Five months before the Azerbaijani Presidential Elections in 2008, the registration of this organization was cancelled by the Khatai District Court on 14 May 2008 based on a technicality in official filings.

[1] In response, Anar Mammadli and Bashir Suleymanli established the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center (EMDS) in December 2008.

[3] Shortly after EMDS published its report, the General Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Azerbaijan opened a criminal case against Mammadli and he was arrested on 16 December 2013.

[1] In September 2014, Mammadli was awarded the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

[2] With this award, the Council of Europe wants to honour "outstanding civil society action in defence of human rights".