Kazakhstan joined the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe on 30 January 1992. In the same year, on 8 July, it signed the Helsinki Final Act of the CSCE, and on 23 September the Charter of Paris for a New Europe.
During the first years of its independence, Kazakhstan needed the support of the world powers and authoritative international organizations, including the OSCE. At the same time, the world community was interested in the constructive foreign policy line followed by the young republic, which, as history willed it, had turned out to be the possessor of the fourth largest nuclear arsenal. Mindful of this, the country made a conscious choice in favour of balanced approaches in its foreign and domestic policies, in which a pivotal role was assigned to the strategy of multilateral partnership and liberalization of the economy and society.
The invitation extended by the leading Western countries to join the Organization was perceived in Kazakhstan as a step towards forming a new European security architecture based on equality and absence of dividing lines.
Having become a full member of the pan-European conference, Kazakhstan took an active part in the processes of its further development, including its conversion into an international organization. President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan participated in the OSCE Summits held in Helsinki (1992), Budapest (1994), Lisbon (1996) and Istanbul (1999). Each year, Kazakhstan is represented at the meetings of the OSCE Ministerial Council by its Foreign Minister.
Kazakh parliamentarians take an active part in the work of the Organization‘s Parliamentary Assembly.
The OSCE‘s role as standard setter in the field of human rights has diminished somewhat over the past years, as reaching consensus among participating states over new commitments has become increasingly difficult. Nevertheless, the OSCE has broadened the scope of its human dimension standards by adopting new commitments aimed to combat hate crimes, intolerance, and discrimination, to counter terrorism, and to combat trafficking in human beings. At the meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Helsinki in December 2008, a number of important new commitments related to the human dimension were adopted.
Participating states agreed to increase their efforts to integrate Roma and Sinti communities, with a special emphasis on education. ODIHR has also organized and supported tolerance-related programs and projects in the fields of legislative reform, law enforcement training, capacity building for nongovernmental organizations, education on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, and initiatives to counter all forms of anti-ethnic, racial, or religious prejudice, including Islamic phobia. Participating states have also agreed to strengthen criminal justice responses to trafficking in human beings through a more comprehensive approach, and to step up efforts to strengthen the rule of law in a wide range of areas.
The OSCE continues to be the preeminent Europe-wide institution for confronting trafficking in persons. The OSCE‘s geographic breadth helps to address the transnational nature of the problem, with much frontline work taking place in OSCE field operations. The CiO‘s special representative and the OSCE Anti-Trafficking Assistance Unit (ATAU), as well as ODIHR, work to combat trafficking through specialized police training, legislative advice, and other assistance. The OSCE participating states approved the ―Plan for the Promotion of Gender Equality‖ in 2004. Since then the OSCE has sought to promote the plan throughout the OSCE region and within the organization itself. The Finnish OSCE chairmanship in 2008 highlighted the importance of mainstreaming the gender perspective into all three dimensions of the OSCE‘s work—the politico-military, the economic and environmental, and the human.
Kazakhstan‘s slow progress in implementing OSCE democracy standards has been the main challenge to its chairmanship. Kazakhstan‘s ability to lead by example, given its highly personalized and centralized political system, has been questioned by human rights organizations. In addition, past Russian attempts to diminish the role of ODIHR have spurred speculation that Kazakhstan‘s chairmanship might be used by Moscow as a vehicle to achieve its goals to modify and weaken ODIHR‘s mandate. At the OSCE Madrid Ministerial Meeting in November 2007, which designated Kazakhstan as OSCE chair for 2010, Kazakhstan committed itself to protect the OSCE‘s core human dimension mandate, including the autonomy and current mandate of ODIHR, and also to advance specific domestic political reforms before the end of 2008. The two issues, domestic democratic reforms and the preservation of ODIHR mandate are related but distinct.
