Just in the past decade, Kazakhstan’s lawmakers have passed several legislative hurdles and control mechanisms against civil society, especially targeting those organizations that receive foreign funding, informally called “foreign agents”. A recent much-criticized decision by Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Finance to publish a (partial) list of foreign-funded entities in Kazakhstan has reignited the stigma surrounding such civil society groups. Legislation of this kind hinders, threatens, and punishes civil society. That foreign agent-style laws have been proposed and passed in several of Kazakhstan’s neighboring countries, including Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, shows that this is a concerning and ongoing regional trend.