CONCLUSIONS
of the International Conference
“The need for one definition of political prisoners”
Baku, May 27th 2011.

Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan realizes by stages a large activity program on Referendum to be held on March 18, 2009. In this connection ACSDA Election Headquarters launched intensive activity from January 10 to realize the monitoring of referendum preparation stage, referendum day and post referendum processes. Observation of the activity of 15 newspapers and 4 TV channels is realized in the course of monitoring process.

The Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan (ACSDA) attained a success in the financial aid contest of the Council of State Support to Non-Governmental Organizations under the President of Azerbaijani Republic. The duration of the project “Burst of voters’ activity in presidential and municipal elections, organization of enlightenment to contribute to hold transparent elections” is 5 months (August – December 2008).
The project aims at eliminating the problems existing in the sphere of civil society development, democratic elections, contributing to democratic reforms in this sphere, and promoting expansion of integration to the West. The goals also involve effective usage of peoples’ opportunities, as well as to contribute to increasing of their roles in the life of society. The realization of Action Plan signed with European Union also includes the priorities of the project.

Organization of Specialists Educated Abroad Azerbaijan (AKTAM) and the Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan (ACSDA) have drafted a bill “On educational credits” and submitted it to the Milli Majlis of the Azerbaijan Republic. The purposes of the drafted bill are the establishment of state assistance system for increasing equal opportunities and guaranties for educational credits, effective economic mechanisms of financing higher professional education and getting qualitative education The bill consists of 4 sections and 20 items. The sections have been devoted to common regulations, agreement on educational credits, financing the expenses on state support to the educational credits and state assistance to the transfer of education to a credit system. The purposes and a controlled object of the bill, as well as its basic conceptions have been indicated in the items of section 1 named “Common regulations”.

CaspiLog 2 (Caspian Dialog) was held on 7-9 May 2007 at Aqua Park, Novkhani. CaspiLog2 was organized by the Processes of International Negotiation (PIN) Program of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), in cooperation with the Caspian Partnership for the Future Public Union (CPF) and Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan (ACSDA). Diplomats, politicians and scientists from Europe, United States and Canada, Post-soviet area attended the conference. Important issues related to Caspian Sea such as status of Caspian Sea, security and environmental issues were discussed during the conference. This included the problems of cooperation (political and economic) of European countries, United States and Canada with Caspian littoral countries.

The Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan (ACSDA) considers that the rate of reforms in the country, as well as democratization and society’s development depend on the development of science, including public science in Azerbaijan. Therefore, the Association starts publishing the "Today & Tomorrow. Azerbaijan in Focus" monthly socio-political journal devoted to the problems of civil society and world of politics and science. The journal is published in two languages: Azerbaijani and English. The journal includes following sections: "analytics", "dialogue of civilizations", "politics", "geopolitics", "civil society" and "projects in science". Although new headlines will be opened in the future, many depend on the range of the articles subject-matter.

On April 7, Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan (ACSDA) and Azerbaijan Free Speech Foundation (AFSF) held an event, connected with 100 years anniversary of "Molla Nasraddin" magazine. "Molla Nasraddin" was first published in Tabriz in 1906. Persian articles in 8 editions of this magazine were translated into Azeri and published in 300 copies, by the initiative of ACSDA and AFSF. In parallel, the web site of "Molla Nasraddin" magazine was prepared – www.mollanesreddin.azfreespeech.org.

On August 22, 2005, the Association For Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan (ACSDA) and Public Association “Protection of Rights of Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons in Azerbaijan” (PRMIDA) held the Round Table on "The Aggressive policy of Armenia and its intrigues" in the International Press Center on the occasion of the anniversary of the occupation of Jabrayil, Fuzuli and Gubadly regions. Participants of the Round Table have accepted the appeal to the international organizations, engaged in the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, and the public.

The next project of Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan (ACSDA) was connected with repeated parliamentary elections, held in our country on May 13, 2006. ACSDA participated in the elections as an observer together with Association for Civic Initiative for Free and Democratic Elections NGO and "Transparent Elections Monitoring Center". Civic Initiative for Free and Democratic Elections was created on May 9 in 1990 in Sophia, the capital of Bulgaria. Civic Initiative for Free and Democratic Elections (CIFDE) is leading organization in Bulgaria that conducts sociologic surveys and exit polls top important for civil society development. During its activity CIFDE has conducted more than hundred Exit Polls, Quick Counts and other such successful researches. Representatives of CIFDE as observers took part in elections in Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, Serbia and Montenegro.

Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan (ACSDA) held a round table on “9/11 terror: let’s think together”. As we know, the terror acts happened in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 in the US, New York caused a terrible shock all over the world. This bloodstained tragedy changed people’s attitude to terror and terrorism.
It became obvious that terror is not a mean to achieve a goal, but an inhuman method for making people to live in threat, stress, in short, for setting up alarm. Just for this reason, the forces struggling against terrorism set up Anti-Terror Coalition. Azerbaijan, facing Armenian terror several times, also joined the mentioned Coalition. To stop and to prevent from terrorism is one of the debatable issues of the mankind.

On 18-20 April, Fund of Monitoring of Ecological Standards of Azerbaijan (FMESA) took enlightening measures on "Bird Flu" in Khachmaz region, together with Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan (ACSDA). Within the frames of these measures discussions were held among the teachers and pupils of Khachmaz on struggle ways from bird flu. Representatives of the commission on bird flu, specialists of corresponding local institutions of Siyazan and Davachi, as well as specialists from NGOs and mass media held a wide-range round table on April 19, 2006. The round table was aimed at enlightening public about bird flu issues.

A round table discussion dedicated to the subject of “Employment problems of the Azerbaijanis studied abroad” was held today at IPC by the Organization of Professionals Studied outside Azerbaijan (OPSOA) and ACSDA (Association for Civil Society Development in Azerbaijan). According to OPSOA chairman Natig Aliyev who opened the event with the opening remarks, the problem of the employment of the Azerbaijanis studying abroad has been one of the actual problems at the time of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. In that period, the ADR parliament has adopted a decision for 100 university applicants to study abroad. England, Italy, France, Turkey, Russia were among these countries. Italy and France had preponderance amongst these countries.