The Project on “Reinforcing Gender Equality and other Ethical Standards in the Azerbaijani Media” continues its effort to raise capacities and awareness on international and European standards concerning media freedom, data protection and privacy rights among lawyers, law-enforcement representatives and journalists in Azerbaijan.
On 12-13 March 2022, the Council of Europe in co-operation with the Azerbaijani Bar Association organised a two-day online training workshop on “Data Protection and Privacy” for Azerbaijani lawyers. Attended by 27 lawyers, the training workshop was delivered by international and local experts, and it addressed the issues of privacy and its importance in international law, international standards on data protection, data protection as a topic for human rights defenders, corporate professionals, techies and others, as well as Council of Europe and EU benchmarks on data protection and privacy.
In his welcoming remarks, Mr Zoltan Hernyes, head of the Council of Europe Office in Baku emphasised data protection and privacy as an important human right, which needs to be promoted and protected through effective national legal instruments. He stressed, “the right to privacy is no longer an exclusive issue between an individual and public authorities. It is also a relation between private persons, entities, or business enterprises, who can also be held accountable for an unjustified interference in privacy”. While opening the online training workshop, Mr Anar Baghirov, chairman of the Azerbaijani Bar Association, stated the importance of data protection as a novel legal instrument protecting privacy rights and also stressed the need for continued capacity-building of legal professionals in this field together with the Council of Europe.
During the online two-day training workshop, the participants were engaged through practical exercises discussing various cases on data protection and privacy and also reflecting on the challenges and opportunities of different national legal systems regulating data protection and privacy rights. Questions were raised concerning a variety of legal issues arising in the daily work of lawyers in Azerbaijan. This illustrated that many aspects of fundamental rights remain unexplored and therefore, this training workshop comes at the right time addressing the right audience.
This training workshop was implemented within the Council of Europe Project on Reinforcing Gender Equality and Other Ethical Standards in the Azerbaijani Media implemented since 2019.