On November 12, the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) elected Kazakhstan for the first time to the UN Human Rights Council, for the 2013–2015 term, with 183 of 193 member states voting affirmatively. Various international human rights groups openly lobbied against... MORE

In early September, the United Nations once again warned of the growing risks of another global food crisis, following particularly bad harvests in the United States, Russia, Ukraine and other grain-producing countries. These negative developments have already led to a rapid erosion of grain reserves... MORE

Earlier this month, a delegation from the Chinese National Defense University made an official visit to Kazakhstan, marking yet another high-profile exchange between the two countries’ defense establishments. According to Major General Yedil Urazov, the head of the military education and science department in Kazakhstan’s... MORE

The latest World Bank (WB)/International Finance Corporation (IFC) Doing Business 2013 (DB) report reveals remarkable progress achieved by Kazakhstan in creating a business-friendly environment: it ranks 49th out of 185 countries surveyed. Especially impressive is the country’s improvement in one of the key indicators—ease of... MORE

The latest meeting of the Kazakhstani-US Energy Partnership Commission took place in Washington on October 15–16, 2012. The two delegation heads, Kazakhstan’s Minister of Oil and Gas Sauat Mynbayev and the US Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman, signed a Joint Action Plan for 2012–2013... MORE

When President Nursultan Nazarbayev visited Turkey earlier this month (see EDM, October 19), one of the issues he discussed with Turkish officials was the two countries’ joint leadership of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA). Nazarbayev initiated the creation of... MORE

On the day preceding Nursultan Nazarbayev’s latest visit to Moscow (see EDM, October 19), the widely-read Russian daily newspaper Izvestia published an interview previously obtained from an unidentified high-level official of the Russian Space Agency (Roskosmos). In his conversation with journalists, the official claimed that... MORE

On October 10–11, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev conducted an official visit to Turkey, which focused on deepening economic ties between these already strong partners. The main event was the first meeting of the High Level Strategic Cooperation Council, which was established after Prime Minister Recep... MORE

On October 9 and 10, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev paid an official visit to Moscow to celebrate 20 years of good-neighborly relations with its northern neighbor. Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, had recently visited Kazakhstan earlier in mid-September. The majority of issues discussed during the bilateral... MORE

Kazakhstan has hosted the first Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) peacekeeping exercise on October 8–17, as the organization positions itself to play a more active role in defense and security among its members. The size of the forces, scenario for the exercise, as well as... MORE