Chechen children cannot attend Azerbaijan schools, says rights defender

Children of Chechen refugees cannot attend Azerbaijan secondary schools, Chechen human rights activist Mairbek Taramov told the Caucasian Knot correspondent. "There is a private direction of the Ministry of Education to deny Chechen children admission to secondary schools. I am collecting all these facts so that to file a complaint with the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) office in Baku," he said.

In its turn, the press service of the Azerbaijan Ministry of Education denied this information, claiming that "all children, irrespective of their nationality and social status, can attend Azerbaijan schools and no worker in the field of education is entitled to prevent them from receiving education."

The staff of the UNHCR office in Baku does not know cases of the infringement on the rights of Chechen refugees in Azerbaijan. "Refugees and internally displaced persons turn to our organization every year asking to help their children enter a secondary school. Some 500 refugee children were admitted to Azerbaijan institutions of general education last year, the majority of them being Chechens' children. There are 700 of them this year, most of them being Chechens as well," a representative of the UNHCR office said.