DISPLACED THEN DISCRIMINATED AGAINST – THE PLIGHT OF THE INTERNALLY DISPLACED POPULATION
Media For Freedom, Nepal
June 28 2007
Introduction
‘We don’t exist, this is not a life. We are ready to live with the
Armenians of Karabakh and we have not forgotten our historical home
there. But we won’t see peace for at least ten years, that’s why we
want decent living conditions now.’
-Internally displaced Azerbaijani man, Goranboy region.
‘I don’t need benefits, I’d rather have my compensation and integrate
into society here in Baku. I’d gladly lose my status as a displaced
person. The government should stop deceiving me that I’ll be able
to return. So many people have already died since being displaced –
and they have nothing to leave to their descendents. It’s my choice
whether to return or not.’
-Internally displaced Azerbaijani man, Baku.
Displacement resulting from the territorial conflicts of the former
Soviet Union is no longer news. Except for occasional ceasefire
violations the conflicts of the South Caucasus region passed into
post-violence phases in the mid-1990s, although peace processes have
yet to offer much glimmer of hope for their resolution. Yet the legacy
of displacement remains long after the international community has
moved on to more current crises elsewhere on the planet.
Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus has one of the largest populations
of internally displaced persons (IDPs) per capita of any state in the
world.(1) Some 600,000 Azerbaijanis have lived in internal displacement
for over a decade as a result of the territorial conflict in and around
Nagorny Karabakh between 1991 and 1994. These are the ethnically
Azeri residents of the former Nagorny Karabakh autonomous region,
whose Armenian population claims independence from Azerbaijan, and
the seven Azerbaijani provinces surrounding it, occupied since the
early 1990s in whole or in part by Armenian forces.
In the immediate aftermath of displacement the Azerbaijani government,
with the assistance of international actors, provided emergency
relief aimed at safeguarding minimum essential levels of basic
human rights. However, in a context of protracted displacement
Amnesty International believes that these measures are insufficient
to guarantee the progressive fulfilment of internally displaced
people’s economic and social rights, as required by international human
rights law. The progressive fulfilment of economic, social and other
human rights requires the removal of a number of obstacles, such as
limitations imposed by the internal residence registration system and
the definition of all provisions for displaced people as ‘temporary’,
currently obstructing displaced people’s full participation in economic
and social life.
Amnesty International is calling for action to improve the human rights
standards enjoyed by internally displaced people in Azerbaijan. The
central concern explored in this report is that a system of practices
which in effect discriminate against internally displaced people is
compounding the problems posed by displacement.
Consistent violations of the rights to freedom of movement,
adequate housing, health care and work inhibit internally displaced
people’s capacity to exercise these and other human rights, and
stall the development of self-reliance. Despite legal guarantees of
displaced people’s equal exercise of human rights alongside other
Azerbaijani citizens, Amnesty International is concerned that a set
of discriminatory practices is serving to encourage the internally
displaced population to accept its current situation as temporary,
pending the conclusion of a peace settlement. This restricts their
capacity to exercise a choice between return to their original
homes, integration or permanent resettlement in another part of the
country under conditions that respect their human rights. This in
turn compounds displaced people’s dependence on the state and their
vulnerability to other pressures. In the words of an Azerbaijani
journalist the internally displaced are ‘hostages to peace’, who
must wait for a peace settlement before their human rights will be
fully respected.
Amnesty International is publishing this report on internal
displacement in Azerbaijan now because the reduced involvement of
international actors has meant increased responsibility for the
Azerbaijani state for the protection of the rights of displaced
people. Compared to international actors states can be motivated
by a different set of factors in dealing with protracted internal
displacement, and this can have serious human rights implications for
the internally displaced population concerned. National authorities’
policies towards their internally displaced must therefore be the
subject of careful scrutiny to assess compliance with human rights
obligations. This is especially the case in cases of protracted
displacement requiring more than protection of minimum essential
levels of human rights.
A key aspect of Azerbaijan’s policy on internal displacement since
2001 has been the re-housing of displaced people from emergency relief
centres to more durable housing in new, purpose-built settlements
across the country. While addressing immediate needs for improved
housing for the displaced relocated from emergency relief camps, the
resettlement policy has been marred by a lack of consultation with
those being relocated, construction of settlements in economically
unsuitable locations and insufficient infrastructure to support
relocated communities. Urban IDPs have been relatively neglected by the
state, and although they have more opportunities to find work in the
urban economy, they are particularly vulnerable to housing shortages.
