ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN
The Campaign to end repression in Azerbaijan is a joint project of human rights defenders and NGOs,
highlighting the systemic nature of arbitrary detention by the Azerbaijani government for over two decades.
As Azerbaijan prepares to host the next UN Climate Change Conference, COP29, a group of distinguished human rights defenders have joined forces under the name of Anar Mammadli, campaigning to raise the profile of emblematic political prisoners amidst a climate of sustained repression in Azerbaijan.
On 29 April 2024, prominent democracy and human rights defender Anar Mammadli was abducted in the streets of Baku. A former political prisoner, Anar Mammadli is once again facing multiple arbitrary charges related to the management of his organisation, the only independent election watchdog in Azerbaijan. Prior to his arrest, Anar Mammadli had co-founded the Climate of Justice Initiative ahead of COP29.
Anar Mammadli is not the only political prisoner in Azerbaijan. According to the group “For Freedom of Political Prisoners in Azerbaijan”, 331 individuals are detained arbitrarily in the country (by 10 December 2024).
Because Anar Mammadli’s case is emblematic of the decade of repression, since his first arrest in December 2013 to his new arrest in April 2024, and emblematic of the government’s will to silence any debate on envrionmental or climate issues, the campaign started as the Anar Mammadli Campaign to end repression in Azerbaijan, ahead of COP29. It has now become the Campaign to End Repression in Azerbaijan.
The Campaign is managed by Progress & Change Action Lab, at the behest of several Azerbaijani human rights defenders and lawyers, and their organisations, in collaboration with a number of international NGOs.
Given the climate of sustained repression in Azerbaijan, the names of those endorsing the Campaign are at this stage not made public. Please contact us for further information in this regard at info(@)endrepression-az.org.
Image courtesy of Voice of America, public domain in the United States.
Progress & Change Action Lab is a not-for-profit advisory group chaired by Florian Irminger, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Florian Irminger has worked from the hallways of the European Union and Council of Europe to the United Nations; from Central Asia to Central Africa, and from Baku to Minsk through Kyiv. His engagement with human rights in Azerbaijan is rooted in nearly two decades of cooperation with Azerbaijani civil society. In his capacity at the time at Human Rights House Foundation, he observed the trials of Anar Mammadli in 2014 and led the drafting of the report “Breaking Point in Azerbaijan”, documenting the unprecedented wave of repression that started in 2014.
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