Azerbaijan

Poverty is not a new phenomenon in Azerbaijan, though was not acknowledged officially until the late 1980s, with official estimates in 1989 of 34 percent of the population below the FSU-wide poverty line. Nonetheless, guaranteed employment, generous public transfers, largely free and universal social services, and subsidies on food, housing, utilities and other necessities meant that income poverty rarely translated into severe deprivation. However, poverty appears to have increased substantially during the 1990s, mainly as a result of the dramatic economic collapse.

This poverty profile is based on the Azerbaijan Survey of Living Conditions (ASLC), which was carried out at the end of 1995. Although Azerbaijan had a long history of household surveys (the Family Budget Survey, or FBS), the sample was not representative, so that the ASLC was the first nationally representative household survey. It was also representative for three sub-groups: the people of Baku, the non-Baku population, and internally displaced people (IDP). The poverty line used was developed by the government, based on an average daily intake of 2,360 calories (adjusted for age and gender). While this is somewhat higher than the minimal required intake, the credibility of the results was enhanced in-country by using an officially developed line. A food-only poverty line was used, because the reliability of important non-food expenditures was questionable (e.g. housing).

Using this poverty line, over 61 percent of the population was poor, and 20 percent were found to be very poor (i.e. household expenditures less than half of the household-specific poverty line). For the three representative sub-groups, poverty was roughly equal in Baku and non-Baku, but substantially higher (75 percent) for displaced people. In urban/rural terms, poverty rates did not vary greatly, largely due to the important role of own-produced food in rural areas. The analysis was also done for 8 economic zones, and this revealed significant regional variation, with the non-contiguous region of Nakhichevan being easily the poorest, and the South-West region relatively the best off.

Although it is difficult to track the dynamics of inequality, anecdotal evidence suggests that it has increased significantly. In the ASLC, the Gini coefficient was 0.35, compared to a 1989 Gini from FBS data of 0.275. Using official and ASLC data for income decile ratios, there appears to have been a substantial widening of the gap between the richest and the poorest since independence, with the decile ratio increasing from 3.3 at the end of the 1980s to between 8.5 and 11 in 1995.

Azerbaijan’s government has a long-standing record of pressuring opposition political parties and civil society groups and arbitrarily limiting critical expression. In the run-up to the November 2005 parliamentary elections the repressive environment intensified, despite considerable efforts by the international community to encourage Azerbaijan’s compliance with international human rights standards. Election day itself fell far short of these standards.

In the elections the government used a variety of tactics that impaired the integrity of the process and ensured that pro-government candidates won the majority of seats. Government policies appear to support an environment in which state officials are free to use violence to achieve their ends without fear of being held accountable. Although the government has released political prisoners, the system of repression against perceived government critics ensures that new politically motivated cases will continue to be generated. Independent and opposition press face major barriers to their work.

Elections and Associated Rights

Azerbaijan has a history of seriously flawed elections. In 2005, repression and harassment of opposition party members, an overwhelmingly pro-government bias in the electronic media, and government control of election commissions ensured that the parliamentary elections would not be free and fair. The government's registration of candidates without party-based bias was an improvement on previous elections but was later overshadowed by other serious violations. Measures taken to improve the election process, such as allowing inking of voters’ fingers with invisible ink to prevent multiple voting and lifting the ban on monitoring by foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), proved ineffective because they were introduced late in the election campaign.

During the election campaign period, the government continued to restrict freedom of assembly, despite lifting the absolute ban on opposition gatherings that had existed until June 2005. The authorities refused to allow rallies to be held in city centers, and police carried out mass arrests and beat protesters who attempted to gather for unauthorized meetings or rallies. Officials exerted pressure on government workers, particularly teachers, to attend the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party candidates’ meetings with voters. At the same time, police detained campaign workers for opposition and independent candidates and warned them to stop their political work.

The timing and circumstances surrounding two separate alleged coup d'etats by opposition groups raised serious concerns that the government was using these cases to increase repression against the oppostion and to influence the elections. Based on these two sets of allegations, the government arrested three youth movement members and about a dozen high-level government officials and opposition supporters, and accused them of preparing a coup d'etat.

Election day was marred by numerous irregularities throughout the country. Local and international observers documented serious violations, including ballot box stuffing, repeat voting, and tampering with results of protocols. At the time of writing, the authorities had responded to international calls to rectify falsifications on election day by cancelling the results in several election districts, firing several local officials, and detaining four others.

