Workplace harassment: a legal perspective
Together with lawyers from 17 countries, including AEQUITAS Partner and Head of Labor & Employment, Yuliya humachenko, ALRUD Law Firm prepared an article on workplace harassment and a legal perspective from Russia and beyond.
There have not been any large-scale surveys of workplace harassment in Kazakhstan. Nevertheless, limited statistics confirms this problem exists. According to a small-scale survey in Almaty, 56% of women have faced sexual harassment in a workplace from superiors (Valentina Sakhnenko, August 2017, in Russian).
Under the Kazakhstan Constitution, everyone is guaranteed personal security and freedom, health, honour, dignity, and individual liberty and the prohibition, suppression and punishment of infringement on life. This includes violence towards women, sexual harassment and human trafficking. However, Kazakhstan legislation does not include legal concepts such as ‘sexual harassment’ or a ‘sexual harassment ban’. According to existing practice, sexual harassment does not meet the qualifying criteria for existing criminal offences (e.g. rape or sexual coercion). Since independence, Kazakhstan courts have issued no more than 25 judgments for sexual coercion, and none of them led to imprisonment. It is extremely difficult for a victim to seek punishment for sexual coercion from a harasser on whom the victim is dependent (superior officer, coworker, teacher or business partner): s/he must collect the evidence and apply to court.
Please read the whole article here.