Message on the occasion of Human Rights Day

10.12.2011

63 years ago this day, a historical document, the Universal Human Rights Declaration was created. It represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled.
This day is not just a memorable historical date when the main values of humankind were stated in the legal instrument but also is an occasion to stress the importance of respect for human rights and to keep the issue in the spotlight.
Unfortunately, today we are witnessing the wide-scale human rights abuses in Azerbaijan, where the government violates such basic human values as justice, equality and rule of law.
Education on Human Rights Public Association, which carries out activities on monitoring of international conventions and legal aid to the population, expresses its deep concern over continuation of human rights violations, increase of the number of unlawful arrests and people subjected to torture and death. Nowadays the facts of mass deprivation of property are perceived in society as common occurrence.
As a party to international treaties, Azerbaijan Republic assumed obligations and duties under international law to respect, to protect and to fulfill human rights. Recent cases of human rights violation attracted the attention of the international organizations to failure to comply with treaty obligations. The authoritative international organizations called the Azerbaijani government to fulfill the obligations but unfortunally this call did not take effect and we are currently witnessing continuation of violations.
Dozens of ratified international legal instruments are not applied in practice; public authorities do not show respect for such democratic values as the rule of law and equality, at best, they refer to the domestic courts, which are not independent. At present, besides the increasing number of arrests for political reasons, we are witnessing that the small and medium entrepreneurs are totally being oppressed and deprived of their property and profits. The citizens are defenseless against officials having illusory rights. Anyone can become a victim of false
accusation and in result, deprived of liberty for long period. This is an example of the reality reflecting the relationship between the government and citizens. The Education on Human Rights Public Association does stress the importance and necessity of joint efforts and show of solidarity by the civil society for the purpose of creation of respect for human rights. Not content with protection of violated rights of the citizens we take steps on increasing the awareness of the population in the field of human rights and support the justice seekers. We do believe in necessity of continuation of the activities on sustainable spread of human values drawing the attention of international community to above-mentioned problems and indicate a readiness to continue work and taking joint efforts in this area.

Being a civil society organization we are calling all public authorities and decision makers for recognition and respect for human rights and taking appropriate and effective measures to eliminate the violations.