QUARTERLY FACT SHEET ON THE SITUATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN AZERBAIJAN (January-March 2021)

Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre (EMDS) presents a quarterly FactSummary based on information gathered from alternative and open sources on the human rights situation in Azerbaijan. EMDS is a non-governmental organization working to promote human rights and democratic institutions in Azerbaijan.

During the first quarter of 2021, EMDS registered a total of 193 human rights violations based on 144 facts collected as a result of monitoring human rights developments in the country and investigating complaints from citizens. Most of the increase in human rights violations compared to the previous quarter is in the categories of fair trial, freedom of expression and social rights. Of the human rights violations reported this quarter, 89 were related to civil and political rights and 104 to economic and social rights.

This quarter was marked by a number of socially significant events. Thus , 475 convicts were released from the unserved part of their sentences by the pardon decree signed by the President on March 16, 2021. 39 of them were identified as political prisoners by the Working Group on the Unified List of Political Prisoners. The sentence of one political prisoner has been halved. After the mentioned pardon order, the Working Group recognized 53 people as political prisoners1.

For the full report, download the file here