Azerbaijan displaced await end of conflict
By Martin Vennard
BBC News, Baku
Tazagul moved with her family in 1993 into a room in the students’
residence at the Technical University in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku.
Sixteen years later, she is now a widow and still living in one room
in the residence.
She shares it with her three grown-up children – two of whom have
mental disabilities – her daughter-in-law, and a grandchild.
Tazagul and her family are internally displaced people (IDPs) within
Azerbaijan – victims of its conflict in the early 1990s with Armenia
over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh – an
Armenian-controlled enclave within Azerbaijan.
`People live in very bad, unbearable conditions’
Elsevar Agayev
UNHCR Azerbaijan consultant
According to the Azerbaijani government and the United Nations, there
are 570,000 IDPs in Azerbaijan out of a population of around 8.5
million – one of the highest concentrations of IDPs in the world.
As well as the IDPs, more than 200,000 ethnic Azeris came to
Azerbaijan from Armenia as refugees during the conflict, while most
ethnic Armenians left Baku and other parts of Azerbaijan.
Make-shift facilities
Some 4,000 of the IDPs are living in the former student complex,
alongside Tazagul and her family. Many of them have been there for at
least 15 years.
There are dozens of such centres in Baku, which house around a third
of the country’s IDPs.
The UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, says IDPs have problems accessing
health and education services, but that their main problem is their
living conditions.
ElsevarAgayev, a consultant for the UNHCR in Azerbaijan, recently
travelled to see IDPs in the west of the country.
"In collective centres, I saw people living in very precarious
conditions," he says.
"It is the same in Baku, in Sumgayit and other places where IDPs
live. People live in very bad, unbearable conditions," he adds.
The IDPs in the former Baku student residence have make-shift cooking
facilities in the corridors outside their rooms or on the balconies,
while the hygiene facilities are communal.
With her grandchild tied to her back, Tazagul says that every morning
the family members have to pile up the mattresses on which they sleep
during the night.
She says she used to work in a bakery, but that the family now lives
solely on benefits.
` Few people work in official and regular jobs ‘ Tazagul An employee
at the centre tells me that the IDPs who do find jobs generally work
in the black economy.
"Sometimes they find jobs, but sometimes they could wait weeks to find
a job. Few people work in official and regular jobs," she says.
Many of the IDPs came from rural areas where agriculture was the
dominant industry and have difficulties finding work in an urban
environment.
The buildings at the centre are in urgent need of repair, while
outside the road is more like a muddy track. It is lined by wooden
stalls and shacks, set up as shops by the IDPs.
Just a short distance away in central Baku, Azerbaijan’s oil wealth is
ostentatiously displayed in the form of expensive cars and shops.
Negotiations
The government’s aim is for all the IDPs to be able to return home to
Nagorno-Karabakh, or the areas around it that are internationally
recognised as being part of Azerbaijan but controlled since the war by
ethnic Armenians.
One of the heads of the group which is trying to help find an
agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed Caucasus
territory recently told the BBC he was more hopeful of success than at
any time in the past.
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza, co-chair of the
OSCE Minsk Group, said the recent meetings between the Azerbaijani and
Armenian presidents had given new momentum to the process.
One of the main issues being discussed is the fate of the IDPs, but
none of those I spoke to at the Baku centre had even heard about the
talks.
The government has built houses for some IDPs, such as Zulfugar Agayev
and his family.
They fled the Azerbaijani district of Agdam, near Nagorno-Karabakh, as
Armenian forces advanced in 1993.
"My father, mother, two brothers and a sister moved back to Agdam
where the government built new houses for IDPs," Mr Agayev says.
"But this new village is very close to the ceasefire line and you can
hear when shooting breaks out. I think it’s very dangerous to live
there now, but people have no other choice."
Oil revenues
A ceasefire was signed between Azerbaijan and Armenia in
1994. However, sporadic fatal clashes continue to break out around
Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding areas.
Critics say
the government could have acted quicker and used more of its oil
wealth to re-house the IDPs.
But the authorities reject that and say the last of the camps for IDPs
were dismantled some time ago.
"The government tries its best to help them. There is not a single
refugee or IDP shelter camp today," says foreign ministry spokesman
Khazar Ibrahim.
"We have used budget money. We have also used money from our oil fund
to build temporary houses for them," he adds.
But IDPs, such as Tazagul, living in collective centres do not believe
that their situation will improve significantly until a resolution to
the dispute is found and they can return home.
Storyfrom BBC NEWS:
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Published: 2009/02/18 00:11:17 GMT
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