1 USCIRF Country Update: Azerbaijan | December 2023

COUNTRY UPDATE:

AZERBAIJAN

UNITED STATES COMMISSION on

INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

732 N. Capitol Street, NW, Suite #A714

Washington, DC 20401

202-523-3240

December 2023

By Keely Bakken, Supervisory Policy Analyst

State Control of Religion in Azerbaijan

Overview

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has included 

Azerbaijan in its congressionally mandated Annual Report every year since 2013. 

In May 2023, USCIRF recommended yet again that the U.S. Department of State 

include Azerbaijan on its Special Watch List (SWL) in light of the government’s severe 

violations of religious freedom. When the State Department in November 2022 made

its designations pursuant to the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, it 

declined to designate Azerbaijan.

Although Azerbaijan has in recent years ceased some problematic practices regarding 

state interference in its people’s practice of their religion or beliefs, the government 

has shown little interest in reforming laws and policies that violate Azerbaijan’s 

international human rights commitments. Within the last three years, the government 

has twice amended its religion law to introduce new restrictions on a variety of 

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Abraham Cooper

Chair

Frederick A. Davie

Vice Chair

Commissioners

David Curry

Susie Gelman 

Mohamed Magid 

Stephen Schneck

Nury Turkel 

Eric Ueland

Frank Wolf

Erin D. Singshinsuk

Executive Director

USCIRF’s Mission

To advance international 

freedom of religion or 

belief, by independently 

assessing and unflinchingly 

confronting threats to this 

fundamental right.
2 USCIRF Country Update: Azerbaijan | December 2023

religious activities. Officials have likewise devoted 

significant effort to promoting a narrative of “religious 

tolerance” that showcases the generally positive societal 

relations among religious groups considered “traditional” 

to Azerbaijan while obscuring the state’s responsibility 

and failure to protect and promote freedom of religion 

or belief for everyone. Moreover, some officials have 

disconcertingly suggested that Azerbaijan’s structure of 

pervasive state control of religion could serve as a “road 

map” or model for other countries.

This report provides an update on religious freedom 

conditions in Azerbaijan in 2023. It describes the 

legislative framework that facilitates the official 

regulation of religious practice, concerns for religious 

sites in Nagorno-Karabakh, the ongoing repression of 

Shi’a Muslim religious activists, and the impact of the 

government’s refusal to allow conscientious objection.

Lack of Respect for Religious Freedom and 

Related Human Rights

Azerbaijan consistently ranks at the bottom of indices 

documenting the status of human rights. In recent 

years, Freedom House has repeatedly characterized the 

country as “not free” and ranked it alongside the likes 

of other authoritarian states for its austerely low-level of 

political rights and civil liberties. Authorities continued 

to severely curtail political opposition in the country 

and to detain on spurious charges those critical of the 

government. In July 2023, police arrested academic 

Gubad Ibadoghlu on fictitious charges related to the 

possession of counterfeit money and religious “extremist” 

materials. The international community, including 

many members of the U.S. Congress, have called for his 

immediate and unconditional release. That same month, 

a non-governmental organization estimated the detention 

of as many as 202 political prisoners in Azerbaijan, of 

whom the overwhelming majority constituted “peaceful 

believers” or religious activists targeted in connection 

with their religious activities. The State Department has 

regularly documented in its yearly Human Rights Reports 

credible allegations of torture, restrictions on free 

expression and the media, harassment of journalists, and 

a de facto ban on peaceful assembly, among other serious 

human rights concerns.

Moreover, Azerbaijan allegedly continued to commit

war crimes and other abuses in the context of its conflict 

with Armenia over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, 

an area internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. 

Beginning in December 2022, ethnic Armenians living 

in the region faced severe food, fuel, and medicine 

shortages due to a partial blockade of the Lachin 

corridor—a key transport route connecting NagornoKarabakh to Armenia—that the Azerbaijani government 

converted into a complete blockade in June 2023. The 

critical humanitarian crisis led numerous organizations 

and other voices to warn that the situation under these 

conditions risked the prospect of ethnic cleansing. In 

September, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive to 

forcibly retake the region, leading to the mass exodus of 

more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians.

Legislative Limits on Religious Freedom

The government continued to subject virtually all religious 

practice to stringent state oversight in line with the 

Azerbaijan

Russia

Kazakhstan

Uzbekistan

Turkmenistan

Ukraine

Georgia

Armenia

Iraq Iran

Turkey

Syria

Baku
USCIRF Country Update: Azerbaijan | December 2023 3

country’s 2009 law “On Freedom of Religious Beliefs,” 

which has for years required the registration of religious 

groups to be able to operate legally and engage in worship. 

