FREE
LEGAL AID IN KAZAKHSTAN
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The Convention on Legal Aid and Legal Relations in Civil, Family and Criminal Cases
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sets forth that “nationals
of each Contracting Party and persons resident in it […] use free legal aid on the same conditions as its own
nationals.”
The Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers
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proclaim the right of any person “to call upon the assistance
of a lawyer of their choice to protect and establish their rights and to defend them in all stages of criminal
proceedings.”
The Convention on the Rights of the Child
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obliges the states to ensure that “every child deprived of his or her
liberty shall have the right to prompt access to legal and other appropriate assistance,” and that every child
alleged as or accused of having infringed the penal law has the guarantees “to have legal or other appropriate
assistance in the preparation and presentation of his or her defense” (Articles 37(d) and 40.2(b)).
The UN Commission on Human Rights urges all the states to guarantee that “all persons brought to trial before
courts or tribunals under their authority have the right to be tried in their presence and to defend themselves
in person or through legal assistance of their own choosing” (Clause 4 of the Resolution on the Integrity of
the
Judicial System
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).
Clause 2 of the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of
Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian
Law
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sets forth that the states must ensure that their domestic law is consistent with their international
legal obligations by, inter alia, “adopting appropriate and effective legislative and administrative procedures
and other appropriate measures that provide fair, effective and prompt access to justice,” and make available
“adequate, effective, prompt and appropriate remedies.”
The right to competent legal aid is provided for by other international statutes as well. Some of them consider
the right to legal aid to include the right to legal aid subsidized by the state. In international documents, this
right is deemed the most important guarantee of the right to access to justice and fair trial, which incorporates
two components: (1) the right to receive free legal aid; and (2) the state’s duty to provide and finance it.
It ought to be noted that international documents provide for the right to such aid for not only suspects, the
persons accused, defendants, or the convicted persons, but for other groups as well, including victims of crime,
indigent people, and certain social groups (senior citizens, disabled persons, refugees, displaced persons,
stateless persons, patients at mental health, psycho-neurological, and medical-and-social institutions, foreign
nationals in rehabilitation centers, and certain other people).
Article 14.3(d) of the ICCPR sets forth that, everyone charged with a criminal offence has the right “to be
informed, if he does not have legal assistance, of this right; and to have legal assistance assigned to him, in
any case where the interests of justice so require, and without payment by him in any such case if he does not
have sufficient means to pay for it.”
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Signed on October 7, 2002 // Bulletin of the International Treaties. 1995, #2.
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Adopted by the Eighth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, August 27 to September 7, 1990
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Adopted by General Assembly resolution 44/25 of November 20, 1989.
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Adopted by the Commission on Human Rights at the 58
th
session in April, 2002.
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UN Guidelines dated July 25, 2009 (D).