Rights defenders: activities of independent NGOs in Azerbaijan paralyzed

The legislation of Azerbaijan to regulate the activities of civil society institutions does not meet the standards of the Council of Europe (CE) and the OSCE. Restrictions provided by the laws and criminal prosecution of activists have deteriorated the environment for the activities of civil society institutions. This was reported by the study "Legal Restrictions on Civil Society Institutions' Activities in Azerbaijan" carried out by the Centre for Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies (CEMD).

According to the document, in 2013-2015, Azerbaijan introduced regulations to create legal obstacles to activities of civil society institutions.

"The process for NGO registration, grants and donors had been significantly complicated. According to the new regulations, an NGO may carry out no activities without registration. Besides, the laws now provide obligatory registration for grants and donors themselves. As a result of those new regulations, many foreign NGOs and donor institutions had to leave Azerbaijan. Activities of most local NGOs have been paralyzed," the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was told by Anar Mamedli, the chairman of the Centre for Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies.

The leader for the CEMD has reported that "for the period starting from 2014, it became impossible to implement projects on serious scale concerning monitoring and education in the field of human rights and elections."

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.