KAZAKHSTAN

Kazakhstan's first WPS National Action Plan was published in 2021 to cover the period 2022-25.

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Objectives of the 2022-2025 NAP:

Kazakhstan’s NAP has 3 main objectives that are supported by numerous actionable targets. The 3 headline objectives are: 

1 Facilitating women’s and men’s participation in conflict prevention and peacebuilding;

2 Preventing violence against women and girls, and ensuring their protection, especially in conflict settings;

3 Promoting gender analysis and inclusion in policy making, leadership development and gender responsive budgeting.

Commentary:

Although the document is short at only 6 pages, the NAP has broad coverage of its aims, and is ambitious in its desire to mainstream gendered perspectives across Kazakhstan’s democratic, military and political institutions, with plans to increase the appointment of women to senior positions in law enforcement, defence, judicial and diplomatic services. 

The brevity of the NAP means there are gaps in plans on how Kazakhstan intends to implement the initiatives that fall under the three main objectives. In the form of a matrix, the NAP does, however, highlight where the resources will be drawn from for these initiatives, which include EU funding and Kazakhstan’s Central Government Budget. 

Civil society involvement in development of the NAP:

Increased engagement with civil society is mentioned at the outset of the NAP, and again briefly in the targets under the first and third objectives. While civil society is not explicitly mentioned as being involved in the drafting of the NAP, there is reference to the need to increase and strengthen engagement with civil society to address conflict prevention and protection of women. 

UN peacekeeping statistics:

At September 2023 Kazakhstan was deploying 19 personnel to UN peacekeeping missions.  All of these were male:  6 Experts on Mission, 5 Staff Officers, 8 Troops.

Women in peacekeeping:

It is difficult to know the extent to which women currently are involved in Kazakhstan’s military, police or other parts of the security sector, because the NAP contains no context or background as to why these objectives and tasks were selected.  As the NAP is relatively new (2022) it is to be hoped there will be further documents with more of this type of information when the activities listed in the NAP are implemented and monitored.  The absence of women from any deployment to UN missions, however, suggests women are significantly under-represented in Kazakhstan’s security sector, both domestically and internationally.

References and sources:

Kazakhstan National Action Plan Kazakhstan-NAP-2022-2025.pdf (wpsnaps.org)

Contribution of Uniformed Personnel to UN by Country, Mission, and Personnel Type (Sept 2023): 05-Missions Detailed By Country

United Nations Peacekeeping (Sept 2023) https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/troop-and-police-contributors