On June 10th 2021, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed a decree to improve the country’s human rights record. He emphasised the rights of citizens with disabilities and victims of human trafficking as priority areas, in addition to ensuring the right to freedom of association, expression, and ‘public order’. The decree comes on the heels of two years of heightened dissent and protests in Kazakhstan, so what are the prospects for reform in the realm of civil liberties?

There has been no progress in re-uniting Georgia with either of its separatist regions, South Ossetia or Abkhazia.