State Violence

Torture, police abuse, and excessive use of force by security forces are widespread in Azerbaijan. In pre-trial detention severe beating is a common form of torture, although electric shock, threats of rape, and threats against family members are also used, usually to coerce a confession or other information from a detainee. Torture and ill-treatment is less common in post-conviction prison facilities, although a series of incidents were alleged in the context of a February 2005 special operation by Ministry of Interior troops to combat illegal activity in the prisons. Former inmates of prisons number 12 and 13 told Human Rights Watch that security forces beat hundreds of prisoners, forcing some to run through a gauntlet of troops who beat them with batons.

The government has not taken any significant measures to combat the environment of impunity for government officials who commit torture or other forms of ill-treatment. On the contrary, Vilyat Eviazov, the head of the Organized Crime Unit, a body known for its use of torture, was promoted to deputy minister of interior in April 2005.

Political Prisoners

The existence of political prisoners is a long-standing problem that Azerbaijan committed to resolving when it joined the Council of Europe in 2001. In the eighteen months prior to June 2005 Azerbaijan made progress on this issue, releasing more than one hundred political prisoners. However, according to the Council of Europe, political prisoners remain in custody and Azerbaijan is yet to find a permanent solution to this problem, such increasing the independence of the judicuary. In 2005 opposition supporters continued to be imprisoned and charged in what appear to be politically motivated cases.

Media Freedom

Authorities use a variety of informal measures to prevent or limit news critical of the government from reaching the public. The government pressures opposition and independent media outlets by limiting their access to printing houses and distribution networks, initiating defamation cases resulting in the imposition of crippling fines, restricting access to official information, and harassing journalists. Major television outlets, from which the vast majority of the population gets its news, are either state-owned or affiliated, and the government controls the issuing of radio and television broadcast licenses through a board that consists entirely of presidential appointees. A public television station, set up by the government because of its obligations to the Council of Europe, started broadcasting in August 2005.

Media monitoring carried out by independent monitors during the pre-election campaign showed that the content of all the national television stations' news broadcasts was overwhelmingly pro-governmental.

In one of the worst incidents of violence against journalists in Azerbaijan in many years, on March 4, 2005, an unknown attacker shot dead Elmar Husseinov, founder and editor of the independent weekly magazine Monitor. The magazine regularly published harsh criticism of the government, including allegations of corruption among high-level officials and their families. Monitor stopped publication after Husseinov’s death.

Human Rights Defenders

The authorities continue to deny registration to many human rights NGOs, usually on minor technical grounds. Human rights defenders are at times subjected to physical and verbal attacks and other forms of pressure and harassment. For example, in March and April 2005, pro-government television channels made harsh and provocative statements against human rights defenders. According to Leila Yunus, the Director of the Institute for Peace and Democracy, in late March a presenter on Lider TV stated, “The whole activity of Leyla Yunus is directed against the statehood of Azerbaijan. And yet she applies to the law-enforcement bodies for protection. Should such people be protected?” On April 2 the authorities refused to allow Ilgar Ibrahimoglu, religious freedom activist, to leave the country to present a statement at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.

Key International Actors

By the end of 2005 construction of the new major oil pipelines routed across Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey had been completed, and a gas pipeline was due for completion in mid-2006. The huge foreign investment in these projects has focused international attention on issues of security and stability in the region, sometimes at the expense of human rights.
United States policy toward Azerbaijan has focused on military cooperation and oil interests.

Since 2001, U.S. military aid and cooperation has increased significantly, and Azerbaijan has cooperated in U.S. military operations, sending approximately 150 troops to Iraq. Although the U.S. government criticized the parliamentary elections and put pressure on Azerbaijan to investigate and rectify incidents of falsification on election day itself, its response to pre-election violations was inconsistent and sometimes weak.

In April 2005, the European Union decided to proceed with preparing the European Neighbourhood Policy action plans with the countries of the south Caucasus, including Azerbaijan. This is the first time that the E.U. has offered closer economic, political, and cultural relations in exchange for progress on concrete human rights benchmarks, and therefore marks a significant opportunity for the E.U. to encourage human rights improvements in Azerbaijan.

However, the potential of this opportunity to trigger meaningful reforms will depend on the specificity of the human rights benchmarks in the final action plan document, which was being negotiated between the Azerbaijani government and the E.U. throughout the latter half of 2005.

