The seminar took place in Almaty, May 29, 2006

KAZAKHSTAN. ‘FROM MORATORIUM TO THE ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY’

May 29, 2006: the seminar entitled “Kazakhstan from the Moratorium on Death Penalty Toward the Adoption of the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR” took place in the country’s capital Almaty. The event was organized by the Vienna-based International Helsinki Federation and the Pavlodar Committee for Monitoring Penal Reform and Human Rights, part of the European Commission funded project, “A Coordinated Civil Society Campaign to Abolish the Death Penalty in Central Asian States”.
The Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Kazakhstan and Freedom House Kazakhstan Human Rights Support Program provided funding and technical assistance. About 30 NGO leaders from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan participated at the event, as well as experts from Italy, Austria, United Kingdom, Norway, and from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
The meeting concluded with the adoption of a document which, among other points, engaged NGOs in the region to actively support Hands Off Cain’s campaign in view of the presentation at the next UN General Assembly of a resolution for a universal moratorium on executions.
The HOC delegation composed of Elisabetta Zamparutti and Marco Perduca, HOC Board of Directors and UN representative of the Transnational Radical Party, and by Antonio Stango, Freedom House Project Director in Almaty and HOC board member, met with Parliamentarian and ASAR party president Dariga Nazarbayeva, also President Nazarbayev’s daughter, to ask for support in the approval of the General Assembly resolution and for ratification of the International Criminal Court.
Nazarbayeva said she would work to have the death penalty debated as of this autumn by the Committee for Penal Reform.
Scheduled for tomorrow is a meeting with Galymzhan Zhakianov, founder of the opposition movement Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan.