Human Rights House Foundation statement
HRC63 – Item 5 – Interactive Dialogue with the ASG – Reprisals
24 September 2026
Background documents:
- Secretary General’s report
- Special Procedure’s Communication 28/06/24
- Azerbaijan: Human rights defender Anar Mammadli sentenced to 13 years in prison
Check against delivery.
Thank you, Vice-President.
We welcome the new Assistant Secretary-General to her post and note that this year’s reprisals report documents reprisals affecting my own organisation, and separately our partner Violetta Fitsner of Memorial Human Rights Defence Centre and OVD-Info.
Vice-President.
We again raise the case of Azerbaijani human rights defender and election monitor Anar Mammadli.
Anar engaged with this Council at its 55th session, including speaking at a side event on the human rights situation in Azerbaijan. Weeks later, he was arrested in Baku. Special Procedures have subsequently warned that some of the alleged violations against him might constitute intimidation or reprisals for cooperation with the UN.
On 7 September, after more than two years in detention, Anar was sentenced to 13 years in prison, following proceedings widely condemned as politically motivated.
In 2018, the European Court of Human Rights found that his earlier imprisonment sought to punish and silence him for his work. Yet that judgment remains unimplemented and his previous conviction was never quashed.
Vice-President.
We ask the Assistant Secretary-General: what further action can the United Nations take when a defender previously subjected to politically motivated imprisonment is again imprisoned after engaging with UN mechanisms, despite years of international scrutiny?
Thank you.
