Vladimir Vardanyan, member of Armenian parliamentary delegation to PACE, replied to Samad Seidov, the head of Azerbaijani delegation. Vardanyan in particular, said.
“First of all, I would like to express the words of gratitude to the Rapporteur for an excellent report.
Ladies and gentlemen, NGOs are part of our life and the Pandemic made NGOs even more important in our daily life because they very active in different aspects of combatting coronavirus.
For sure, everybody understood from the legal perspective that NGOs are not free to do everything. They may be subject to certain limitations. And it is quite normal until it is necessary for democratic society, until they are democratic as such, until these limitations are based on the law, and for sure, until they are proportionate. We are speaking about discriminatory restrictions on NGOs. And unfortunately we have some particular countries where NGOs face such problems.
Here we speak also about responsibility. Yes, for sure, responsibility is quite important when we are speaking about relations of state and NGOs and this responsibility should be reciprocal. Yes. NGOs should be responsible but states should be responsible too. My colleague from Azerbaijan. Mr. Seidov said that at least there is (on Azerbaijani opinion) one responsible NGO in Azerbaijan. It is the International Committee of the Red Cross. Mr. Seidov whether you ask ICRC do they consider Azerbaijani authorities as responsible authorities? Plus, I would like to say that the International Committee of the Red Cross is not just an NGO. It is an organization, which more than, one and half century is very active in solving and in protecting different victims of war. And when we are speaking about the ICRC we should do not forget that this is not just an NGO it is also a substitute of protecting power and it has the Geneva Mandate. And if you are speaking about the responsibility, I would like to say to my Azerbaijani colleagues. There is no need, no need of adopting any other regulations. Geneva Conventions, which are binding for Azerbaijan, and I know that the International Committee of the Red Cross should raise this issue for a lot of times stated clearly that after termination of hostilities all the captives should be repatriated. Please, Mr. Seidov, please be responsible and please fulfill your international obligations. International obligations based not just only on the international Statutory Law, but International obligation, which considered as erga omnes obligations. I hope that sometime, somehow your country would become responsible on this issue. Thank you”
