Azerbaijani activists submit alternative reports to UN

Baku/07.07.23/Turan: The Election Monitoring and Democracy Training Centre (EMDTC) held a public forum on 7 July to inform the public and the diplomatic corps about the reports of civil society organizations within the framework of the 44th Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the UN Human Rights Council. The event was attended by civil society activists, human rights defenders and foreign embassy officials. The civil society representatives from Azerbaijan spoke about the recommendations of their reports for the UPR. 

Anar Mammadli, head of EMDTC, spoke about the recommendations put forward in the last UPR on Azerbaijan in 2018. He said that five years ago, representatives of 105 states at the UN had expressed their views in discussions on Azerbaijan on more than 200 issues."Unfortunately, there have been no reforms on the 150 human rights commitments made by Azerbaijan. On the contrary, the human rights crisis has further intensified," Mammadli said. He noted that in November 2023, the Azerbaijani government would submit a national report to the UN Human Rights Council. "As an alternative to this report, in the first half of this year the local civil society activists submitted their reports on different areas of human rights to the UN under the UPR rules," Mammadli said.

He believes that the UN diplomatic corps should scrutinize the alternative civil society reports and assess them in par with the government's national report.

It is worth recalling that during the forum the public and the diplomatic corps were presented with the recommendations contained in the UN civil society reports on areas such as freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, right to political participation, freedom of association, gender equality, domestic violence, persecution of LGBTI people, rule of law, social equality and labor rights as well as anti-corruption.

Emin Abbasov, representative of the "Network of Independent Lawyers of Azerbaijan," pointed out that the session of the UN Human Rights Council on the UPR in Azerbaijan should also take into account the need to eliminate the reactionary amendments made to the legislation of Azerbaijan on NGO activity, starting from 2023, which severely restricted the freedom of association of citizens.

Vafa Rustam," Ayna Initiative Group" representative, highlighted the significant increase in cases of domestic violence against women over the last five years. The state's efforts to fulfill its obligations proved disappointedly poor. To her mind, it is important to increase the number of shelters and legal protections for victims of sexual violence.

Zohrab Ismail, head of the "Centre for Promoting Free Economy", emphasized that the state failed to fulfill its obligations in combating corruption under the UPR, which it adopted five years ago. He said that during the next meeting the Azerbaijani authorities should work on the adoption of the action plan to combat corruption, disclosure of income declarations of officials, as well as the principles of transparency in governance.

Samed Rahimli, lawyer focused on the facts of hate speeches and vilification of LGBTI representatives. In his opinion, the government should introduce reforms to combat hate crimes. Improving legislation to protect the rights of this category of citizens is also important.

Ulker Hamidli, representative of the Civil Rights Institute, referred to the raising of living wage standards in the country, improving the rights to calculate social benefits. There is a need to prepare new normative acts in this sphere.-06B-