As a national NGO in the Azerbaijan Republic, the Joint Working Group for the implementation of international human rights standards` “Hot line” service has launched implementation of a project which for the first time enables people living in the regions to call without any payment. The aim is to provide low-income people in the regions with free and qualitative legal advice and defend their rights.

We would like to mention that, it was overly important for us to supply the accessibility of low-income people, especially who live in the regions to the hot-line service. One can conclude from the statistics that, majority of the appeals to the hot-line service are from the capital, the minority of the complaints come from the regions. So that, according to the statistics, 75 % of the addresses come from Baku city, 25 % of the addresses come from the regions. We consider that, the core reason for such a difference in the statistics is that majority of the people in the regions who need legal help and whose rights are violated are low-income citizens.

Taking into account afore-mentioned facts, the hot-line service has activated a service which enables low-income people to telephone from the regions without any payment. From now on, low-income people living in the regions will be able to call the numbers 088 408 30 17 (for the restoration of violated rights) 088 408 30 27 (for legal consultation) to express facts when their rights are violated and to receive legal advice.