Regarding the draft law on the protection of children and minors from bullying and cyberbullying

The Ministry of Information and Social Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan, as part of the explanation of the disseminated information, informs the following.

Today a number of norms of the bill being adopted are being actively discussed in the media and social networks, however, we note that the information indicated in the publications is not exhaustive.

The draft law on the protection of children's rights, approved by the Mazhilis of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the second reading, lacks a norm on mandatory registration of branches of foreign online platforms in Kazakhstan.

The norm raised in the publications was provided for in the original version of the bill, which was considered on September 15, 2021 in the first reading of the bill. At the same time, during the plenary session, comments were made on this draft law, including on the revision of the above-mentioned norm.

So, within the framework of the meeting of the working groups of the bill, a number of norms were revised. Accordingly, the norm for opening branches or representative offices was revised and replaced with the appointment of its legal representative authorized to interact with the authorized body in the field of mass media and only for foreign social networks and messengers, access to which during the month is more than one hundred thousand users located on the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

The introduction of a norm setting a time frame for the removal of malicious content is due to the fact that bullying usually occurs in closed groups and communities, where it is almost impossible to identify such facts without having access. Everyone knows about suicidal groups that have become popular on social networks, where monitoring revealed a lot of suicidal materials against teenagers.

It took the Ministry several months to remove illegal materials from social networks. Monitoring is now recording new groups in social networks, also aimed at teenagers.

In addition, today the instructions of the authorized body are considered by social networks for a long time, respectively, the relevance of deleting information is lost and entails harm to children.

In fact, these amendments will not negatively affect ordinary users in any way, except in cases when their actions will fall under the qualification of cyberbullying.

In general, when drafting amendments, international experience was studied in detail, according to the results of which it was established that the world community is making attempts to legislate in this area. For example, some European countries have adopted norms on the legal regulation of the Internet space, taking into account the specifics of local legislation.

It should also be noted that in the countries of Europe, Asia, South and North America, work is being carried out on the legislative regulation of the Internet space, including social networks and messengers. Accordingly, the world community, realizing the importance of the problem, carries out appropriate work.

The Ministry has been actively establishing cooperation with the owners of international social networks in recent years, negotiations have been held with representatives of the company through social networks – «VKontakte», «Odnoklassniki», «Mail.ru», «Livejournal», «Facebook», «Instagram», «Tik tok», «linkendin», «Telegram» messenger, which they took this initiative on the positive side and agreed to the implementation of these norms.

Currently, foreign social networks are working to identify and appoint a legal representative.

Representatives of Internet companies generally understand proposals for cooperation in the removal of illegal content that violates the requirements of international law and the legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

In addition, it should be noted that censorship is already prohibited by the legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Accordingly, the proposed norms do not contradict the norms of international law and the current norms of the legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

In turn, the Ministry, in accordance with the novelties of the draft law, is not given the competence to prevent the free activity of social networks and messengers and restrict freedom of expression.