NUR-SULTAN -- The upper chamber of Kazakh’s parliament has approved a bill on abolishing the death penalty in the Central Asian nation.
The Senate's December 23 approval of the bill comes almost a year after President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev signed off on parliamentary ratification of a UN human rights protocol aimed at abolishing the death penalty worldwide.
Kazakhstan instituted an indefinite moratorium on capital punishment in 2004 but retained the death penalty for terrorism-related offenses, including plotting an assassination of the nation's first President Nursultan Nazarbaev.
In 2016, the death penalty was imposed on a man who was convicted of a mass shooting in Almaty.
Ruslan Kulekbaev had been the only person on death row in Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan's lower chamber, the Mazhilis, approved the bill on December 8.
Russia, Belarus, and Tajikistan are now the only three countries in Europe and Central Asia that haven’t signed or ratified the UN's Second Optional Protocol To The International Covenant On Civil And Political Rights. Belarus is the only country in the region that still carries out executions.