The Council of Europe has played a constructive role in addressing human rights problems in Azerbaijan, pressing for the release of political prisoners, greater pluralism, and a devolution of political power away from the presidency. In 2005, it concentrated on promoting free and fair parliamentary elections, and resolving the issue of political prisoners.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is one of the largest multilateral investors in Azerbaijan, having committed more than €459 million in projects, approximately half of which goes to the private sector. Although acknowledging many serious shortcomings in Azerbaijan's human rights record and transition to democracy, the EBRD's strategy for Azerbaijan, approved in May 2005, confirmed the government’s commitment to the principles of article 1 of the bank's founding document, which includes multiparty democracy, pluralism, and market economics. Despite its conclusion that Azerbaijan’s progress in implementing these principles was “slow and uneven,” and that “many challenges remain,” the Bank did not make use of its political mandate to link further engagement to concrete human rights improvements.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was deeply involved in election monitoring for the parliamentary elections, providing 665 election observers from forty-two countries. During the election campaign period and immediately following the elections, the OSCE published three interim reports and a preliminary report that described numerous violations of OSCE commitments and Council of Europe standards for democratic elections.

Growing poverty, social tension, unemployment, migration, as well as changes of moral values and rising crime have led to the proliferation of drug abuse and unsafe sexual behaviour, which lead to an increase in the risk of transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

The first HIV infections were detected in Azerbaijan in 1987 (a resident of Uganda) and 1992 (a local resident). While seven HIV-infected individuals were diagnosed from 1987-1996, this number rose to 13 in 1997, 68 in 1998, 81 in 1999, 64 in 2000, with 87 for the first nine months of 2001. Despite the rising number of HIV infections detected, fewer tests have been carried out. As the figure shows, 326,000 persons were tested in 1992 compared with 103,051 in 1999. As of October 1, 2001, there were 315 persons with HIV/AIDS, including 24 foreigners. Twenty-four local residents have died of AIDS. Particularly vulnerable to HIV transmission refugees, migrants, drug abusers, sexual workers and patients with sexually transmitted infections. However among these groups there is a low coverage by HIV tests, as well as a lack of services provided.

The main transmission route of HIV is sharing of paraphernalia among injecting drug users. Fortyseven per cent of all HIV-infected are injecting drug users, 26 per cent were infected through heterosexual contact, 1.5 per cent through mother-to-child transmission, 0.62 per cent through homosexual contact, and for 24.7 per cent, the transmission route could not be detected (see Eighty-nine per cent of people with HIV/AIDS are between the 15 and 45 years old; there are five in the 1-5 age group infected through mother-to-child transmission, and five are family-members of blood donors. In 1999, the first case of HIV transmission through untested donor blood was detected.

The responsible health workers were brought to criminal court. In the period from 1992-2000 heterosexual transmission rose 22-fold, and transmission through needle sharing among injecting drug users 67-fold. Almost all AIDS patients die within a two years after diagnosis; AIDS develops faster in HIV-infected newborns than adults.

Analysis of the environment in Azerbaijan revealed that the most acute problems are in the area of environmental preservation.

From the territorial point of view, the parameters of the distribution of the negative influence of anthropogenic processes on the environment are quite different and spread to a certain extent all over the territory of the Republic.

Almost 30% of the coastal area is exposed to contamination. More than half the rivers (50.6% ) which are more than 100 km in length are considered to be contaminated. All the lakes of the low-lying parts of the Republic are exposed to the changes of the thermal, biological and chemical regimes. The lakes of the Apsheron Peninsula and the Kura Araks Lowland with a total area of more than 200 km2 are in a critical state.

Baku, Sumgait and Ganja are on the top of the list of the cities with a high level of environmental contamination. In these cities, the contamination level according to the amount of different contaminants is several times higher than the average level in the Republic. More than 60% of the Republic's territory is already exposed to erosion processes of various intensity, including 16% being strongly-eroded, 14.8% being averagely-eroded and 31.2% being slightly eroded. Up to 80% of the mountainous area and more than 45% of agricultural lands are exposed to erosion. The area of salinized lands allover the Republic is almost 1.5 million hectares or 50% of all agricultural lands. The area of technogenically damaged and contaminated regions constitutes almost 25 thousand hectares.

Among the most acute and typical problems relating to the protection of flora are: an extremely high (83.8%) share of woodless territories, pollution of forests by industrial waste (12 thousand hectares), cattle pasture (15.5 thousand hectares) and recreation activities (about 2 thousand hectares).

The strongest anthropogenic impact on forests is the felling of timber for fuel, which has become especially acute during the last years due to a rapid decrease in the natural gas supply and the lack of other types of fuel (bituminous coal, kerosene and others). Practically more than 65% of the population of the Republic suffers from a lack of fuel, and due to this, the use of timber for heating living spaces has increased 3-4 times, mainly using local resources. There has been depletion in the forest berry fields, mushroom areas and medicinal flora. Due to military hostilities and the presence of more than 1 million refugees resulting in demographic redistribution, there has been a sharp increase in population pressure on the central regions.

