Azerbaijan

Country Profile

On September 19-20, Azerbaijan conducted a military operation to gain full control over Nagorno-Karabakh. Since December 2022, Azerbaijan had closed the Lachin Corridor to most civilian and commercial traffic, allowing only intermittent humanitarian access until Azerbaijan reopened it on September 24 for one-way traffic out of Nagorno-Karabakh. Between September 24 and October 1, more than 100,000 Nagorno-Karabakh residents – virtually all of the region’s ethnic Armenians – fled to Armenia. During the year, authorities arrested an unprecedented number of nonconforming Shia Muslims who practiced outside of government-approved institutions for having alleged links to Iran, with some civil society observers estimating thousands of arrests and many credible allegations of forced confessions. While these arrests were characterized as targeting Iranian spy networks, the vast majority of known charges involved drug-related crimes.

Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killing; torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by members of the security forces; harsh and sometimes life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary detention; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; political prisoners and detainees; transnational repression against individuals outside the country; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; punishment of family members for alleged offenses by a relative; serious abuses in a conflict, including deliberate deprivation of items required by the civilian population and denial of humanitarian access; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including violence against journalists, unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, and enforcement of criminal defamation laws to limit expression; serious restrictions on internet freedom; a de facto ban on the right of peaceful assembly and substantial interference with the freedom of association; restrictions on freedom of movement; inability of citizens to change their government peacefully through free and fair elections; serious and unreasonable restrictions on political participation; serious government corruption; serious government restrictions on domestic and international human rights organizations; extensive gender-based violence, including domestic or intimate partner violence; crimes involving violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex persons; significant and systematic restrictions on workers’ freedom of association; and existence of the worst forms of child labor.

The government did not take credible steps to punish the majority of officials who were reported to have committed human rights abuses. There was no reported progress on government investigations of alleged abuses committed by Azerbaijani armed forces or individuals during the 2020 and 2022 hostilities.