Kazakhstan and the 2010 chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: progress toward democracy?

Kazakhstan and the 2010 chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: progress toward democracy? Public Deposited

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Mot, Ana Maria Manuela
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies, Russian, Eurasian and East European Concentration

Abstract

The association of Kazakhstan to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a regional organization with a strong human rights component, could not induce the oil-rich Central Asian country, long since criticized for its poor human rights record, to change its behavior toward sustainable democratic progress. For Kazakhstan, the 2010 chairmanship of the OSCE represented a missed opportunity to fulfill its pledges to develop civil and political rights aimed at bringing democratic changes. There are two main reasons for this failure: on the one hand, the lack of institutional capacity of the OSCE in providing an incentive and punishment mechanism to enforce the participating states to fulfill their commitments and on the other hand a combination of external factors and internal conditions in Kazakhstan that prevent democratic development.

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