European Commission against Racism and Intolerance reports on Azerbaijan

The report reads: Since the publication of ECRI first report on Azerbaijan on 15 April 2003, progress has been made in a number of the fields highlighted in that report. In the area of education, access to public school for children of non-citizens without legal status has been improved and measures in favour of teaching human rights as well as minority languages have been taken.

"State Programme on improvement of the living conditions and raising employment for refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs)" was adopted in 2004 and is currently being implemented. A procedure for granting the status of refugee was put in place and some asylum seekers have already obtained refugee status on this basis.
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However, a number of recommendations made in ECRI first report have not been implemented, or have only been partially implemented. There are still cases of racist and inflammatory speech or the promotion of religious intolerance by some media, members of the general public and politicians, particularly against Armenians, Russian citizens from Chechnya and members of some religious minorities. The unsolved conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh continues to have a negative impact on the climate concerning Armenians.

"In this report, ECRI recommends that the Azerbaijani authorities take further action in a number of areas. It recommends in particular that they provide officials in the judicial system with more training on the importance of adequately applying criminal law provisions to combat racism and intolerance."

It asks that a specialised body be set up to combat racism and racial discrimination and that the civil and administrative law provisions prohibiting racial discrimination be strengthened. Measures should be taken to solve the problems linked to the lack of legal status of some categories of non-citizens living in Azerbaijan.

Khazar Ibrahim, head of Foreign Ministry press center told that Council of Europe as respected body should approach issues very objectively.

"There is no problem between confessions, ethnic groups and nations in Azerbaijan. Tolerance and understanding culture in Azerbaijan have its ancient roots. The only problem is conflict with Armenia and this emerged because of Armenians policy. Armenian aggressive policy led to the occupation of Azerbaijan territories and deportation of many Azerbaijani people from their homes. Unfortunately, Council of Europe ignores the policy of ethnic cleansing carried out by neighboring Armenia, releases unrealistic information on Azerbaijan. It said Azerbaijan suffers from lack of information on racism and intolerance. This is absurd. In comparison with other states, Azerbaijan does not need it as it is already part of Azerbaijani history and culture," he underlined.

/APA/