NEWS BRIEF — Kazakhstan Abolishes the Death Penalty

After a sev­en­teen-year mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, the Republic of Kazakhstan has for­mal­ly abol­ished the death penalty. 

On January 2, 2021, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev added his sig­na­ture to a bill passed by Kazakhstan’s par­lia­ment December 29 rat­i­fy­ing the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, an inter­na­tion­al treaty that com­mits sig­na­to­ry nations to abol­ish­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The coun­try sus­pend­ed all exe­cu­tions in December 2003.

Kazakhstan signed the Second Optional Protocol on September 23, 2020, in con­junc­tion with the 75^th ses­sion of the United Nations General Assembly. Tokayev said at the time that the action was a step “[t]o ful­fill a fun­da­men­tal right to life and human dig­ni­ty.” The coun­try reserved the right to impose the death penal­ty ​“for espe­cial­ly seri­ous crimes of a mil­i­tary nature in times of war.”

One per­son was on Kazahkstan’s death row at the time of abo­li­tion. Ruslan Kulekbayev, who killed eight police offi­cers and two civil­ians dur­ing a mass shoot­ing in 2016, will be resen­tenced to life impris­on­ment, which Kazahkstan autho­rized as an alter­na­tive to the death penal­ty in 2004. 

Kazakhstan is the 88^th nation to become a sig­na­to­ry or par­ty to the Second Optional Protocol. Amnesty International’s 2019 annu­al Global Report on Death Sentences and Executions report­ed that, as of December 31, 2019, more than two-thirds of the world’s coun­tries had abol­ished the death penal­ty in law or prac­tice. 142 nations had either abol­ished the death penal­ty under the country’s con­sti­tu­tion or laws or had not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in more than a decade. 56 nations retained capital punishment.