23/06/2014 Session
The President of the Kyrgyz Parliament, Asilbek Jeenbekov, and PACE President Anne Brasseur today signed the Partner for democracy status, granted by the Parliamentary Assembly in April 2014.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) decided today to grant the Kyrgyz Parliament Partner for democracy status, the third time that this status has been granted since being created in 2009. For the Assembly, obtaining this status is “an important incentive to further develop democracy, the rule of law and protection of human rights in Kyrgyzstan”, the only central Asian country to have opted for a political system based on parliamentary democracy.
In a letter from its speaker, the Kyrgyz Parliament emphasised that it shares the Council of Europe's values, as evidenced, in particular, by the abolition of the death penalty in 2007 or efforts to promote the equal representation of women and men in public and political life. PACE also welcomed the country's resolve to implement “deep constitutional, institutional, political and legal reforms in order to strengthen democracy”.