Although the new settlements are superficially impressive, Amnesty
International is concerned that they cannot be considered as adequate
housing for those in situations of protracted displacement. The new
settlements are often located in remote parts of Azerbaijan, have poor
communication links and are isolated from employment opportunities
and health and education services. Furthermore, the housing units
provided are often of very poor quality and Amnesty International
has received reports of dangerous incidents related to structural
failings. As such, the new settlements do not respect the right to
adequate housing of IDPs and frustrate the efforts of displaced people
to realise their rights to work, to health care and to an adequate
standard of living. Azerbaijani human rights activists and internally
displaced community leaders share these concerns, describing the new
settlements to Amnesty International as ‘open prisons’ and a kind of
‘reservation system’.
Urban IDPs have been relatively neglected in Azerbaijani state policy
on displacement. Displaced people in the capital Baku and its suburbs
told Amnesty International that they are ignored by the state and
have to pay for various services they are entitled to receive for free
under Azerbaijani law. Many eke out an existence in informal trading,
while others work without a residence permit, forfeiting local access
to a number of serves to which they are legally entitled, as they
are unable to re-register.
The displaced are also penalized by the maintenance of an internal
registration system that ties certain rights and benefits to a fixed
residence. As the internal registration is notoriously difficult to
change many displaced persons are forced move in search of employment
without a legal residence permit. Many displaced families are broken
up as a result, as husbands and sons move to urban centres while
wives and children remain at the household’s registered residence.
Alternatively, displaced people must pay bribes in order to change
their registration.
Other concerns addressed in this report include the absence of
consultation of the displaced in decision-making processes directly
affecting the exercise of their human rights, and different ways
in which corruption diminishes the impact of state-run programmes
to fulfil these rights. International human rights law confers on
IDPs, as well as other citizens, the right to participation in public
affairs and to be consulted in decision-making processes that have a
direct impact on them. Amnesty International is concerned, however,
at the absence of mechanisms allowing displaced people to fulfil these
rights. For example, displaced people relocated to new settlements
report not having been consulted on the location of the settlement
in which they were re-housed. This lack of consultation amounts to a
pattern of mass forced displacement, in violation of both the right
to adequate housing and the right to freedom of movement and to choose
a residence.
Displaced people confront corruption and bribery at virtually every
level of their interaction with official structures. This also
applies to other Azerbaijani citizens, yet the displaced typically
have far fewer resources to offset the demands made on them by
corrupt officials. Official structures reportedly extort bribes
from displaced people for a wide range of services, for example
in the form of so-called ‘processing fees’ for which there is no
legal basis; by contrast during election periods displaced people
report being offered bribes in order to vote for pro-governmental
candidates. Amnesty International has also received reports of
corruption in the expenditure of funds allocated to IDP programmes,
resulting in a vastly reduced impact in terms of fulfilling the human
rights of their beneficiaries.
Amnesty International does not take a position on territorial disputes,
including that over Nagorny Karabakh. Regardless of the origins of
the conflict or the outcome of negotiations, however, displaced people
from both sides of this dispute, as in any other, remain entitled to
a set of rights. These include the right to return to their original
homes in conditions of dignity and security. They also include the
rights to integration or resettlement elsewhere in the country.
Given the steps taken in recent years by the Azerbaijani government
to relocate internally displaced people out of emergency shelter,
this report focuses on the contexts of newly constructed purpose-built
settlements for displaced people and displaced populations in urban
environments, principally the capital Baku.
The information in this report was gathered on successive visits to
Azerbaijan and research conducted in a number of different sites
within the country. Interviews were conducted with civil society
activists, representatives of displaced communities, state officials,
representatives of international organizations, health professionals
dealing with displaced populations and a wide variety of displaced
persons. Numerous reports published by international and domestic
humanitarian organizations and the Azerbaijani state were also
referred to.
