ICG: Azerbaijan makes progress in treating IDPs

In recent years, Azerbaijan has made progress in satisfying the needs of approximately 600,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) forced out of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions by ethnic Armenians almost twenty years ago, says the report of the International Crisis Group (ICG) "Burden of Azerbaijani IDPs: Search for Solution".

"Since recently, the government of Azerbaijan has substantially increased the financial resources directed to improving the living conditions of IDPs, which make 7 percent of the total population of the country – one of the highest rates in the world. Over the past two years, 108,000 people were resettled into new houses; it is planned to build houses for 115,000 people more by 2015." says the ICG's report, which was translated into Russian on April 23.

Despite all this, as noted by the authors of the report, IDPs often express dissatisfaction with the poor quality of construction and infrastructure, inadequate involvement of local communities in planning, and limited access to the labour and land markets in the territories of new settlements. The social status of many of the new settlers is still notable by extreme uncertainty.

The living conditions of some 128,000 IDPs and local residents living in close proximity to the 180-kilometre-long contact line established after signing the 1994 Ceasefire Agreement are characterized the report as "very unstable because of recurring skirmishes and presence of minefields."

The co-chairs of the Minsk Group are advised to take measures to set up some mechanism for investigating incidents, developing confidence in localities, creating favourable atmosphere, including by organizing meetings of ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh with the ethnic Azerbaijanis expelled from Nagorno-Karabakh and occupied territories.