On 11-12 September, Liliane Maury Pasquier, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) conducted an official visit to Azerbaijan.

During the visit, she met with President Ilham Aliyev, Elmar Mammadyarov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Ogtay Asadov, Speaker of the Parliament. She also visited the Azerbaijani parliament’s Committee on Family, Women and Children’s Affairs and the Disciplinary Committee, along with members of the Azerbaijani delegation to PACE.

Afterwards, Pasquier took part in a high-level round-table conference devoted to the 70th anniversary of the Council of Europe entitled “Our rights, our freedoms, our Europe” at the French-Azerbaijani University in Baku. At the conference, Pasquier stressed that the ascension of Azerbaijan and other countries to PACE played an important role in achieving unity in Europe. She also said that the Council of Europe is working to create additional response mechanisms in order to implement European Court of Human Rights decisions in member countries. She also highlighted the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence as a new milestone for the Council and wished that Azerbaijan would ratify the convention in the future.

Azerbaijan became the 43rd member state of the Council of Europe when it joined in 2001. The Council of Europe is active in Azerbaijan in multiple fields, including: prevention of torture, fight against racism, protection of social rights, protection of minorities, fight against corruption, fight against money laundering, the implementation of democracy through public laws, the fight against human trafficking and the improvement of the country’s judiciary. The Republic of Azerbaijan has so far signed and ratified 64 of the Council of Europe official documents.