Azerbaijani activists support campaign for human rights in Europe

On January 26, in Strasbourg, fourteen organizations, including NGOs from Azerbaijan, announced the Campaign to Uphold Rights in Europe (CURE).

Organizers of the Campaign emphasize that “the Council of Europe is the defender of the common European legal framework for human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.”

However, the organizers of the Campaign note that participating states are still unable to act against human rights violations.

“Therefore, the influence of the Council of Europe on serious systematic violations is very limited. This negative model makes the victims of ill-treatment vulnerable, which leads to impunity,” the “Caucasian Knot” correspondent was told by Anar Mamedli, the director of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre (EMDS).

He notes that Azerbaijan is one of the countries where the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) are not fully implemented, especially with regard to political activists, in particular, from the “Ilgar Mamedov Group”. The cases of human rights defenders Intigam Aliev, Leyla Yunusova and Arif Yunusov, journalist Khadidja Ismayilova, and activist Giyas Ibragimov have not yet been reviewed.

Members of the CURE campaign intend to come up with proposals on specific topics or cases in which key decisions of the ECtHR have been ignored, to make recommendations for a stronger impact on states that systematically do not fulfil their obligations, and to strengthen the response to anti-democratic trends in Europe.