19/04/2016 Session
Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland replied to questions put by members of the Assembly in a question and answer session during the Assembly’s spring part-session.
During this exchange, members of the Assembly asked about Mr Jagland’s recent report on the situation of human rights in Crimea. This report, the result of a Council of Europe delegation to the peninsula where for the past 18 months there had no longer been any international organisation present, underlined the importance of ensuring that the 2.5 million people living there were granted the protection of the European Convention on Human Rights. In this context, Mr Jagland reiterated that Crimea belonged to Ukraine and that its annexation was illegal.
In addition, the Council of Europe was continuing to do all it could to secure the release, on humanitarian grounds, of Nadia Savchenko.
In the absence of any tangible progress, Mr Jagland said that he had suspended the Council of Europe’s participation in the tripartite working group on Azerbaijan, tasked with monitoring the situation concerning human rights and political prisoners. Nonetheless, he had pursued the action in this regard by initiating an inquiry into respect for human rights in the country, under Article 52 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Asked about the rise in Islamophobia in Europe, Mr Jagland said that he had strongly condemned the Islamophobic statements made by the “AfD” party in Germany, as had Chancellor Merkel. The Council of Europe had taken a number of initiatives in this regard, particularly in the field of education.
The other topics addressed included questions over the holding of the forthcoming parliamentary elections in “The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”, the electoral law in Armenia and the EU-Turkey agreement on the refugee crisis.