Briefing paper for President of the European Council and President of the European Commission ahead of their meeting with President of Kazakhstan on 30 March 2016

Briefing paper for Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, and Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, ahead of their meeting with President Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazakhstan on 30 March 2016

The authorities of Kazakhstan have implemented some significant positive steps in recent years in the area of torture prevention and eradication, but we are concerned that torture and other forms of ill-treatment are continuing and impunity is still the norm. In 2015, the NGO Coalition against Torture in Kazakhstan registered over 70 new cases of men, women and children who allege to have been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment. In its November 2014 Concluding Observations the Committee against Torture pointed out that less than two per cent of torture complaints led to prosecutions and we believe that the situation remains largely unchanged.

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