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The October 9 presidential in Azerbaijan did not meet a number of key standards of the OSCE for democratic elections.
Although there were more than 50 political parties, the president’s party, the Yeni Azerbaijan Party, dominated the political system, the annual report of the Bureau of the Democracy, Human Rights and Labor of the U.S. State Department reads.

The authors of the report noted that the most significant human rights problems in Azerbaijan during the last year were restrictions on freedoms of expression, assembly, and association including intimidation, arrest, and use of force against journalists and human rights and democracy activists. According to the assessment of the NGO there are at least 12 journalists and bloggers in Azerbaijan that are detained.

Prior to the official presidential election campaign period, the government approved only a handful of applications for peaceful protests, limited approved demonstrations mainly to inconvenient locations , forcefully dispersed unsanctioned protests, and often detained demonstrators.

According to the report following the October 9 presidential election, authorities launched a criminal investigation against two election monitoring NGOs, the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center (EMDS) and the International Cooperation of Volunteers (ICV) Public Union, arrested the EMDS chairman, and banned the EMDS executive director and the ICV chairman from leaving the country.

Authors of the document note that run-up to the October 9 presidential election the political environment was repressive in Azerbaijan. There was a lack of a level playing field among candidates, significant shortcomings were recorded throughout all stages of election-day processes, and a complaints and appeals process lacked impartiality.

The State Department also touched upon the deficiencies of the judicial system in Azerbaijan, including increased reports of politically motivated imprisonment and executive influence over the judiciary. According to estimates the number of political prisoners varies from dozens to 143.

Властям Азербайджана не удалось обеспечить защиту прав собственности, что привело к сносу домов и выселению жителей без предоставления соразмерной компенсации.

The Azerbaijani authorities failed to provide due legal process with regard to property rights, which resulted in forced evictions, demolition of buildings on dubious eminent domain grounds, and inadequate compensation for property taken by the state.
“Other human rights problems reported during the year included abuse in the military that resulted in 69 noncombat deaths,” reads the document.

Conditions prisons are harsh and sometimes life-threatening. According to the report, security forces abused 111 persons in custody in 2013.

Restrictions on the religious freedom of some unregistered Muslim and Christian groups continued.

The State Department notes that the government failed to take steps to prosecute or punish most officials who committed human rights abuses.