Regardless of the condition of its domestic democratization, Kazakhstan has the capacity to be a responsible CiO on the human dimension question with regard to preserving the functions of ODIHR. A country does not need to be a full-fledged democracy to have capable diplomats necessary for a successful chairmanship. Kazakhstan needs to deliver on its promise to chair responsibly according to the core OSCE principles. At the same time, other member states have the right and will continue to convince Kazakhstan to deepen its democratic reforms and strengthen the rule of law. Astana is already feeling the pressure to move faster on its democratization agenda. In 2009, the government introduced a major human rights program even though the year was marked by the adoption of a controversial Internet law and questions about the sentencing of a prominent human rights activist on vehicle-manslaughter charges.
The Kazakh Mazhilis (Parliament) passed amendments to the laws on the media, political parties, and elections in 2008, but they were largely considered insufficient to meet the commitments made in Madrid. Following the adoption of the new legislation, the U.S. government stated that they marked a step forward on Kazakhstan‘s path to democracy but urged Kazakhstan to take further measures to create the conditions for advancing political pluralism. Such a program must include legislation ensuring that all political parties are represented on independent electoral commissions and that registration hurdles for political parties are reduced. Kazakhstan was also encouraged to improve its media legislation to include the decriminalization of libel.
The amended legislation on elections preserved the relatively high threshold of 7 percent for political parties to enter parliament, but included provisions for a second party to send members to the Mazhilis. If only one political party receives 7 percent of the votes, the party with the next highest percentage of votes will receive seats in the parliament. The legislative changes have fallen short of providing for representation of opposition political party or civil society representatives on election commissions at all levels and granting the right to nongovernmental opposition groups to observe elections. Currently, Kazakhstan has a one-party parliament controlled by the presidential party NurOtan. The parliament was elected in 2007, after changes introduced in May 2007 slightly enhanced parliament‘s powers.
The government of Kazakhstan has taken some welcome steps to improve the situation of smaller religious communities in recent months, such as registering the Atyrau branch of Jehovah‘s Witnesses and revoking court decisions that suspended the activities of three Jehovah‘s Witnesses‘ communities. In a positive development, the proposed restrictive law on religion adopted by the Mazhilis in 2009 was ruled unconstitutional by the Constitutional Council in February 2009.
As the OSCE chair, Kazakhstan will be in a pole position to focus on human security, specifically strengthening tolerance and nondiscrimination. The Kazakh authorities are proud of their efforts to ensure interethnic and inter-confessional accord and view this as a significant achievement in the human dimension. There are 130 ethnic minority groups in Kazakhstan, and their assembly (the Assembly of Nations) is represented by nine deputies in the lower house of parliament. The parliamentary seats are reserved for representatives of the national minorities in a mechanism similar to practices of some parliaments in European countries intended to broaden ethnic representation. However, since the members from the minority groups are elected indirectly by the Assembly of Nations, and not by popular vote, this mechanism has been criticized by international organizations.
In May 2009, President Nazarbayev signed a new program for reform, the ―National Human Rights Action Plan 2009–2012,‖ which envisions substantial progress in the human dimension during the next three years. The plan was prepared in cooperation between the Kazakh government, nongovernmental organizations, the UN Development Program, and other UN agencies and partner organizations, including the OSCE Center in Astana. It was preceded by a baseline study and report on human rights in Kazakhstan that analyzed the national legislation, law enforcement practices, and compliance with international law provisions in human rights protection.
The Human Rights Commission and the group working on the plan closely studied the breath of international experiences. Kazakhstan has also supported the establishment and work of the UN Council on Human Rights and has initiated the Universal Periodic Review process, thus sending positive signals about its commitment to the human rights agenda. The proposed program presents a comprehensive strategy for reform in key areas—from political liberalization and media freedom to freedom of association and religious beliefs—and recommends further liberalization to the recently amended laws on elections, political parties, and the media.
The Action Plan corresponds with the provisions of the ―Concept of Legal Policy of Kazakhstan for 2010– 2020,‖ which was approved in September 2009 in order to define the main directions of legal policy. Representatives of civil society took an active part in the development of the concept. The concept is intended as a foundation for the development of programs in the sphere of legal policy and is projected to bring Kazakhstan‘s legal system closer to international standards in such areas as the constitution, administration, taxation, customs, as well as civil, financial, and criminal law. It envisages reforms in law enforcement, the judiciary, and the protection of human rights.
