Roundtable “Azerbaijan and Council of Europe: Human Rights Cooperation” dedicated to 60th anniversary of European Convention on Human Rights and 9 years of Azerbaijan’s membership in the Council of Europe has taken place at the office of Human Rights Commissioner in Baku on Monday.

According to APA, Human Rights Commissioner Elmira Suleymanova said at the meeting that Azerbaijan became full member of the Council of Europe on January 25, 2001 and joined the European Convention on Human Rights on December 25, 2001. Suleymanova said Azerbaijan has ratified a number of human rights conventions and protocols passed by the Council of Europe in the past period. Azerbaijan joined 230 international conventions at all and most of which concern the human rights.

Suleymanova said Council of Europe resolutions 1690 and 1416 on Nagorno Karabakh were especially important. She said there were series of problems alongside with successes and reminded about the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections emphasizing that law violations during the elections are unacceptable. She said they would ask the Central Election Commission to organize trainings on the parliamentary and presidential elections.
The Human Rights Commissioner underlined the improvement of state of mass media in the country. “Most of 10 arrested journalists were pardoned. But problems with Eynulla Fatullayev and two bloggers still remain”. She also noted that 154 staff members of the Interior Ministry were punished last year for violation of law within the system of Internal Affairs.

Special Representative of the Council of Europe Secretary General in Azerbaijan Veronica Kotek said Azerbaijan and the Council of Europe started cooperation in 1996 and were successfully developing it. “The member countries have to make efforts to improve human rights situation inside the country. We have no responsibility for this issue as an international organization. The countries have main responsibility. Complains about the human rights violations should be investigated seriously”.