Arbitrary deprivation of the applicant’s nationality, with the intention of rendering him stateless in breach of international law obligations. Invasion of privacy
JUDGMENT
Emin Huseynov v. Azerbaijan (no. 2) 13.07.2023 (app. no. 1/16)
SUMMARY
The case concerned the applicant’s complaint about being deprived of his Azerbaijani citizenship in
June 2015, making him stateless. At the time he was an independent journalist and the chairman of
a non-governmental organisation specialising in the protection of journalists’ rights. He had just
spent ten months in hiding in the Swiss embassy in Baku as he was on a wanted list in connection
with criminal proceedings against his NGO concerning alleged financial irregularities, before leaving
on a plane with the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Switzerland where he was granted asylum shortly
afterwards.
The Court found in particular that the national authorities had given no heed to the fact that the
termination of Mr Huseynov’s citizenship, rendering him stateless, would be in breach of
Azerbaijan’s international law obligations. Also, since Mr Huseynov had not been able to contest the
decision to terminate his citizenship before the national courts, he had not benefited from the
necessary procedural safeguards. Therefore, the Court concluded that the decision had been
arbitrary.
PROVISIONS
Article 8
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The applicant, Emin Rafik oglu Huseynov, was born in 1979 and lives in Geneva (Switzerland). He is a
stateless person of Azerbaijani origin.
At the time of the events the applicant was an independent journalist and the chairman of the
Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS), a non-governmental organisation specialising in
the protection of journalists’ rights.
On 22 April 2014 a criminal case was opened in Azerbaijan in connection with alleged irregularities in
the financial activities of a number of non-governmental organisations. The bank accounts of
numerous non-governmental organisations and civil society activists were frozen and various human
rights defenders and civil society activists were arrested.
In July 2014, Mr Huseynov learned that the tax authorities had launched an investigation into the
activities of the IRFS. In early August 2014, he was stopped at Baku airport from boarding a flight to
Istanbul. Fearing that he would be arrested, he went into hiding two days later, and then took refuge in the Swiss embassy in Baku. According to the Azerbaijani Government, he was subsequently charged with illegal entrepreneurship, large-scale tax evasion, and abuse of power. In the first half of 2015, Mr Huseynov applied to the President of Azerbaijan to renounce his Azerbaijani citizenship,
indicating, however, that he had no other nationality.
On 9 June 2015, the Swiss authorities paid his tax debt and three days later, Mr Huseynov left
Azerbaijan on a plane with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Swiss Confederation. Two weeks
later, the State Migration Service informed him that his Azerbaijani citizenship had been terminated
on 10 June 2015 by presidential order. He was granted asylum in Switzerland in October 2015.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT…
Article 8
The Court noted that the decision terminating the applicant’s citizenship had left him without any
valid identity document, creating general uncertainty as regards his legal status as an individual and
directly affecting his social identity. It therefore amounted to an interference with the applicant’s
right to respect for private life under Article 8. In keeping with its case-law, the Court’s duty was
therefore to determine whether that interference had been arbitrary or not – that is to say whether
it was legal, whether the applicant had had an opportunity to challenge the decision, and whether
the authorities had acted diligently and swiftly.
Contrary to the Government’s submissions that Mr Huseynov had not exhausted all the legal
avenues in Azerbaijan, the Court observed that the Law on Normative Legal Acts explicitly provided
that orders of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan were not normative legal acts. Therefore,
the presidential order terminating Mr Huseynov’s Azerbaijani citizenship could not have been
challenged before the Constitutional Court. Nor could it have been challenged in administrative
court proceedings, since the President of the Republic was not an administrative body. Moreover,
the applicant had never even been provided with a copy of the presidential order.
While Mr Huseynov maintained that he had been pressured into renouncing his citizenship – living in
fear of unfair imprisonment or even for his life –, the Government submitted that he had voluntarily
renounced his citizenship. The Court observed that there were a certain number of elements that
cast doubt on the voluntary nature of his renunciation of his citizenship, including the sequence of
events which had taken place at the beginning of June 2015 and preceded his departure from
Azerbaijan. In particular, the order for his arrest had been revoked and the decision declaring him a
wanted person had been quashed within a few days of his submitting his request to renounce his
citizenship and the payment of his tax debt by the Swiss authorities, events followed by the
applicant’s departure from Azerbaijan with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland. However,
it did not find it necessary to establish whether the applicant’s renunciation of his citizenship had
been forced or voluntary.
The Court drew attention to Article 17 of the Law on Citizenship of the Republic of Azerbaijan of
30 September 1998, which provided that a person accused in a criminal case was not able to ask to
renounce his citizenship. Although Mr Huseynov had apparently been charged with various criminal
offences on 19 August 2014, no information was available in the case file as regards the outcome of
the criminal proceedings instituted against him or his legal status in those criminal proceedings on
10 June 2015, the date on which his citizenship had been terminated.
In any event, the Court noted that the national authorities had given no heed to the fact that the
termination of Mr Huseynov’s citizenship would render him a stateless person in breach of Article 7
of the United Nations Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness of 30 August 1961, which was
an integral part of the legislative system of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Article 26 of the Law on
Citizenship, which confirmed the applicability of international legal norms related to issues of
citizenship. The Court noted that the UN Convention – and other subsequent guidelines issued by
the UNHCR and the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers to member States – expressly
provided that if the law of a Contracting State permitted renunciation of nationality, such
renunciation should not result in loss of nationality unless the person concerned possessed or
acquired another nationality.
In addition, since Mr Huseynov had not been able to contest the decision to terminate his citizenship
before the national courts, the Court noted that he had not benefited from the necessary procedural
safeguards.
Therefore, the Court concluded that the decision to terminate Mr Huseynov’s citizenship had been
arbitrary and had violated Article 8 of the Convention.
Articles 10, 13 and 18
The Court considered that there was no need to examine the admissibility and merits of the
complaints under these articles.
Article 34
Agreeing with the Government that it could not have been aware of the lodging of the present
application with the Court at the time when Mr Huseynov’s brother had been arrested, the Court
found that there was no sufficient factual basis for it to conclude that the national authorities had interfered in any way with the applicant’s exercise of his right of individual application in the proceedings before the Court.
Article 38
The Court observed that it had not made any explicit request for the submission of specific
documents when notice of the application had been given to the Government. In any event, the
incompleteness of certain documents had not prevented it from examining the application.
Therefore, the Court found that Azerbaijan had not failed to comply with its obligations under Article 38 of the Convention.
Just satisfaction (Article 41)
The Court held that Azerbaijan was to pay the applicant 4,500 euros (EUR) in respect of nonpecuniary damage
