Meeting of IAWG in the Peace area

Meeting of the Interagency Working Group in the Peace area

On November 12, a meeting of the Interagency Working Group (hereinafter - the IAWG) in the Peace area of the Coordination Council for Sustainable Development Goals was held.

The meeting was opened by Bolat Tlepov, the Vice-Minister of Information and Public Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

There were two items on the agenda:

1.    Discussion of the results of the Sustainable Development Report 2021 on the SDG 16 indicators in the Peace area;

2.    On the preparation of the Second Voluntary National Review on the Sustainable Development Goals.

Danna Gafyatullina, the expert of the Secretariat for SDGs of Economic Research Institute JSC (ERI), spoke on the first item, noting that Kazakhstan is in the red zone for SDG 16 "Safe and peaceful society, strong institutions, justice", which entails the risk of not achieving the goals.

According to her, the following critical issues for a number of years remain:

— high murder rate (5.1 murders per 100 thousand population);

— corruption in the country (at the same time, compared to last year, the indicator improved 34 to 38 points);

— lack of freedom of speech in the media (compared to last year, the indicator worsened 52.8 to 54.1 points).

Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Anti-Corruption Agency and the Ministry of Information and Public Development provided information on the current situation and the ongoing work on problematic indicators.

Thus, Kanat Nurmagambetov, the Deputy Head of the Criminal Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, noted that in order to reduce the prevalence of all forms of violence and reduce mortality rates from this phenomenon, the Anti-the Homicide Roadmap of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan 2021-2023, approved in December 2020, is under implemention.

Ualikhan Kuramayev, the Senior Officer of the Anti-Corruption Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan (hereinafter- the Agency) informed about the work to reduce the level of corruption. The Agency has established a project office Adaldyq alany, which operates in the Prevention and Combating Corruption. The Agency also conducts extensive outreach work. Within the framework of projects Adal komek, Antikor.Live and information and educational headquarters there were more than 20 thousand online and offline events held.

Zarina Bayanova, the Director of the Department of State Media Policy, spoke about how journalists are regulated in Kazakhstan. Two provisions of the Criminal Code, Articles 174 and 274, imposing criminal liability, limit media activities. By analogy with the article "On Libel", work is underway to decriminalize the following articles in the Administrative Code (Code of Administrative Offenses: "Dissemination of Deliberately False Information" and "Inciting Social, National, Tribal, Racial, Class or Religious Hatred." In addition, work is underway to improve the Media Law and to bring it in line with international media standards.

The second item was addressed by Altyngul Utebayeva, the Deputy Director of the ERI Secretariat for the SDGs, who focused on the step up efforts on the voluntary national review plan, which will be presented at the High-Level Political Forum in 2022.

But this year, each country has the opportunity to identify other priority goals for the presentation. Two options are proposed for this: to take National Priorities as a basis or to involve all stakeholders to select priority goals.

Following the results of the meeting of the IAWG in Peace, the protocol resolution was made in the following areas:

— systematically monitor the results of the SDG Index rating;

— step up efforts to localize the SDGs with the assistance of local executive authorities, NGOs and businesses;

— prepare an Action Plan for 2022;