TODAY.AZ / Business

Azerbaijan, ICRC mull cooperation

13 October 2015 [12:33] - TODAY.AZ

/By AzerNews/

By Aynur Karimova

Azerbaijan and the International Committee of the Red Cross have discussed bilateral relations and the organization's projects on the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops.

The discussions were held between Azerbaijan's Deputy Prime Minister, the Chairman of the State Committee for Refugee and IDP Affairs, Ali Hasanov, the ICRC's Director for Europe and Central Asia, Patrick Vial and the Head of the organization's office in Azerbaijan, Deniz Duran on October 12.

During the meeting Hasanov provided an insight into the causes and consequences of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

"Although the OSCE Minsk Group has been mediating the conflict for more than 20 years, this has not yielded any tangible results. The main barrier is non-constructive position of Armenia and its efforts to keep the conflict frozen," he noted.

Azerbaijan, a country which has suffered through the last 25 years from the refugee problem, has one of the largest per capita internally displaced persons and refugees burden in the world.

The number of Azerbaijani refugees and IDPs from the occupied by Armenia Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions of Azerbaijan is above one million.

Over the years, Azerbaijani government together with international community has provided significant resources towards the improvement of overall living conditions for this group of population.

This has resulted, first of all, in better housing conditions and a significant decline in the poverty rate among the IDPs and refugees.

Despite the enormous efforts made by the government, the total solution of IDP problems is still very difficult to achieve as About 400,000 IDPs continue to live under difficult conditions in old and unsuitable houses.

The full restoration of the human rights of IDPs and refugees requires a resolution of the conflict.

Azerbaijan’s position in this issue is crystal clear: all the internationally recognized territories of Azerbaijan under Armenian occupation must be liberated and the right of IDPs to return to their homes and properties must be ensured. In that regard, the Azerbaijani government has developed a comprehensive repatriation program called the “Great Return” to enable the IDPs to realize their rights to return to their homes and to access to their properties as soon as Armenia withdraw its troops from the occupied Azerbaijani territories.

Armenia occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions, after laying territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor, causing a brutal war in the early 1990s. Long-standing efforts by U.S., Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.

As a result of the military aggression of Armenia, over 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, 4,866 were reported missing, almost 100,000 were injured and 50,000 were left disabled.

The UN Security Council has passed four resolutions on the Armenian withdrawal from Azerbaijani territories, but they have not been enforced to this day.

URL: http://www.today.az/news/business/144331.html

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