The registration process itself is complex and burdensome, 

having set an arbitrary membership threshold of at least 

50 members for a religious group to even qualify for 

registration. A failure to register puts the community at 

risk of raids, detention, arrest, or fines. In 2023, the official 

State Committee for Work on Religious Affairs (SCWRA) 

reported registering only two Muslim mosques and not 

a single non-Muslim community. The latter marked the 

continuation of a trend in which the government has 

refused to register any religious minority community 

for the last three years. Some communities of Jehovah’s 

Witnesses and Protestant Christians have sought official 

registration for years and continue to encounter obstacles.

The government has also made several other religious 

activities contingent on official government approval; 

for instance, the religion law mandates that religious 

literature and related materials be reviewed and approved 

by an official body prior to its production, import, export, 

distribution, and sale in the country. Without approval, 

such activities are punishable under the criminal code 

with a fine between 5,000 and 7,000 manats ($2,941 to 

$4,118) or imprisonment for up to two years. The law 

also prohibits non-Azerbaijani citizens from engaging 

in “religious propaganda” or missionary activity without 

explicit state permission. A citizen who has received an 

Islamic education abroad must similarly obtain the express 

approval of the government before leading Islamic prayers 

or other religious activities or face fines or imprisonment.

In the last three years, the Milli Mǝclis—Azerbaijan’s 

parliament—has on two separate occasions adopted 

amendments to the religion law that introduced new 

restrictions on religious practice that President Ilham 

Aliyev quickly signed into law. In 2021, the set included

provisions that barred parents from forcing children to 

practice religion, banned persons in official positions 

from carrying out professional religious activities, 

instituted state approval of religious leaders and the reattestation of Muslim religious leaders every five years, 

required religious communities to suspend their activities 

in the absence of an appointed religious leader, placed 

limitations on religious communities’ ability to establish 

institutions of religious learning, conditioned the 

organization of religious pilgrimages abroad on notifying 

the government, and largely restricted religious activities 

with few exceptions to a community’s registered legal 

address. In 2022, the government adopted amendments 

that removed the nominally independent Caucasus 

Muslim Board’s (CMB) authority to appoint imams 

and gave that power instead to the SCWRA, abolished 

the CMB’s right to register mosques, and codified state 

oversight of donations to religious entities.

Religious Sites in Nagorno-Karabakh

Many organizations remained concerned about the 

protection and preservation of religious sites throughout 

the region of Nagorno-Karabakh and other neighboring 

territories that have in recent years come back under 

Azerbaijani control. For instance, the International 

Court of Justice ruled in February that Azerbaijan 

must prevent incitement and the promotion of racial 

hatred and discrimination against Armenians and “take 

all necessary measures to prevent and punish acts of 

vandalism and desecration affecting Armenian cultural 

heritage, including but not limited to churches and other 

places of worship, monuments, landmarks, cemeteries 

and artefacts.” USCIRF raised the religious freedom 

implications of failing to protect religious sites directly 

with government officials.

In the summer, Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov stated

that ethnic Armenians may keep their culture “if they 

integrate into Azerbaijani society and governmental 

structures like other ethnic and religious minorities.” 

Others, however, have spoken more forcefully against 

a continued Armenian presence in the area. In May 

2023, the chairman of the SCWRA Mubariz Gurbanli 

explicitly called for Armenian priests to abandon the 

Dadivank Monastery in the Kalbajar region as he 

falsely claimed that they had no connection to the site. 

While a United Nations mission to Nagorno-Karabakh 

completed in October 2023 reported that it “saw no 

damage...to cultural or religious structures,” human 

rights organizations continued to urge the government to 

ensure protections for religious and cultural sites and 

rights.

Continued Pressure on Muslims

Authorities continued to routinely surveil, fine, detain, 

and arrest Shi’a Muslims throughout the year. Religious 

freedom nongovernmental organization Forum 

18 reported in early 2023 that at least seven Shi’a Muslims 

faced administrative charges for “illegally involv[ing] 

minors in the performance of religious rituals” when 

they brought children to a religious celebration at a 

shopping center. In January and February 2023, courts 

fined at least four of the men involved and later arrested 

one of them on charges of drug trafficking.
4 USCIRF Country Update: Azerbaijan | December 2023

The government has particularly targeted 

the unregistered Muslim Unity Movement 

(Müsəlman Birliyi Hərəkatı) or MUM, a group that has 

criticized the government’s repressive policies toward 

religion and whose persecution many human rights 

defenders believe to be politically motivated. The group 

reported during the year that authorities detained tens of 

its members, sentenced many of them to administrative 

arrest, searched the home of another, and subjected

detained or imprisoned members to physical and 

psychological pressure. In July, reports emerged that 

guards beat MUM member Jeyhun Balashov, while in 

September, MUM member Agali Yakhyaev claimed that 

authorities tortured him and threatened him with sexual 

assault. In the summer, a court additionally sentenced

MUM member Mahir Azimov to four years in prison 

on drug-related charges. Earlier in the year, in February 

2023, the European Court of Human Rights had awarded

compensation to eight individuals associated with the 

movement on the basis that officials did not investigate 

their claims that they had experienced ill-treatment while 

in government custody.

