No progress on registration of independent NGOs - experts

Baku/26.11.21/Turan: In the coming days, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) will announce its next decision on Azerbaijan. The case "Election Monitoring Center and Others v. Azerbaijan" is related to the refusal of the authorities to register independent NGOs. This practice has been observed for many years. The “Election Monitoring Center” was registered in February 2008, however, less than two months later, the Ministry of Justice went to court and its registration was canceled.

Easing on this issue has been talked about since last year, after a meeting of representatives of civil society with the presidential aide Hikmet Hajiyev. However, nothing has changed. According to the Ministry of Justice, 76 non-profit organizations were registered in the first six months of this year. This brings the total number of non-profit organizations registered by the state to 4,766.

"Of these, 3332 are public associations, 209 are foundations, 56 are political parties and 1169 are other non-profit organizations," the ministry said. The organization noted that the registration of NGOs is regulated by the Law on Non-Governmental Organizations (Public Associations and Foundations) and the Law on State Registration and State Register of Legal Entities.

“According to the legislation, if non-compliance with the legislation is found in the constituent documents of public organizations, the deficiencies must be eliminated within 30 days,” the Ministry of Justice said.

Gunel Safarova, a member of the supervisory board of the NGO State Support Agency, said that all proposals to simplify the registration process were submitted to the government. “We have proposed to significantly simplify registration,” she said.

“Prohibitions arise during the implementation process. Unfortunately, if there is no political decision to register a public organization, the consideration of their documents is artificially delayed and red tape is created. In general, there are still artificial obstacles in the registration process of independent NGOs. The same applies to registration of the activities of foreign NGOs”.

Negotiations are underway with the government for the Cabinet of Ministers to adopt new mitigating decisions. But so far there are no results, Safarova said. Legal expert Khalid Agaliyev believes that the situation with registration of NGOs remains the same as it was 10 years ago, that is, there is no progress.

“For example, if 10 organizations apply, then only two of them receive registration. The existence of this problem is eloquently reflected in the complaints that are currently being considered by the European Court,” Agaliyev said. For 3-4 years now, the authorities have been making promises of easing in this matter, but there are no real steps.

“In 2016 and 2017, the government prepared a proposal to amend the legislation on the registration of legal entities, stating that registration of NGOs is also possible online. However, this is still under discussion, ”the expert noted. –21B06-