Strategies of in/visibility in the authoritarian state: human rights activists and the EU in post-2014 Azerbaijan

This paper focuses on the agency of human rights activists in Azerbaijan since 2014, in a context of increased legal restrictions and government pressure on NGOs, as well as politicization of connections with external actors like the European Union (EU). Adding to recent critical literature which highlighted civil society’s coping strategies and agency in authoritarian environments, this paper wants to challenge the dominant discourse of ‘shrinking space’ and ‘paralysed civil society’ in post-2014 Azerbaijan. Informed by poststructuralist and postcolonial understandings of visibility, the paper argues that Azerbaijani activists deploy selective in/visibilities as strategies to perform human rights work in a restrictive environment. Notably, these strategies are shaped by the ambivalent logics of recognition and control ensuing from two hegemonies that compete over Azerbaijani civil society: on the one hand, the repressive gaze of the authoritarian regime; on the other, the requirement for transparency underpinning EU support to, and understandings of, civil society as an agent for democratisation. Building on interviews with local activists and EU officials, as well as on the analysis of relevant policy documents, the paper illustrates how the shifting environment has shaped Azerbaijani human rights activists and NGOs’ positioning vis-à-vis the state and the EU in ambiguous ways, which challenge the ‘independent’ vs. ‘government-organised’ dichotomies. Moreover, it explores how these developments spurred the emergence of new forms of human rights activism, possibly critical of ‘traditional’ human rights defenders and NGO-donor relations.