Details

Kyrgyzstan – annual report 2022

Published: September 4, 2023

Strategic Framework

Legal Policy Starting Point

Power has been increasingly concentrated in the hands of the president since the election of Sadyr Dzhaparov in January 2021 and the adoption of a new constitution in May 2021. The post of prime minister has been abolished and replaced by a chairman of the cabinet of ministers, whereby the respective head of the presidential administration simultaneously holds this position according to the constitution. The importance of parliament has also been restricted in many areas and the number of members of parliament reduced from 120 to 90.

The president’s influence on the judiciary has been extended, especially with regard to appointments of court presidents. The position of the criminal prosecution and security authorities has been increasingly strengthened, which is leading to tighter controls in all areas of the country. Heightened pressure on the media and representatives of civil society has also been observed in this context. Numerous legislative initiatives give cause for concern that the work of independent media and non-governmental organisations will be deliberately made more difficult or even made impossible in some cases going forward.

Overall Concept

IRZ is involved in the EU project “Rule of law in the Kyrgyz Republic” as a junior partner. The significant political changes have affected project activities in some cases. Pressure is also being exerted on the judiciary and investigations carried out against officials. More recently, though, the situation has improved again, at least with regard to the implications for the project.

Project funded by the European Union

EU Grant Project: “The rule of law programme in the Kyrgyz Republic – 2nd phase (ROLPRO2)”

The rule of law project in Kyrgyzstan, which was scheduled to run until the end of 2022, has entered its second phase in May 2018. In addition to several consortium partners under the leadership of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, IRZ participated in the project by dispatching two long-term experts with technical support from short-term experts.

The consortium partners shared the extensive areas of responsibility included in the following three components, whereby the German organisations GIZ and IRZ were in charge of priority tasks in the first two ­components:

Component 1: Modernisation of the legislative procedure

Component 2: Support for the judiciary/the court system

Component 3: Support for the Public Prosecutor’s Office

Current projects were moved forward and finalised in the “Modernisation of the legislative procedure” component. For example, the database of laws with free access and the database for monitoring the implementation of laws were further developed for the Ministry of Justice. Digital support for the legislative procedure was also expanded further. The Ministry of Justice received project support in the regular provision of training courses on the legislative procedure, focusing on recently appointed civil servants. In this context, two summer schools on legislation techniques were held for civil servants at the Ministry of Justice. Likewise, other training courses were held for the new unified website of the Ministry of Justice, where ­citizens, associations and other representatives of civil society can comment on draft laws and submit proposals.

In the component to support the judiciary/court system, the leadership training programme for newly appointed court presidents – which was co-developed by the project – was revised to address IT use in the judiciary, corruption prevention and gender-based violence. The corresponding manual and the training module were revised and expanded to include new areas in 2022. The project made a significant contribution to developing a new model for the evaluation of judges. Progress was also made in implementing the new business review model, which was adopted in 2021 as the third priority area in this component to review court business. Individual reviews have been conducted at the courts, but nationwide implementation and a systematic analysis of the findings remain to be addressed.

Key milestones were reached in the e-justice component. The Kyrgyz judiciary assumed full responsibility for ongoing development and optimisation following a positive conclusion of the independent IT audit of the electronic internal court record and information system “AIS Suda” end of 2021. All 73 courts belonging to the three instances were then connected to this electronic system thanks to increased development efforts with the support of the project. Integration of “AIS Suda” with other electronic state registers by means of a unified national eService portal was implemented as well, along with improvements to court statistics now delivering real-time case data nationwide. The automatic case allocation system, now a mandatory feature for all courts using “AIS Suda”, is attracting particular attention from both inside and outside the judiciary. Given the absence of a fixed business allocation system, this is the first time that this task has been successfully taken away from the court presidents in Kyrgyzstan and instead entrusted to an algorithm that was co-developed by the judiciary itself. “AIS Suda” will be updated continuously going forward. Its impact is set to expand beyond the judiciary in the near future with the launch of the new justice portal. There are plans to enable electronic legal transactions between citizens and the judiciary, in addition to access to court decisions.

Outlook

The project came to an end on 31 December 2022 and the European Union does not plan to implement an immediate follow-up project.

Please find the Annual Report 2022 here: Media centre – Annual reports.