During the visit to Azerbaijan The Chairman of the Board of International Transparency Initiative in the mining industry (EITI) Fredrik Reinfeldt and the head of the International Secretariat of the organization Jonas Moberg, met with members of the Azerbaijani NGO Coalition to increase transparency in this area.
The statement of the coalition for the press noted that the representatives of the EITI shared their impressions of the meetings with President Ilham Aliyev, the head of the government commission on EITI Shahmar Movsumov (the head of the State Oil Fund), and the ambassadors of foreign countries.
In turn, members of the coalition said that the government's attitude towards civil society has changed and the problems remain the same.
A member of the multilateral group on EITI from civil society, Azer Mehdiyev, stated the need for changes in legislation, taking into account the standard of "civil society Protocol" EITI.
However, a former member of the Board of the NGO Coalition Alimammad Nuriyev said that the civil society problems have been solved, and the current Council coalition is not legitimate.
Member of the Board and a member of the coalition of the Multilateral Group on EITI, Ogtay Gyulalyev, refuted the statements of Nuriyev, the supporter of the authorities, saying that the civil society have real problems. In addition to the changes in the legislation, it is necessary to change the approach of the authorities to civil society. He also recalled the imrisonment of the former members of the coalition Gahramanli Fouad to 10 years for the Facebook status. This is a violation of the items "activity" and "freedom of expression", "Protocol civil society" EITI standard, he said.
Another former member of the Coalition, invalid of the Karabakh war, Asif Yuisfli, is also serving a prison sentence. A member of the Supervisory Board of the Natural Resources Management Institute Ilgar Mammadov has been in prison for 4 years.
NGO Coalition Coordinator Gubad Ibadoglu confirmed the presence of civil society issues. "Until the freedom and independence of the press, civil society in the country is not provided, this problem will not be solved," said Ibadoglu.
He called erroneous the decision of the Council of State Support to NGOs not to finance the activities of the Coalition, whose members include more than 150 NGOs, and they actually froze its activities.
Reinfeldt said that he will inform the EITI Board at the meeting, which will take place in a month in Bogota on the results of his meetings. "Meetings in Baku showed that the discussion on March 8-9 in Bogotá will not be easy for Azerbaijan," he said.
In May 2015 Azerbaijan's EITI status was downgraded from full membership to "a candidate country." In October 2016 Azerbaijan was given another time until March 2017 with the aim to eliminate the problems with the civil society. -03D06-
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