General Information About Document Recognition Between Canada And Kazakhstan

In accordance with Republic of Kazakhstan Law dated 30 December 1999 # 11-II, Kazakhstan has joined the Hague Convention "Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents" (05/10/1961). This Convention became effective for Kazakhstan on 30 January 2001.

Thus, for official documents coming from signatories, apostilles can be stamped on documents instead of passing through all steps of consular legalization by the Ministry of External Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan, its diplomatic representations and consular offices of Kazakhstan accredited in the countries who ratified this Convention. Currently, 91 countries have joined this Convention.

Republic of Kazakhstan also ratified the so called Kishinev Convention on Legal Help and Legal Relations on Civil, Family and Criminal Matters dated 07/01/2002 (intended to replace the similar Minsk Convention of 1993).

Unfortunately, Canada is not a signatory to the Hague Convention to abolish the requirements for authentication of documents for use in other countries; therefore, instead of apostille, Canadian documents must be properly legalized for use in Kazakhstan.

Thus, when you require a Canadian document to be legally recognized in Kazakhstan, that document must be verified as being legitimate. In Canada, this process of verification is the authentication and legalization of the document: the equivalent of an Apostille certificate. Because Canada did not sign the Hague Apostille Convention abolishing the requirement of legalization for foreign public documents (1961) while Kazakhstan did, full authentication and legalization process is used by both Canadian and Kazakhstan authorities.

In Canada this process generally includes authentication of your documents by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) Canada in Ottawa and legalization of your documents by Kazakhstan Embassy in Canada. The, so called, superlegalization may be additionally required by some Kazakhstan entities - this is when the document after DFAIT authentication and consular legalization (by Kazakhstan Embassy in Canada) is asked to undergo second-round authentication at the Canadian Embassy in Kazakhstan and legalization by Kazakhstan Ministry of External Affairs.

Please note that although using provincial authentication in lieu of DFAIT is possible from purely Canadian perspective, Kazakhstan authorities and likewise Canadian Embassy in Kazakhstan do not accept provincial authentication during subsequent legalization and superlegalization stages. The process has been already established on the part of Kazakhstan Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and every other entity in Kazakhstan dealing with Canadian documents on a routine basis to recognize only DFAIT stamps and signatures.

Kazakhstan Document Legalization Requirements and Application Packages

For documents coming from Canada to be formally recognized in Kazakhstan, they have to pass through 3 stages:

Kazakh Service Centre provides document services for all three stages above. The menu to the right contains links to various Application Packages for our typical document services. Depending on the state of your document (original or notarized) and your required service type (either all three stages above or just a specific step), choose the relevant Application Package.

Each Package contains Checklist, Instructions and all Templates you need to apply for a specific service type. Please read the Instructions thoroughly if you want your documents to be processed without any delays. If you have any questions or problems with the PDF forms, please contact us.