STRASBOURG, September 29 (RIA Novosti), Daria Chernyshova – Azerbaijani human rights defender Anar Mammadli was awarded the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize by the PACE on Monday.
"The selection of the candidates has been extremely difficult," PACE President Anne Brasseur said.
Mammadli was not able to receive his award, as he is currently in jail. His father came to Strasbourg on Anar Mammadli's behalf.
Aside from the Azerbaijani human rights activist, the shortlisted nominees included B'Tselem Israeli Information Center for Human Rights and Malta's Jesuit Refugee Service.
Mammadli is the founder and chairperson of an Azerbaijani organization dedicated to observing elections. Since 2001, his Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center (EMDS) has been carrying out independent election monitoring in Azerbaijan.
In 2013, the award went to Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatski, who was also imprisoned at the time he was rewarded and came to Strasbourg to collect the reward in July.
The Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize is awarded annually by the PACE in partnership with the Vaclav Havel Library and the Charta 77 Foundation to reward outstanding civil society action in the defense of human rights in Europe and beyond. The prize consists of a sum of 60,000 euro ($76,000) a trophy and a diploma.
