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Economic Development of Azerbaijan should be based on human rights and open dialogue. This is the general opinion of the members of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, which visited Azerbaijan to study the human rights situation in the field of business, Turan news agency reports.

According to the article during a 10-day visit, the guests met in Baku and Ganja with representatives of various government agencies, business, civil society and media.

At the press conference the experts noted that oil and gas revenues of Azerbaijan will significantly reduce the level of poverty in the country. The experts also highlighted that 40% of the population in the country have low incomes.

"We want to note that in recent years several NGOs have problems with frozen bank accounts and denial of grants registration. As a result, these NGOs have been forced to suspend their operations. The reason for this was the recent tightening of legislation," said UN expert Pulvan Selvanatan.

At the same time he noted that among these NGOs were also members of EITI (Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative).

Selvanatan urged the government of Azerbaijan to ensure transparency, impartiality, efficiency and timeliness of procedures for registering grants.

Asked by Turan information agency to comment on the pre-trial arrests of civil society activists, Selvanatan said that in any country it is important to ensure the rule of supreme law and therefore he would refrain from commenting on this topic before the end of the trial.

In his turn Selvanatan’s colleague Paul Sulyandziga said that the arrests of famous representatives of civil society are a concern. "We cannot comment until the investigation is completed, we pre-arranged to meet with these people, but because of their arrest, we could not do it,” he said.

After the meeting, the expert said that there were planned meetings with three of the four arrested activists: Leyla Yunus, Intigam Aliyev and Rasul Jafarov.

"The government must ensure the smooth implementation of the legitimate and peaceful activities of human rights defenders," said Sulyandziga.

In their preliminary conclusions the UN experts noted the importance of ensuring transparency in the fight against corruption. In this regard, the civil society and free press is greatly concerned that the information about the owners of commercial entities is classified as a commercial secret.

According to the experts, corruption is mainly related to monopolies and the lack of transparency in certain sectors of the economy.

On Turan’s question of how to assess the absence of declaration by civil servants of their income Sulyandziga noted that the declaration of state employees is an important indicator of the transparency of the government and the country's image.

According to the article the final report with recommendations will be presented to the UN Council on Human Rights in June 2015.