Non-alignment was adopted by Azerbaijan in the early years of the country’s post-Soviet independence under the former President Heydar Aliyev.

In the years 2013 to 2015, following the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine and the shady re-election of Azeri president Ilham Aliyev, for a third term, the Azerbaijani government, already one of the most restrictive dictatorships of the European continent, introduced a series of new laws and regulations affecting NGOs, their funding, and their activities. This allowed for an unprecedented crackdown on the NGO sector between 2014 and 2016.