020, due to the pandemic, the government extended the legal stay of foreigners in the country and facilitated the return of 133,000 foreign workers to their home countries. The Ministry of Internal Affairs did not conduct raids to detect illegal migrants nationwide. It also allowed foreigners whose travel documents, entry visas, or residence permits had expired during a state of emergency to stay in Kazakhstan until 5 June 2020.⁵⁰¹

250.  Reacting to the spread of Covid-19, many labour migrants from Central Asia decided to leave the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan and return to their home countries. A huge number of migrants were determined to leave Kazakhstan, but many of them were not able to cross the borders and return to their countries of origin. As a result, approximately 3,000 migrants of Tajik and Uzbek nationalities were stranded at the Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan border in early July 2020; 25% of this group were women and children, according to UNICEF’s office in Kazakhstan. Migrants’ average stay at the border has varied from a few days to several weeks, with bad conditions and limited access to water and sanitation facilities.⁵⁰² In December 2020, the Kazakhstani office of the International Organization for Migration sponsored a survey of 659 migrants stranded for over a month in Kazakhstan. This survey revealed that about one-half of respondents sought assistance from the authorities, and most (96%) received it.⁵⁰³

251.  The indigenous peoples of Kazakhstan are Kazakhs, who comprise 70% of the country’s population. Those without a working knowledge of the Russian language lacked information about Covid-19-related restrictions which were published in Russian (see Part VI.D above).

Alexei Trochev, Associate Professor, Nazarbayev University