What is in the Ombudsman`s report and what is not…

The annual report of the Commissioner for Human Rights (Ombudsman) of Azerbaijan has already been submitted to the Milli Majlis and  was discussed in the Human Rights Committee. According to the legislation, no later than two months after the end of the reporting year (2022), the Ombudsman submitted an annual report to the President and delivers this report to the National Assembly.

The report says that 201 primaries were held during the year. Of these, 82 belong to the subordinate institutions of the Penitentiary Service of the Ministry of Justice, 36 - to the institutions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs: "During the presidency, confidential meetings were held with 2 thousand 25 persons. 36 of them were persons whose names were mentioned in a letter addressed to the Ombudsman by the International Committee of the Red Cross requesting a meeting. The state of ensuring the rights of these persons has been studied, their appeals have been heard, many issues have been resolved on the spot, due to other circumstances, to the relevant state structures."

And a member of the Milli Majlis Committee on Human Rights, Fazil Mustafa, told Turan that since there are many problems, it is difficult to cover them all in one report: "The Ombudsman or another body does not matter. Because there are massive problems in the mechanism of functioning of a number of laws, and many institutions do not take steps towards their implementation or correction."

The committee member noted that, thus, the report does not directly reflect the real situation in the full sense: "In particular, there are elements that violate consumer rights. Both in medical institutions and in other areas of public catering, there are many problems associated with the violation of workers' rights. Although it is possible to correct many issues to some extent, from women's rights to the right to education and the right to freedom, this is not being done. It is necessary to carry out broad reforms to eliminate shortcomings in these areas."

And the chairman of the Institute of Civil Rights Bashir Suleymanli told "Radio Azadlig" that these reports are just a formality: "In the reports of the Ombudsman for previous years, we see about the same set of data. That is, here we do not encounter nuances concerning the raising of problems that will affect fundamental human rights and freedoms, and there is no information on the assessment of the need to improve the legislative framework in this direction."

According to the human rights defender, the Ombudsman's office should be formed as a completely independent institution not controlled by the government: "His reports should be based both on the identification of problems related to legislation containing human rights and on the expression of problems related to fundamental human rights. But, unfortunately, we don't see them. For example, the laws "On Mass Media", "on political parties" and others are quite restrictive, but the Ombudsman's office has no reaction to this."

In previous years, there has also been criticism of human rights defenders regarding the annual reports of the Ombudsman. In particular, criticism included the fact that the report did not address specific cases of torture in prisons. But the Ombudsman's office, as a rule, did not consider the criticism justified.-0—