In January 2023, an armed attack on the Azerbaijani 

Embassy in Tehran contributed to a dramatic rise in 

tensions between Azerbaijan and Iran. In the ensuing 

months, law enforcement throughout Azerbaijan carried 

out mass arrests of individuals the government at various 

stages accused of espionage, planning to overthrow the 

government, and drug trafficking. Officials asserted that 

such acts were carried out “under the veil of religion” 

and that persons who portrayed themselves as deeply 

religious were engaged in efforts to establish a theocratic 

state. While Iran has consistently engaged in malign 

activities and supported terrorism throughout the 

region, Azerbaijan has been known to levy false charges 

of collaborating with foreign powers to jail its political 

opponents and critics, making it difficult to discern the 

veracity of the allegations. Observers have maintained 

that hundreds of religious activists were detained as part 

of the sweep, with one human rights defender telling

Eurasianet that he “presume[d] that there are innocent 

people among the detainees, who were only practicing 

their religion, and perhaps criticized the government’s 

policy regarding religious freedoms.” As of October 

2023, the Union for the Freedom of Political Prisoners 

of Azerbaijan categorized 171 persons as “peaceful 

believers” wrongly imprisoned in connection with their 

religious beliefs or activities. 

Jehovah’s Witnesses and 

Conscientious Objection

Law enforcement agencies continue to sporadically 

detain and threaten Jehovah’s Witnesses who are found 

sharing their religious beliefs with others. In some 

instances, police have brought Witnesses into local police 

stations for questioning or to pressure them to cease 

such activities.

Jehovah’s Witnesses often face punishment for exercising 

their right to conscientiously object to mandatory 

military service. Although Azerbaijan’s constitution 

provides for an alternative civilian service, it has not 

provided such an option in practice and has prosecuted 

conscientious objectors for “evading” military service. In 

2022, authorities respectively detained and imprisoned 

Witnesses Royal Karimov and Seymur Mammadov after 

they refused to carry out their military service. Although 

Karimov was eventually released, a court sentenced 

Mammadov to nine months in prison before converting 

his sentence to a one-year suspended sentence. The 

Supreme Court dismissed his appeal in June 2023. 

Throughout 2023, other Witnesses continued to receive 

summonses to fulfill military service and, in some cases, 

experienced retaliation in the form of passport denials or 

exit bans.

Conclusion

The Azerbaijani government has unfortunately erased 

the little progress it had made for religious freedom 

by passing increasingly restrictive amendments to its 

religion law, continuing to require and deny official 

registration to several religious groups, harassing and 

arresting Shi’a Muslim religious activists, and refusing to 

permit conscientious objection. The United States should 

pressure Azerbaijan to address its severe violations of 

religious freedom and place the country on the State 

Department’s Special Watch List until the Azerbaijani 

government amends its 2009 law “On Freedom of 

Religious Beliefs” in line with international human rights 

standards and ceases other policies and practices that 

routinely infringe upon its citizens’ freedom of religion 

or belief.
UNITED STATES COMMISSION on INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

732 N. Capitol Street, NW, Suite #A714

Washington, DC 20401

202-523-3240

www.USCIRF.gov

@USCIRF

Media@USCIRF.gov

Professional Staff

Michael Ardovino

Policy Analyst 

Danielle Ashbahian

Chief of Public Affairs

Keely Bakken

Supervisory Policy Analyst

Susan Bishai

Policy Analyst

Mollie Blum

Researcher

Elizabeth K. Cassidy

Director of Research & Policy

Mingzhi Chen

Senior Policy Analyst

Patrick Greenwalt

Policy Analyst

Sema Hasan

Policy Analyst

Thomas Kraemer

Chief Administrative Officer

Veronica McCarthy

Public Affairs Associate

Hilary Miller

Researcher

Nora Morton

Operations Specialist

Dylan Schexnaydre

Researcher

Jamie Staley

Supervisory Policy Advisor

Scott Weiner

Supervisory Policy Analyst

Luke Wilson

Researcher

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is an independent, bipartisan federal government entity established by the 

U.S. Congress to monitor, analyze, and report on religious freedom abroad. USCIRF makes foreign policy recommendations to the President, 

the Secretary of State, and Congress intended to deter religious persecution and promote freedom of religion and belief.