OSCE Office in Baku organizes expert discussion of law that decriminalizes defamation

BAKU, 10 October 2006 - Azerbaijan's first draft law on defamation was presented at a roundtable meeting held today by the OSCE Office in Baku. The draft would decriminalize defamation.

The event, co-organized with the local media non-governmental organization, Yeni Nesil (New Generation), provided a platform for representatives of legislative and executive bodies, as well as lawyers and representatives of international and non-governmental organizations, to share their views on the importance of such a law for Azerbaijani society.

The draft law was prepared by a working group of independent media experts and members of parliament as part of an OSCE-supported project that aims at transferring libel, defamation and verbal insult provisions from the country's Criminal Code to the civil law.

"The work of the media in modern societies covers two juxtaposed problems: on the one side, protection of the freedom of information, which also means protection of journalists, and on the other, countering of abuses committed by journalists. "Any solution of the second problem must respect the first," said Ambassador Maurizio Pavesi, Head of the OSCE Office.

"Most advanced societies have found a balanced answer to this conundrum: they have decriminalized defamation over the last decades. This solution is in tune with the principle of proportionality of punishment accepted by all legal systems in the world," he said.

The expert discussion was attended by Miklos Haraszti, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. The draft law will be presented by the working group to the relevant commission of Parliament during the autumn session.