Council of Europe to regularly include Azerbaijan democracy issues on its meetings’ agenda
The Monitoring Committee of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, meeting in Warsaw on 17 September 2015, said that it was deeply concerned by the deterioration of local democracy in Azerbaijan. The declaration adopted during the meeting is published on Council of Europe website.
The Committee referred to its Recommendation (326)2012 on local and regional democracy in Azerbaijan, which the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe forwarded to the authorities but has remained a dead letter since it was adopted. It also condemns the arrest and sentencing of its main partners in Azerbaijan, including Ilgar Mamadov, Director of the School of Political Studies in Baku, who is still being held in detention despite the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, and Leyla and Arif Yunus (Baku court condemned the Yunus couple to 8.5 and 7 years imprisonment – ed.). It also regrets that BINA (the alliance for municipal development) – its main partner in the field of local democracy – has been forced to give up its activities as a result of the blocking of its bank accounts.
The Congress Monitoring Committee asks the Azerbaijani authorities to reconsider the launching of a post-monitoring procedure as suggested in Recommendation (326)2012 with a view to establishing a political dialogue with the Congress based on the application of the European Charter of Local Self-Government ratified by Azerbaijan in 2002. Further, the CoE agency “invites the Azerbaijani authorities to co-operate with the Congress in keeping with the principles set out in Article 3 of the Statute of the Council of Europe, which Azerbaijan accepted when it became a member of the Council of Europe.”
The Committee asks the Azerbaijani authorities “to enable it once more to work with its close partners by releasing them and allowing local democracy NGOs to function normally.” It also “undertakes to regularly include this matter on the agenda of its meetings to ensure that the situation continues to be monitored.”
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