Growth in the number of agricultural animals displaced from the territories under occupation is area threat, which may cause over-grazing, and a depletion of the main plain pastures of the Republic. The situation with fauna is in close correlation with flora. With the reduction of habitat areas and an increase in anthropogenic pressure, the abundance and variety of fauna is reduced. The list of rare and endangered species of fauna and flora to be included in the "Red Book" has been considerably extended.

In the pre-Soviet period, Azerbaijani education included intensive Islamic religious training that commenced in early childhood. Beginning at roughly age five and sometimes continuing until age twenty, children attended madrasahs, education institutions affiliated with mosques. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, madrasahs were established as separate education institutions in major cities, but the religious component of education remained significant. In 1865 the first technical high school and the first women's high school were opened in Baku. In the late nineteenth century, secular elementary schools for Azerbaijanis began to appear (schools for ethnic Russians had been established earlier), but institutions of higher education and the use of the Azerbaijani language in secondary schools were forbidden in Transcaucasia throughout the tsarist period. The majority of ethnic Azerbaijani children received no education in this period, and the Azerbaijani literacy rate remained very low, especially among women. Few women were allowed to attend school.

In the Soviet era, literacy and average education levels rose dramatically from their very low starting point, despite two changes in the standard alphabet, from Arabic to Roman in the 1920s and from Roman to Cyrillic in the 1930s. According to Soviet data, 100 percent of males and females (ages nine to forty-nine) were literate in 1970.

During the Soviet period, the Azerbaijani education system was based on the standard model imposed by Moscow, which featured state control of all education institutions and heavy doses of Marxist-Leninist ideology at all levels. Since independence, the Azerbaijani system has undergone little structural change. Initial alterations have included the reestablishment of religious education (banned during the Soviet period) and curriculum changes that have reemphasized the use of the Azerbaijani language and have eliminated ideological content. In addition to elementary schools, the education institutions include thousands of preschools, general secondary schools, and vocational schools, including specialized secondary schools and technical schools. Education through the eighth grade is compulsory. At the end of the Soviet period, about 18 percent of instruction was in Russian, but the use of Russian began a steady decline beginning in 1988. A few schools teach in Armenian or Georgian.

Azerbaijan has more than a dozen institutions of higher education, in which enrollment totaled 105,000 in 1991. Because Azerbaijani culture has always included great respect for secular learning, the country traditionally has been an education center for the Muslim peoples of the former Soviet Union. For that reason and because of the role of the oil industry in Azerbaijan's economy, a relatively high percentage of Azerbaijanis have obtained some form of higher education, most notably in scientific and technical subjects. Several vocational institutes train technicians for the oil industry and other primary industries.

The most significant institutions of higher education are the University of Azerbaijan in Baku, the Institute of Petroleum and Chemistry, the Polytechnic Institute, the Pedagogical Institute, the Mirza Fath Ali Akhundzade Pedagogical Institute for Languages, the Azerbaijan Medical Institute, and the Uzeir Hajibeyli Conservatory. Much scientific research, which during the Soviet period dealt mainly with enhancing oil production and refining, is carried out by the Azerbaijani Academy of Sciences, which was established in 1945. The University of Azerbaijan, established in 1919, includes more than a dozen departments, ranging from physics to Oriental studies, and has the largest library in Azerbaijan. The student population numbers more than 11,000, and the faculty over 600. The Institute of Petroleum and Chemistry, established in 1920, has more than 15,000 students and a faculty of about 1,000. The institute trains engineers and scientists in the petrochemical industry, geology, and related areas.

Azerbaijan Medical Association - The mission of Azerbaijan Medical Association (AzMA) is to help to improve medical and health services in Azerbaijan, to increase medical education and medical ethics standards, to support health literacy of the population. Azerbaijan Medical Association (AzMA) is a country leading voluntary non-governmental, non-political ,non-profit and an independent professional medical organization that includes more than 600 members who aren physicians, medical scientists, medical and health care professionals, young doctors and medical students of Azerbaijan. The association represents the public face of Azerbaijan Medicine.

Azerbaijan Youth Development Center - To support and promote sustainable development in youth field in Azerbaijan.

Junior Achievement Azerbaijan - Junior Achievement Azerbaijan (JAA) is the local representative of Junior Achievement Worldwide, the world’s largest non-profit organization, involved in economic and business education in schools. JAA has worked in 180 schools throughout Azerbaijan since 2000.

United Aid for Azerbaijan - UAFA's mission is to aid 'long-term development of life in Azerbaijan, with particular focus on children, health and education

Physicians for Peace - Physicians for Peace is a private voluntary organization building peace and international friendships through medicine. Volunteers from many health professions provide medical education and treatment in 50 developing countries.