Human Rights Education for the Police

Although the line authority for higher education in Kazakhstan did not veto the objectives nor the timeline for activities during the project’s initial consultations, whether human rights training will become a mandatory discipline for Kazakhstan’s police academies was still vague at the time of the evaluation. The grantee should have maintained an ongoing communication and coordination with the Ministry of Education to secure its approval.

The Department for Educational and Methodological Matters of the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Kazakhstan – who were a partner of the grantee – submitted an application for approval of the new, mandatory, human rights training for police academies to the Ministry of Education upon completion of the Human Rights Training manual drafting process. At the time of the evaluation visit still no launch date had been secured and almost 2,600 training manual copies were on the shelf. With plans for future training, review and production of new training manuals yet to be confirmed – to keep pace with national legislative developments – there is a serious risk that knowledge will be lost and that existing course material becomes out of date.

The workshops and study tours were very effective at awareness raising among the police educators and for one participant were “an eye opener which took the staff of the faculties out of their academic isolation”. Participants left the training owning the idea that dedicated human rights courses for the police must be held in Kazakhstan.