On April 4-7, Civil Rights Defenders hosted Defenders’ Days – Empowering Human Rights Defenders at Risk, a four day conference welcoming 160 human rights defenders from 35 countries, alongside leading human rights experts from all over the world, to Stockholm, Sweden. Civil Rights Defenders Executive Director Robert Hårdh is a member of the World Movement for Democracy Steering Committee.

At the Defenders’ Days Award Ceremony, World Movement Steering Committee member Hassan Shire expressed the World Movement’s solidarity with human rights defenders, particularly those in prison, and called the conference participants to join the #SetThemFree Campaign. Intigam Aliyev, a prominent Azeri human rights lawyer who was recently released from prison, received the Civil Rights Defender of the Year Award. This video details his work and story.

While Intigam’s recent release from prison is to be celebrated, the Azerbaijani government has many issues on which it needs to improve. According to a recent report by the Caucasus Civil Initiatives Center, the rules on “inspecting activities of NGOs, branches and/or representatives of international NGOs,” adopted in December 28, 2015 by the board of the Ministry of Justice have created new control and inspection mechanisms that the Ministry can use to restrict and harass Azerbaijan’s civil society. These rules are an overstepping of the boundaries set by the legislation of Azerbaijan on the activities of NGOs. You can read the report here.