The Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center (EMDS) has submitted a report to the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights assessing the progress the Azerbaijani government has made in implementing recommendations it received and supported during its 2018 Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The report states that Azerbaijan failed to implement all four of the recommendations it received regarding freedom…

Azerbaijan continues to target and persecute journalists and civil society activists and is now also using the coronavirus outbreak as an excuse to take unlawful actions against them, as reported by the Atlantic Council. For instance, authorities shut down the headquarters of the opposition group D18 on March 8, saying it was against COVID guidelines…

Afgan Mukhtarli, the Azeri investigative journalist and political activist well known for his investigative reports on the Azerbaijani government, was released from an Azerbaijani prison on March 17 after three years in detention. In 2017, Azerbaijani forces kidnapped Mukhtarli from his home in Georgia and brought him to Azerbaijan, where he was convicted of crossing…

In the face of arbitrary arrests and torture, Azerbaijani civil society activists have appealed to the United Nations Committee Against Torture (CAT) and the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), asking them to intervene to prevent further violence. The appeal, signed by 21 people, says that in response to peaceful rallies on October…