A/HRC/46/57/Add.1 IX. Conclusions and recommendations 99. The Special Rapporteur wishes to reiterate that the Government of Kyrgyzstan has taken commendable measures towards addressing a range of human rights concerns, including ratification of United Nations treaties and collaboration with international human rights procedures, and has taken steps to tackle discrimination, hate speech and hate crimes against minorities and other vulnerable groups. Kyrgyzstan should also be congratulated for its efforts in many areas, including in eliminating statelessness in the country, and for its collaboration and willingness to engage with members of the international community. 100. As is always the case, however, there are improvements and changes needed where there are challenges to be met, such as in the case of gaps or weak implementation, particularly in relation to the rights, protection and participation of minorities. 101. The Special Rapporteur calls upon the Government of Kyrgyzstan to adopt a comprehensive anti-discrimination framework that would address all grounds of discrimination, as well as more comprehensive legislation to protect the human rights of minorities. 102. The Special Rapporteur recommends that article 7 of the Law on the Ombudsperson of the Kyrgyz Republic be modified to remove the political vulnerability of his or her institutional position, including the possibility of “premature dismissal” by Parliament. More broadly, he also recommends that the mandate and operations of the Office of the Ombudsperson be reviewed and amended so as to comply with the Paris Principles, and that its institutional resources be guaranteed according to a multi-year funding formula so as to be assured the necessary resources to discharge its role. The Government of Kyrgyzstan should also take effective measures to raise awareness about the work of the Office and about the mechanism available to minorities for complaints of ethnic, religious or linguistic discrimination. 103. The Special Rapporteur invites the Government to review current legislation which allows citizenship to be withdrawn from persons suspected of being involved in a wide or ambiguous category of terrorism. “Citizenship stripping” can lead to statelessness, affecting particularly certain minorities, and possibly constitute breaches of the international obligations of Kyrgyzstan. 104. The Special Rapporteur urges the Government of Kyrgyzstan to reverse the decrease in the use of minority languages in education, including as medium of instruction, and to ensure equal access to quality education for all children in the country, including members of minorities. In this regard, Mugat children must be guaranteed equal access to public schooling. The number of public schools and educational programmes that use Uzbek as the language of instruction must be increased, in order to properly reflect large or concentrated minority populations. The Government must ensure appropriate and proportional budgetary resources for the provision of quality mother tongue education, while providing effective teaching of Kyrgyz as a second language, and re-establish university admission tests in the Uzbek language. A plan to redefine, celebrate and include the languages of minorities in public education as languages of education where they are concentrated should be adopted so that these languages are not subjected to continual reductions or pressure to assimilate, as one step in promoting an even more inclusive, tolerant society through education. 105. The Special Rapporteur strongly recommends that the Government collect, compile, analyse, publish and disseminate reliable statistical data, in full respect of the relevant data protection standards, disaggregated along ethnic, linguistic and religious lines, on the basis of voluntary self-identification, in order to have reliable tools for the development of more effective policies and measures for the protection and promotion of the human rights of minorities, and that these data in the future be made freely available to United Nations missions. 17