On 12 October 2007 the big delegation group of Heinrich Boell Foundation had a meeting with a group of human rights defenders of Azerbaijan. The purpose of the meeting was to get comprehensive information on human rights environment in the country as well as get acquainted with the local and regional initiatives of organizations regarding human rights, conflict transformation, civil society building. (14-OCT-07)
Written by Shahla Ismailova/HRH Azerbaijan; photos by Shahla Ismailova
Participants
The head of the delegation, Walter Kaufmann, the head of the Sauth Cauasus bureau in Tbilisi introduced the delegation of 21 people affiliated with the Foundation. All the groups members were high-profile experts in various fields, such as law, medicine, social work, etc. The common interest of the group was to get updated about the situation around the conflicts in South Caucasus and the civic initiatives for peacebuilding.
The Azerbaijan group of human rights defenders was represented by Novella Jafaroglu, Saadat Benanyarly, Avaz Hasanov, Eldar Zeynalov, Zaliha Tahirova, Saida Gojamanly, Elmira Alekperova, Chingiz Ganizadeh, Arzu Abdullayeva and Shahla Ismailova.
Discussions
The participants of the meeting spoke on different aspects of human rights environment in Azerbaijan. Among the problems discussed was corruption, partiality of courts, political prisoners, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, lack of mechanism on implementation of laws. The attention of the delegation was also drawn to the existing problems in the healthcare service, particularly those related with women’s health.
The current situation on conflicts in the area caused bigger discussion. The human rights defender, Eldar Zeynalov (right) said in this relation “All initiatives of civil society groups on peacebuilding has a decorative character, as nothing is dependent on the civil society in reality. It is a matter of “big politics” and the players of this game already negotiated that the region should have security until the last drop of oil is obtained from the country.”
Another topic of interest was the growing tension on the religious dimension, which was commented by Avaz Hasanov, as “artificially created problems, as the government wants to distract attention from other problems”. Eldar Zeynalov mentioned that this game with Islamic cards was not harmful so far, but from this stage it can take serious forms and the situation might get out of control.
Heinrich Böll Foundation
The Heinrich Böll Foundation aims to become a focal point for debates both on general principles and current issues, and to provide impulses for socio-political reform. The foremost task is political education in Germany and abroad with the aim of promoting informed democratic opinion, socio-political commitment and mutual understanding. The political values of ecology, democracy, gender democracy, solidarity and non-violence are the chief points of reference of the Foundation.
