Kazakhstan: Joint submission to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, 93rd Session, on gender-based violence against women and girls

This submission highlights ongoing gaps in Kazakhstan’s legal and institutional response to gender-based violence against women and girls. It documents that, despite the Committee’s 2019 recommendations, Article 120 of the Criminal Code still defines rape in terms of violence, threats or the victim’s “helpless state” rather than the absence of freely given consent. It also sets out how Article 122 is applied in ways that imply that a girl under 16 consented to sexual acts with an adult, and how the exceptions in the Code on Marriage and Family continue to permit marriage from the age of 16.

The submission further highlights that Kazakhstan has not adopted comprehensive, standalone and gender-sensitive legislation on domestic violence following the withdrawal of a 2019 bill after campaigning by anti-rights groups. It notes that femicide is not criminalised as a distinct offence or as an aggravating circumstance, and that there is still no comprehensive legislation addressing sexual harassment or technology-facilitated gender-based violence. It also documents how Article 32 of the Criminal Procedure Code makes the prosecution of many forms of gender-based violence against women and girls dependent on the victim’s complaint, while reconciliation is still available.

On women and girls with disabilities, the submission details intersecting gender and disability discrimination, the absence of data disaggregated simultaneously by sex and disability, reported cases of forced contraception, sterilisation and abortion, and violence in residential and psychiatric institutions. It sets out how rules on forensic assessment of testimony (Articles 271 and 115 of the Code of Criminal Procedure) can exclude the evidence of women with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities altogether, and how the absence of procedural accommodations denies them access to justice.