Paper long abstract:

The Republic of Azerbaijan (Azerbaijan) makes efforts on better protection of human rights through ratification and implementation of numerous human rights treaties, and improvement of national legislation and practice. In this process it is important to assess the status of international norms in the domestic legal system of the country - the pivotal point for understanding the impact of those norms on the national practice.

The present paper analysing the status of international norms in the domestic legal system of Azerbaijan, tries to reveal the legal force of those norms, as well as the state of implementation thereof.

The first section of the paper analyses the place of international norms in the legal system of Azerbaijan. The second section tries to reveal their legal force and addressing universally recognised norms of international law and ratified international treaties separately, also underlines the special weight of human rights treaties in comparison to other international agreements. The final section discusses the implementation mechanism of international norms in the legal system of Azerbaijan.

It is argued that the ratified international treaties are an integral part of the national legislative system, and have a superior legal force than any other act in that system. Furthermore, the ratified human rights treaties hold an even higher position, as they have, at least, an equal legal force with the Constitution of the country. Therefore, logically the ratified treaties should be applied in situations where the domestic legislation is not (properly) regulating this or another issue. However, the real situation is not so straightforward in the national practice. Thus, although the direct applicability of those documents is legally declared, in reality, they are treated as non-self-executing norms, which can only be applied through domestic legal tools. This undoubtedly necessities bringing the domestic legal acts into conformity with the ratified treaties, so that those treaties are fully implemented in practice.