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Kazakhstan

Country profile

Kazakhstan, formally part of the Soviet Union, has an emerging economy with massive oil revenues but also shocking poverty.

In spite of the billions brought in by oil, and a special fund set up with oil revenues, one-third of the population live below the UN's US$1 per day absolute poverty line.

Kazakhstan is a unitary state with a presidential form of government. The first and current President of the Republic of Kazakhstan – Nursultan Nazarbayev – won the first ever, democratic Presidential Elections in the history of Kazakhstan on December 1, 1991.

DanChurchAid and partners see the Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan involvement very much in terms of a regional approach. Much of what can be said about Kazakhstan goes for Kyrgyzstan as well. But there are differences. Kyrgyzstan has won the reputation of being more democratic. In reality the access for people to exercise their right to political participation is not much better than in Kazakhstan. And even if Kazakhstan is a poor country it still has far more resources than Kyrgyzstan, and this creates a wider gap between rich and poor than the scarcity of Kyrgyz resources readily allows for.

More about Kazakhstan