Online safety & content laws in Azerbaijan (2026)

President Aliyev signed a decree creating the Centralised Information and Digital Analytics System (MİRAS), controlled by the State Security Service and to be fully operational by May 2026. It consolidates biometrics, health records, communications metadata, and location data from across all government bodies with no independent oversight, drawing condemnation from Human Rights Watch as a vehicle for sweeping privacy violations.

After a police car struck four children in Imishli, sparking street protests, authorities throttled internet access in the area and reportedly pressured residents to delete social media posts, the latest instance of Azerbaijan using connectivity disruption as a tool of domestic crowd control.

Starting in November 2023, authorities arrested at least 40 journalists and civil society activists, almost all from online outlets including Abzas.net, on fabricated smuggling and extortion charges; by mid-2025 the tally reached 25 imprisoned journalists. Freedom House called it the most severe assault on digital media in the country's history.

The compulsory Media Registry established by the February 2022 Media Law opened for applications on 14 October 2022; multiple independent and opposition outlets were refused registration, effectively stripping them of legal status as media and barring them from employing journalists.

During renewed military operations on the Armenian border in September 2022, authorities blocked TikTok nationwide from mid-September through November 2022, establishing a now-repeated pattern of single-platform suppression during military operations.

President Aliyev signed the new Law on Media on 8 February 2022, requiring all online news outlets to obtain state accreditation via the Azerbaijani Agency for Media Development before publishing; outlets denied registration lose legal standing as media. Press-freedom bodies and the Council of Europe condemned the law as incompatible with international standards.

Azerbaijani authorities throttled internet speeds and blocked major platforms, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Zoom, Skype, and Messenger, across the country for 46 days beginning 27 September 2020 during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, lifting restrictions only after the 10 November ceasefire; Access Now estimated economic losses of USD 243 million.

Under the pretext of combating COVID-19 disinformation, parliament amended the Law on Information, Informatisation and Protection of Information on 17 March 2020 to require website owners to remove 'false information' endangering public health, safety, or infrastructure; the OSCE Media Freedom Representative warned the vague wording would be weaponised against independent reporting.

The Ministry of Communications ordered ISPs to block azadliq.info (RFE/RL's Azerbaijani service), azadliq.org, Meydan.TV, Turan TV, and other outlets, the first time the authorities openly acknowledged blocking websites, citing national-security threats; Baku courts formalised the orders in May 2017.

Amendments to the Law on Information, Informatisation and Protection of Information and the Telecommunications Law gave domestic courts explicit authority to order ISPs to block online content on national-security grounds without prior judicial approval, creating the statutory infrastructure immediately used to suppress independent media.

Azerbaijan's first comprehensive personal data statute, Law No. 998-IIIQ of 11 May 2010, established the legal framework for collecting, processing, and protecting personal data, drawing on European data-protection principles; it remains the primary statutory basis for data-related rights, though enforcement has been widely criticised as inadequate.