Are NGOs coming back?

Baku/10.08.21/Turan: Members of the monitoring group of human rights organizations Novella Jafaroglu, Saida Gojamanli and Saadat Bananyarli gave a positive assessment to the meeting with the aide to the President of Azerbaijan, Hikmet Hajiyev on August 4.

Human rights activist Novella Jafaroglu told the media that problems in the NGO sector were discussed at the meeting. It was promised that the issues related to NGOs and donors would be resolved.

Human rights activists also handed over to the presidential aide a list of 38 people whom they recognized as political prisoners. Hikmet Hajiyev said that steps would be taken in this direction.

However, will the problems of public NGOs and political prisoners be solved in reality in the near future? The head of the Baku Human Rights Club, Rasul Jafarov, answered these and other questions in the "Difficult Question" program.

He refused to give a forecast regarding the possibility of solving the problems of public organizations and political prisoners. According to him, the policy towards civil society in Azerbaijan tightened in 2014, and in 2015, the pressure on NGOs increased even more.

Jafarov noted that the existing legislation hinders the activities of NGOs. Moreover, difficulties begin already upon registration. The problems of financing them also seem insurmountable.

“It is obvious that in these conditions the institutions of civil society cannot function as a single organism, let alone its development.

The civil society has not been developing in Azerbaijan for 8 years already. These problems must be solved, since society, and the state itself, needs to solve the tasks facing them, especially after the 44-day war. The legislation regulating the activities of NGOs should be streamlined,” he said.

Jafarov is not sure if the government is ready to address these issues. “We do not have any information. Can the meeting of the members of the Monitoring Group of human rights organizations - Novella Jafaroglu, Saida Gojamanli and Saadat Bananyarli with the aide to the President of Azerbaijan Hikmet Hajiyev - be considered a positive message? It's hard to say,” he said.

According to Jafarov, a few days after the meeting of Hikmet Hajiyev with human rights defenders, the Agency for State Support to NGOs issued a message that a package of proposals was being prepared to improve the legislative base of NGOs, which was sent to the relevant structures.

“Who knows, maybe this is a symptom of the coming shifts? If so, very good. But, we do not have any other information. Until now, there have been messages more than once that the issue of political prisoners will be resolved. However, this did not happen. True, there are fewer political prisoners in the country, but they still exist and there are many of them. There are about 50 of them on our list,” he stressed. –0-