A/HRC/46/57/Add.1 efforts, most notably Ferghana Valley Lawyers Without Borders and its director, Azizbek Ashurov, who won the Nansen Refugee Award in October 2019 for their contribution. 17. Kyrgyzstan is therefore a notable example of good practices to eliminate statelessness, which are particularly important in light of the serious consequences of statelessness for millions of members of minorities in other regions. 18. Kyrgyzstan must be commended for these and other progressive measures, but there are areas of concern which need to be recognized and addressed to ensure the full realization of the human rights of minorities in a number of areas, particularly in relation to specific minorities, such as the Uzbeks, Mugats and others. VI. Areas of concern and for further improvement in the recognition, protection and implementation of the human rights of minorities 19. The Special Rapporteur is of the view that the Government of Kyrgyzstan has taken significant steps towards a fairly comprehensive strategy and set of initiatives to tackle discrimination, hate speech and hate crimes against minorities and other vulnerable groups. 20. The Special Rapporteur urges additional improvements and changes in areas where there are gaps, or where the implementation is much weaker or even inconsistent with the country’s international human rights obligations, particularly in relation to the rights of minorities. A. Comprehensive human rights legislation 21. While Kyrgyzstan has developed a human rights action plan based on recommendations from international human rights mechanisms which includes a specific section on minority issues, the plan deals mainly with awareness-raising activities such as on combating racial discrimination and intolerance as provided for in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. It does not directly address issues such as education in minority languages or the underrepresentation of minorities in many or most areas of public life. 22. There are therefore a number of continuing gaps or omissions which raise concerns that have been expressed previously by other United Nations human rights mechanisms, including the absence of comprehensive human rights legislation – and especially of an antidiscrimination law – to ensure the implementation of constitutionally entrenched human rights and of the international obligations of Kyrgyzstan. 3 While anti-discrimination provisions are included in the Criminal Code and the Labour Code, there are no such provisions in other key areas, such as education and health care, among others. These lacunae can be of particular significance for minorities. B. Office of the Ombudsperson and the Paris Principles 23. The Office of the Ombudsperson (Akyikatchy) receives complaints about human rights violations, including from members of minorities, such as alleged police mistreatment, discrimination in the provision of public services, and hate speech and hate crime, and also with regard to registration of religious organizations. Despite the important work of the Ombudsperson, his office faces challenges in the areas of human and financial resources. His institutional position also appears to be vulnerable, due to specific provisions contained in the Law on the Ombudsperson of the Kyrgyz Republic, such as article 7 of the law which provides for “premature dismissal” of the Ombudsperson in the case of disapproval by the Parliament (Jogorku Kenesh) of his Office’s report on the human rights situation in the country. 3 See A/HRC/44/4, in particular the recommendations contained in subparas. 140.208–140.215. 5