This chapter first explains human rights as a concept of public law and briefly analyzes its legal nature. Second, the chapter outlines the particular challenges this concept presents for the Central Asian countries and their formal education sectors. Treating the concept as a predominantly legal phenomenon, it considers how human rights play into key ideas such as the Rechtsstaat and its crucial elements: rule of law and civil society. Further, it scrutinizes the role of human rights education (HRE) and knowledge dissemination in raising legal awareness and promoting legal culture among the population, a particularly relevant problem for the Central Asian countries. The chapter then proceeds to address issues of disseminating knowledge on human rights, primarily in the formal education sectors and hence public (but also private) higher education institutions that impart legal knowledge in the four main Central Asian countries. Challenges to providing effective formal education in human rights are reviewed, along with local contextual factors in the region (cultural, social, historical, economic, and political) contributing to those challenges. Understanding such factors facilitates the development of potentially useful suggestions and solutions to address these challenges. The latest overview of the current human rights education programs in Central Asia is a crucial basis for this brief analysis. Lastly, the chapter argues in favor of applying a systemic, principled, as well as contextualized approach to improving human rights education efforts in the region.
Crimes against humanity constitute mass crimes against civilian populations and represent the so-called ‘core crimes’ of international criminal law. Central Asian states have so far abstained from incorporating the corpus delicti of crimes against humanity in their criminal legislation. After a short overview of the current status of crimes against humanity under international law, this article analyses the domestic legislation of five Central Asian countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. It looks at current Criminal Codes to suggest how those could be strengthened by the inclusion of properly formulated crimes against humanity dispositions, taking into account the peculiarities of these national legal systems. The article also offers a brief review of possible factors which might have precluded the states in question from proper implementation. It argues in favour of such implementation, delineating its legal benefits and potential advantages for both State Parties and non-State Parties to the Rome Statute in Central Asia.
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