STATUS OF REFUGEE

KarabakhOpen
27-02-2008 10:33:06

During the Karabakh conflict over one million Armenians and
Azerbaijanis became refugees. However, the Armenian refugees
from Azerbaijan who now live in Nagorno-Karabakh do not have an
international status. Since the country they live in is unrecognized,
the world officially does not consider them as refugees or internally
displaced persons, although they have lost their homes, property,
country, like the Azerbaijani refugees.

According to the Agency for Refugees, Settlers and Migration, 30
thousand refugees and IDPs from the regions of Karabakh which are
occupied by the Azerbaijani army live in Karabakh. Sarasar Saryan,
a refugee from Baku, head of the NGO of refugees, thinks the
international community uses double standard.

"Some refugees are considered as refugees, we are not considered as
refugees. We suffered and we had losses just like the others. What
difference does it make from where we left? The attitude toward people
must be the same, despite ethnicity and nationality, no matter they
are Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Georgians, Ossetians, Abkhazians. We also
lost everything and we also have difficulty living in a new place,"
Sarasar Saryan says.

At the end of 2004 the law on refugees was passed in Karabakh,
according to which the refugees were granted an "internal status". The
people who had been displaced got a small compensation form the
state budget of Karabakh for "transportation of property and moral
and psychological damage", which is certainly too small to cover even
part of what they have lost.

Sarasar Saryan says his NGO is likely to appeal to the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees to display a humanitarian rather than
political attitude toward these people. For the problem of refugees
is that everyone forgets about them, there are a lot of words of
help but no actions. Therefore, they rely on the organization which
is led by refugees who understand and share their problems.

Seiran Karapetyan and Karine Ohanyan from Karabakh From series of
radio programs "South Caucasian Almanac: Old Neighbors, New World"