The requirement for transparency, long debated in Kazakh society, will now be enshrined at the level of the Fundamental Law. The new Constitution establishes the obligation for non-commercial organisations (NGOs) to disclose full information about foreign funding — including the movement of funds and data on assets. The rule covers receipts from foreign states, international structures, foreign legal entities and individuals, as well as stateless persons.
WHAT EXACTLY IS CHANGING
Until now, Kazakhstan operated a register of recipients of foreign funding; however, according to MPs' assessments, its content covered a limited amount of information.
According to the State Revenue Committee (SRC), in the second half of 2025, foreign funding was received by 155 individuals and legal entities. The total volume of receipts, including both monetary funds and other property, exceeded 12 billion tenge.
For comparison, in the first half of the same year, foreign support was received by 186 entities. However, data on the amounts, sources of funding, and directions of expenditure were not publicly available.
The new constitutional norm requires the disclosure of the full picture: both funds received and assets acquired with them are subject to publication. This is fundamentally different from the previous system, which recorded the mere fact of receiving foreign funding, but not its content.
WHERE DID THIS NORM COME FROM
The issue of foreign funding for the non-profit sector has been raised in Kazakhstan for several years. At the end of 2025, the head of the People's Party of Kazakhstan (PPK) faction, Magerram Magerramov, sent a parliamentary inquiry to Minister of Culture and Information Aida Balayeva, demanding that the sources and volumes of foreign funds flowing into public organisations and media be disclosed.
The inquiry, in particular, described the mechanism of so-called secondary grants: funds go to branches of foreign organisations and are then redistributed within the country — and at the level of the final recipients, their origin effectively disappears from the scope of public oversight.
Concurrently, data on the scale of such flows were voiced in the public domain. According to estimates from a number of media outlets, the total volume of foreign receipts into Kazakhstan's public and media sphere could reach around $60 million per year. Among the major donors mentioned was the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which has directed more than $150 million to Kazakhstan in the form of grants over the last ten years.
HOW THE NORM IS EMBEDDED IN THE CONSTITUTION
The transparency requirement is enshrined in the section on the foundations of the constitutional order — that is, in the part of the document which defines the fundamental principles of the state structure. This means that the obligation to disclose data on foreign funding acquires the character of a constitutional obligation, rather than a provision of sector-specific legislation which is easier to change or circumvent.
At the same time, the Constitution does not prohibit non-commercial organisations from receiving foreign funding. It is precisely about transparency: citizens gain the opportunity to independently assess the activities of foundations and form their own opinion, having at their disposal data on the sources of their funding.