During its chairmanship, Kazakhstan needs to continue pursuing dialogue and cooperation with civil society to implement the two programs according to the timeframe envisioned in the documents. Putting in place the planned changes in the legislation and other structural reforms as well as the full implementation of the Madrid commitments will demonstrate the government‘s willingness to bring the country‘s legal and political system in accordance with OSCE standards.
The Alliance, along with the OSCE is the largest necks international organization in the field of security, including spending in its activities, not just Europe and North America, but also Eurasia. Therefore NATO factor in any case will influence the situation in the OSCE and the behavior of members with in the alliance. NATO demonstrated stability as an operating - extending military- strategic tool of the West. This is made possible thanks common to the entire West geopolitical and strategic objectives to achieve the United States and European Union considerably easier in the presence of such military but strategic tool, as NATO. Given the tendency of the safety factor used West transformations both instruments - the OSCE and NATO, especially the former Soviet Union. According to many Western experts, the main purpose of NATO today is diplomatic greater than military planes. European strategists have expressed the view that the main role NATO is to form the basis of European security systems to include the Russian. At the same time, Alliance is drifting in the direction of becoming a framework organization. Loop it cannot become a common foreign and defense policy on contemporary threats and even "military machine", and the total PR- infrastructure shared information analytical and advocacy mechanism NATO closer in function to the OSCE.
The most important tasks of the Alliance in the post remain democratization of Eastern Europe, Caucasus and adaptation Central Asia to Western standards, linking Russia to the West. These strategic objectives are the preservation of stability completely in the vast area of Eurasia, lying to the east of Europe; maintaining geopolitical control over the strategically important regions of the Middle East, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, The Caspian Sea and Central Asia. A special place in this series, Catching are Central Asia and Afghanistan as the key regions for implementation geopolitical presence in the center of Eurasia taking into account the impact on Russia and China.
The scope of OSCE in other post-Soviet countries - in Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia - is rather modest. Most the largest budgets and headcount OSCE centers – in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, but their aggregate budget is comparable with a relatively small budget of the mission in Serbia. Strength same international staff OSCE Mission to Serbia and a half times more than in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan combined. Trend of gradual decrease in activity "east of Vienna" and supported by prominent - especially since 2007 - a decrease extra (or extra) funds States parties to implement the various missions those or other special projects. Most of all extra budgetary funds to the OSCE cut the U.S. - more than doubled in 2007.
They did not do so much because of disillusionment with the effectiveness Organizations, but the need to seek additional ITATION funds for implementation of other projects in other parts of the world. Thus, the scope of the organization, especially in the Balkans, has been steadily declining. Any revival of FSU is not compensated for this reduction. If the Russian criticism was aimed at folding OSCE activities "east of Vienna", today it occurs itself. If the goal was to expand activities in the West, it is solved in other ways. Moscow's withdrawal is unlikely to lead to the collapse of the Organization, wherein anyway concerned practically all neighbors Russia.
Kazakhstan should chairmanship in 2010, is preparing intensively for this mission. Even Belarus and Uzbekistan, caught up in the political isolation in the West, in the presence of the OSCE, despite all the costs remains an important symbol of their involvement in the European process. If Russia withdraws from the Organization ceases to influence decision of the OSCE Mission to Georgia, official Tbilisi will welcome this development. Russian experts have come to the conclusion that while Moscow will no longer participate in policy of the Organization and finally lose its leverage over the OSCE's engagement with neighboring countries. Not a substantial reduction range of activities "east of Vienna" , including humanitarian sphere, Russia is unlikely to achieve activation of the OSCE for - Western direction. Moscow even lose the capacity criticized the Organization and demand its deep reforms, while the OSCE will continue and probably even greater extent than it is now become an instrument of promotion political and other know - how along the East - West . The situation in case of the Russian Federation or to freeze its of participation (moratorium) in the OSCE may have a different effect.
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