A/HRC/4/21/Add.2 page 15 78. A number of women associated with an NGO met the Special Rapporteur on the issue of being denied the right to wear headscarves while being photographed for the national identity cards and passports. The Special Rapporteur was told by these women that they had contested the authorities’ decision to deny them this right and had accordingly obtained some court orders. The court orders were not made available to the Special Rapporteur and she was unable to obtain them from other sources. She was, however, told by the Registrar of the Supreme Court that no such petition had reached the court to date. VI. CONCLUSIONS 79. The Special Rapporteur considers that Azerbaijan is a country where there is a high level of religious tolerance and, despite an overwhelming majority of persons of the same religion, there is real religious harmony. Moreover, although there are some instances of undue limitations or violations, the Government generally respects freedom of religion or belief. 80. Azerbaijan can play a leading role in building a model of its own because it has the most valuable raw material available to achieve this purpose: the good will and accommodating nature of its people towards spiritual beliefs. 81. The Special Rapporteur is not in a position to make an exhaustive detailed assessment of each reported incident regarding freedom of religion or belief in every region of the country. However, since she was already closely following the situation in Azerbaijan, this visit has enabled her to make an objective assessment of the situation concerning the right to freedom of religion or belief. 82. The most striking feature of Azerbaijan regarding issues relevant to the mandate is the balanced attitude shown by the Azerbaijanis towards religion. The main consequence of this attitude is an undisputable degree of tolerance of the population in general, which certainly constitutes an essential ingredient of the freedom of religion or belief in a society. 83. At the normative level, the Constitution contains the main guarantees of the right to freedom of religion of belief and the secular character of the State provides a further guarantee to this right. 84. The corresponding legislative framework is generally in line with human rights norms but the interpretation of certain of its provisions may raise concerns in terms of the right to freedom of religion. Moreover, the Government has created - and in some cases re-established specific mechanisms to deal with religion-related matters. These mechanisms do not fully respect the principles of freedom of religion, including in certain instances because of their ignorance of these principles. 85. The general respect for the right to freedom of religion or belief is not uniformly observed in all regions of Azerbaijan. The Special Rapporteur has indeed noticed that, in some cases, the concerned authorities may have blurred the thin line that distinguishes facilitation of religious freedoms from control. In particular, certain situations related to the different aspects of this control have resulted in actual limitations of the right to freedom of religion of religious communities: difficulties in registration, restriction on religious literature, methods of appointment of clergy or obstacles for non-registered religious communities.