A/HRC/45/13/Add.2 Annex Report of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances on its visit to Kyrgyzstan I. Introduction 1. The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, represented by Bernard Duhaime (Chair) and Henrikas Mickevicius (member), conducted an official visit to Kyrgyzstan from 25 to 30 June 2019. 2. The Working Group thanks the Government of Kyrgyzstan for inviting it to visit the country and for the efforts made before and during the visit to facilitate its smooth undertaking. Moreover, it appreciates the Government’s openness to engage with the Working Group, noting that virtually all the meetings that it requested were accommodated. 3. The Working Group also thanks the Regional Office for Central Asia of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights for the continuous support it provided during the visit. 4. The Working Group visited Bishkek and Osh. In Bishkek, it met, inter alia, with representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the State Border Guard Service, the State Registration Service, the Ministry of Justice, the State Migration Service, the State Committee for Defence Affairs, the Coordination Council on Human Rights, the Office of the President, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the State Committee for National Security, the State Service for the Execution of Punishment, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ombudsman’s Office and the national preventive mechanism. In Osh, the Working Group met with municipal and regional representatives of the State Committee for National Security, the police department and the Prosecutor’s Office, as well as with the Head of the pretrial detention facility. 5. The Working Group also met with representatives of civil society, including nongovernmental organizations, human rights defenders and lawyers, all of whom it thanks. 6. The present report covers developments that occurred between June 2019, when the visit was conducted, and the date of its submission to the Human Rights Council. The Working Group thanks the Government of Kyrgyzstan for its comments on the report, received on 4 August 2020. The Working Group hopes that a dialogue can continue with a view to implementing all the recommendations contained in section VII of the present report. II. General background and situation on enforced disappearances 7. Since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Kyrgyzstan has undergone significant developments marked by two popular uprisings against sitting State presidents, in 2005 and 2010. The adoption of a progressive Constitution in 2010, which guarantees equal rights to all Kyrgyz without distinction of sex, race, language, ethnicity, age or disability, ushered in a process of consolidating democratic institutions and the rule of law. 8. In the southern parts of Kyrgyzstan, decades of inequitable distribution of wealth and pervasive institutional discrimination, mainly affecting the Uzbek minority, have contributed to long-standing grievances and tensions. This led to an outburst of inter-ethnic violence in June 2010 that claimed hundreds of lives and resulted in massive displacement and destruction of property. 9. The democratic gains made over the years have been weakened by shortcomings in the independence and capacity of the judiciary and in the accountability of law enforcement. Human rights defenders and independent media outlets critical of the Government have been under significant pressure, which has in turn shrunk the civic space. 3