Employees of Azerbaijani NGOs find registration refusals politically motivated

The common practice to reject registration of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Azerbaijan is politically motivated. This was announced at the presentation of an expert research on registration of NGOs in Azerbaijan, performed by the public association named "Learning Democracy".

"Very often the Department of Notary and Registration of the Ministry of Justice is totally unreasonably and on subjective grounds repeatedly refusing to register NGOs, giving no reasonable explanations to their decisions," said Mirali Guseinov, the head of the organization "Learning Democracy" at the presentation on July 27.

According to his story, under the project implemented with the support of the EU Delegation in Azerbaijan, documents of 200 NGOs were examined, which received the Ministry of Justice's refusals of registration.

Ziya Guliev, the head of the NGO "Centre for Legal Initiatives" is sure that the registration issue is not legal but political. His organization cannot receive state registration since 2009. Answering the question why NGOs do not go to court, Guliev said that "it is useless, as courts are also executing the political order."

In his opinion, the trust in the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has also been undermined. "Does it make sense to address the ECtHR, if during one day there one judge refused to accept 50 complaints from Azerbaijan?" asked Guliev.

The debaters also pointed to the unreasonable and unlawful demand of the Ministry of Justice that NGOs must present certificates from relevant ministries that their activities are not contrary to state interests.

Alimamed Nuriev, Head of the Research Fund "Constitution" and a member of the Council for Support of NGOs under the President of Azerbaijan, agreed with the existence of all the raised problems and urged NGOs to be persistent and seek redress through the courts.

Any comments by the Ministry of Justice in the context of the voiced criticism were unavailable.

According to the Azerbaijani authorities, at present the country has 2607 registered NGOs. With regard to non-registered ones, according to various unofficial sources, they are from 800 to 1000 in number.