A/HRC/46/57/Add.1 IV. Legal and institutional framework A. International framework 10. Kyrgyzstan is a party to most core human rights treaties and regularly submits national periodic reports to the monitoring bodies. However, it has not signed or ratified the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, nor has it ratified the complaints procedures under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The most recent ratification was of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, on 16 May 2019. 11. The Government of Kyrgyzstan should be commended for its generally positive record with regard to its engagement with international human rights institutions and mechanisms, including, specifically, special procedure mandate holders. Recent requests from the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and the Special Rapporteur on minority issues have all been accepted, and the visits completed. B. Constitutional, legislative and institutional framework 12. The Constitution of Kyrgyzstan has a number of human rights provisions, including article 16 of the Constitution which guarantees the right to equality and non-discrimination on many grounds, including sex, race, language, ethnicity, disability, age, belief, political and other convictions, education, property and other status. V. Positive steps and developments 13. Kyrgyzstan has made significant strides in the field of human rights since it transitioned to democracy after 1991. It has in more recent years made legislative, institutional and policy progress in areas such as human rights protection and gender equality, including its adoption of the 2012–2020 national strategy for achieving gender equality and of the 2018–2020 national plan of action for achieving gender equality. It has also more recently put into place a 2019–2022 national human rights action plan, and a 2019–2022 national action plan on the implementation of the recommendations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. 14. There have also been initiatives such as a programme on multilingual education for 2017–2030, which, though praiseworthy in its intention to reflect the country’s rich cultural and linguistic diversity, needs to be reconsidered and readjusted, as will be discussed later in the present report. 15. It is important to point out the significant efforts and progress that have been made in the country in relation to statelessness – one of the most serious global human rights challenges, which principally affects minorities. Worldwide, statelessness is mainly a minority issue, since more than 75 per cent of the world’s estimated 10 million stateless people are members of minority groups. 16. In 2019, Kyrgyzstan became the first country to largely end statelessness for all practical purposes – with one exception. The concrete measures undertaken by the Government to eradicate statelessness include the State Registration Agency’s community outreach initiatives to try to ensure that everyone in Kyrgyzstan has access to civil registration and official documents, as well as a policy of granting automatic citizenship to children born in the country who would otherwise be stateless. In partnership with civil society, the State Registration Agency has implemented a countrywide campaign that led to the identification of 79,000 people who were provided with identification cards, and, more specifically, a campaign focusing on members of the Mugat minority who traditionally might not have any identity papers or even birth registration. Civil society organizations were part of these 4