UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. The government demonstrated increasing efforts compared to the previous reporting period; therefore Kazakhstan remained on Tier 2. The government demonstrated increasing efforts by expanding protection of victims by opening seven new shelters for Kazakhstani human trafficking victims, increasing funding for shelter and victim assistance for Kazakhstani victims, and hosting awareness-raising events.
However, the government did not meet the minimum standards in several key areas. Efforts to identify and protect foreign victims remained inadequate. Foreign victims could receive comprehensive assistance if they participated in criminal investigations; victims who chose not to participate in these proceedings were ineligible for services and had no legal alternatives to removal.
NGOs continued to report allegations of police officers' complicity in human trafficking. While the government convicted two police officers complicit in trafficking crimes, there remained few investigations or prosecutions of police or other government officials suspected of complicity.
Legislative norms allowed for alleged traffickers to pay a settlement to victims to withdraw their criminal cases. Articles , , , and of the penal code criminalized all forms of trafficking. However, inconsistent with the definition of trafficking under international law, the law did not include force, fraud, or coercion as an essential element of the crime, but rather considered it an aggravated circumstance.
The law prescribed penalties of three to five years imprisonment for adult trafficking and five to seven years imprisonment for child trafficking; the penalties could be increased to up to 15 years imprisonment under aggravated circumstances. These penalties were sufficiently stringent and, with respect to sex trafficking, commensurate with those prescribed for other serious crimes, such as rape. Article 68 of the criminal code allowed defendants to pursue settlements by paying monetary compensation to the victim in exchange for having the criminal case withdrawn; while this option was not available in cases involving sex crimes against minors, it was an option in cases involving other forms of trafficking under article , part 1; in , this article was not applied in any trafficking cases.
