This article is part of our special report A busy EU-Kazakhstan agenda.
Kazakhstan continues to rejuvenate its public administration in a drive to keep talented youth at home and achieve two major goals: modernising the Central Asian country and avoiding brain drain.
Kazakhstan’s capital Nur-Sultan prepares for the second round of selection for the president’s elite programme designed to inject fresh talent into public administration as the country presses on with reforms despite the pandemic.
The second intake of the Presidential Youth Personnel Reserve should address Kazakhstan’s emigration problem. According to the Central Asian Bureau for Analytical Reporting, 366,000 people have left the 19-million post-Soviet country in the past ten years, most of them educated professionals.
10 March 2021
Mushfig Bayram, Forum 18
Prison authorities have repeatedly denied seriously ill Jehovah s Witness prisoner of conscience Shamil Khakimov the specialised medical treatment he needs. The 70-year-old has a bad leg which smells like rotten meat and has had coronavirus symptoms. The UN Mandela Rules for prisoners treatment say medical decisions must be made by doctors, and the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Committee against Torture have both called for Tajikistan to implement the Rules. Yet the prison governor told Forum 18: I do not know what the Mandela Rules are. A Supreme Court official similarly denied knowledge of the Mandela Rules.