Winner of the 2014 VH Prize

Azerbaijani human rights defender who has made a marked contribution to the respect of human rights and free elections in his region. He is founder and chairman of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre, which since 2001 has monitored votes in Azerbaijan. In December 2013 he was charged with “abuse of office” and this May he was sentenced to five and a half years in prison. On March 17, 2016, after almost two and a half years of imprisonment, he was pardoned by the president of Azerbaijan along with a number of high-ranking political prisoners. On April 29, 2024, soon after the recent presidential elections of 7 February 2024, Mammadli was detained again in Baku. The Václav Havel Library and Forum 2000 Foundation expressed their deep solidarity with Anar Mammadli and other political prisoners and appealed to President Aliyev and respective Azerbaijani authorities for their unconditional release and dropping the charges against them.