1. The Nagorny Karabakh conflict
The conflict over Nagorny Karabakh is one of several minority-majority
conflicts contesting sovereignty between former federal units of
the Soviet Union. Known in the Soviet Union as the Nagorno-Karabakh
Autonomous Oblast (NKAO, with Oblast signifying an administrative
region in Russian), Nagorny Karabakh was a region populated by a
local Armenian majority within Soviet Azerbaijan. With the onset of
political liberalization in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, the
Armenians of Nagorny Karabakh began to campaign for separation from
Azerbaijan and union with Armenia.(2) The conflict escalated into a
full-scale war in 1991, ending in 1994 with the de facto secession of
Nagorny Karabakh from Azerbaijan. The Armenians of Nagorny Karabakh
and Armenia portray this separation as the national self-determination
struggle of a repressed minority. Azerbaijanis portray the separation
as the result of aggressive Armenian desires to acquire territory.(3)
A number of proposals have been put forward to resolve the conflict
by the ‘Minsk Group’, a body created within the framework of the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to mediate
in the conflict, although no proposal thus far has been acceptable
to all parties to the conflict. No state, including Armenia, has
recognized the self-declared Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR).(4)
1.1. Mass population exchange
A key feature of the conflict was forced population movements. During
the course of the conflict Armenians and Azeris suffered harassment,
mass killings, forced expulsions and the expropriation of their
property. Statistics on numbers of refugees and the internally
displaced vary due to post-displacement movements (including return
in some cases to recaptured territories) and logistical difficulties
in collating data (see textbox). Overall, it is estimated that
over 400,000 Armenians became either refugees from Azerbaijan to
Armenia or were internally displaced in border regions contiguous
to Azerbaijan.(5) Over 200,000 Azeris became refugees from Armenia
to Azerbaijan, while the number of those internally displaced in
Azerbaijan peaked in 1993 at some 780,000. At that time the Azerbaijani
government announced the presence of more than one million refugees
and internally displaced persons on its territory, a figure still
regularly cited in official Azerbaijani sources.
According to independent experts and international organizations the
figure today is probably considerably lower, although most sources
agree on the unreliability of data due to the absence of regular
surveys of the internally displaced population.
The timing of the various waves of refugees and internally displaced in
Azerbaijan is significant. The main influx of refugees from Armenia
was complete by September 1990, by which time a total of 201,000
Azeri refugees from Armenia were registered in Azerbaijan.
The main displacement flows resulting from Armenian military control
of Nagorny Karabakh and the regions surrounding it took place three
years later in 1993. Having arrived first and facing no realistic
prospect of return to Armenia, Azeri refugees from Armenia were to
a considerable extent integrated into Azerbaijani society. Indeed
Azeris from Armenia, known in Azerbaijan by the (for some pejorative)
term yerazi, became one of the leading political-economic clans in
the country, displacing other previously prominent groups.(6) Those
subsequently displaced by the occupation of territories surrounding
Nagorny Karabakh faced less favourable conditions for integration.
Notes:
(1) Internally displaced persons differ in legal terms from refugees
in that they have not crossed an international boundary as a result
of their displacement.
(2) Although conflict over ownership of Nagorny Karabakh has existed
since the early twentieth century, the current phase of the conflict
may be dated back to 1988. For accounts of the conflict see Thomas
de Waal, Black Garden. Armenia and Azerbaijan through peace and war
(New York: New York University Press, 2003); Michael Croissant,
The Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict: causes and implications (London:
Praeger, 1998); Ali Abasov and Haroutiun Khachatrian, Karabakh
Conflict. Variants of Settlement: Concepts and Reality, 3rd. ed.
(Baku and Yerevan: Areat/Noyan Tapan, 2005).
(3) These views are reflected in different strategic definitions of the
conflict. While Azerbaijan refuses to negotiate with the Armenians of
Nagorny Karabakh and defines the conflict as an inter-state conflict
between itself and Armenia, the Armenians of Nagorny Karabakh define
the conflict as one between themselves and Azerbaijan.
(4) Different variants of the name Nagorny Karabakh are in use. Many
sources, as well as the English language literature and insignia of the
NKR, use the term ‘Nagorno-Karabakh’. Since nagornyy (‘mountainous’) is
a Russian adjective, this report uses the simplified formula ‘Nagorny
Karabakh’ as one which complies with Russian linguistic norms. There is
no difference in meaning between Nagorno-Karabakh and Nagorny Karabakh.
(5) This figure is cited by International Crisis Group, based on data
provided by Arif Yunusov, a leading scholar of displacement in the
Karabakh conflict. International Crisis Group, Nagorno-Karabakh:
Viewing the Conflict from the Ground, Europe Report No.166,
(Tbilisi/Brussels, 2005), p.2.
(6) Rasim Musabayov, ‘The Karabakh conflict and democratization in
Azerbaijan’, in Broers, op.cit. ft.21, p.62.
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