UPR 44 Azerbaijan Submission - Social Charitable Center Women and Modern World (CWMW) and the SRI

This submission reflects on the progress that Azerbaijan has made since its last review to meet its obligations to respect, protect and fulfil human rights. Azerbaijan received and supported recommendations during the last cycle of the UPR on gender equality, violence and discrimination against women, as well as women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) issues. These include bodily autonomy, reproductive health and family planning, sexual orientation and gender identity, maternal and infant morbidity and mortality, and child marriage. These sets of rights are cornerstones of democratic societies.

This submission by The Social Charitable Center Women and Modern World (CWMW) analyses the extent to which the recommendations Azerbaijan received and supported were implemented between UPR cycles three and four.

Azerbaijan is a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its Optional Protocol, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and its Optional Protocol and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It has been a member of the Council of Europe since 2001.

Under Constitution of Azerbaijan (1995)[i], the State makes a commitment to guarantee a democratic system within the framework of the Constitution, to build a constitutional and secular state that guarantees the supremacy of law as an expression of the will of the people, to provide a proper standard of living for all in conformity with a just economic and social order, to maintain a commitment to universal human values, and to live in friendship, peace, and safety with all the nations of the world and cooperate with them for this purpose.

Within the chapter on the protection of human rights and freedoms, everyone has the right to inviolable and inalienable rights and freedoms[ii], including the right to dignity[iii], the right to freely marry on attaining the age prescribed by law[iv], and the right to education including free and obligatory secondary education.[v] International agreements, to which Azerbaijan is a party, constitute an integral part of the national legislative system according to Article 148 of the Constitution.

Article 25 reaffirms the principle of equality and inadmissibility of discrimination of any kind. Additionally, Article 154 of the Criminal Code sanctions violations of the principle of equality of citizens when their rights and legal interests are harmed, including acts of discrimination on the basis of gender.

This submission demonstrates that Azerbaijan still has work to do to upend patriarchal norms in the country, in order to achieve gender equality, end gender-based violence, meet the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women, and to end discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

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