A/HRC/13/23/Add.1 participation of members of minorities in public life, especially with regard to decisions that affect them. The independent expert applies a gender perspective in all areas of her work. 8. Each section below contains a summary of legislation, views expressed by senior governmental sources and the views of civil society actors, community members and others. II. Historical context 9. A brief history of Kazakhstan and the forces that have shaped its demographic composition is vital to understanding the contemporary situation of minorities and legislation, policies and practice. The following is drawn from public historical and governmental sources. 10. For most of its history the territory of modern-day Kazakhstan was inhabited by nomadic tribes. The Kazakhs emerged as a distinct group in the sixteenth century, divided into three unions of tribes or clans claiming common ancestry and shared territory. Russia began advancing into the Kazakh steppe in the eighteenth century; by the mid-nineteenth century the territory was subsumed into the Russian Empire. The Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic became part of the USSR in 1936. 11. Major demographic changes and the influx of a variety of different ethnic groups through both forced and voluntary migration marked the subsequent period. Under Soviet collectivization policies, intensive agricultural production entailed forced settlement of nomads and led to the death of most of their cattle – their only source of livelihood. Subsequent famine is estimated to have caused the deaths of 25 to 40 per cent of ethnic Kazakhs. 12. Between 1937 and 1949, Kazakhstan became the destination for huge deported populations whose loyalty to the Soviet Union was questioned. These included over 95,000 ethnic Koreans, 444,000 Volga Germans and nearly 480,000 Chechens and Ingush, as well as smaller numbers of numerous other nationalities. The “Virgin Lands” campaign of 1954–1956 opened up vast tracts of agricultural land and led to the further arrival of some 640,000 settlers from Slavic and Baltic republics.1 13. By 1959, the census revealed that ethnic Kazakhs made up only 29 per cent of the population, while the Slavic and European nationalities represented nearly 60 per cent. The influx of Russian speakers, Russian culture and Soviet values, as well as of Stalin era purges of Kazakh intelligentsia, all served to turn Kazakhs into the most linguistically and culturally Russified of all Central Asian ethnic groups. Census statistics from 1989 revealed that 64 per cent of Kazakhs claimed fluency in Russian; in contrast, only 1 per cent of Russians and Slavs had proficiency in Kazakh. In urban Russophone settings, scholars described a dramatic loss of their native language among ethnic Kazakhs, with some 40 per cent unable to speak Kazakh. 14. Kazakhstan declared independence on 16 December 1991, the last Soviet republic to do so. It was the only newly independent State in which the titular ethnic group, the Kazakhs, did not constitute a majority. Independence brought radical demographic changes, including the mass emigration of Russians, Slavs and Germans. Overall, nearly 2 million Russian speakers left Kazakhstan in the decade to 2004. In addition, high birth rates among 1 6 Dave, Bhavna, “Minorities and participation in public life: Kazakhstan”. Paper submitted to the Working Group on Minorities at its ninth session. GE.10-10602