Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Germany
 Tuesday 1:06 PM EST


European court orders Armenia, Azerbaijan to compensate war refugees

Paris

DPA POLITICS justice Europe Armenia Azerbaijan conflict  European
court orders Armenia, Azerbaijan to compensate war refugees Paris
Armenia and Azerbaijan must compensate seven refugees
from the former Soviet republics' war for the disputed region of
Nagorno-Karabakh, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday.


Armenia must pay 5,000 euros (almost 6,000 dollars) plus costs to
each of six Azerbaijani Kurds who have been unable to return to an
area occupied by Armenian forces since the war in the early 1990s,
the court said.

Azerbaijan, in a separate judgement, was ordered to pay 5,000 euros
and costs to the children of an Armenian man who had been unable to
return to his village in the Shahumyan region, near Nagorno-Karabakh.

The court had already ruled in 2015 that Armenia had given no valid
reason to explain why the six Azerbaijani applicants were not allowed
to return to their homes in the Lachin district in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Also in 2015, the court held that Azerbaijani authorities had been
within their rights to keep the Armenian applicant's village off
limits for security reasons, but should have compensated him.

Christian ethnic Armenian forces have controlled the former
autonomous district of Nagorno-Karabakh, inside majority-Muslim
Azerbaijan, since a 1994 ceasefire ended several years of fighting.

They also control formerly Azeri-populated areas around the enclave,
including Lachin.

The conflict, as well as simultaneous ethnic clashes inside Armenia
and Azerbaijan, caused hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee in
both directions across the countries' border.

The court said that both countries had a responsibility to find a
political solution to the conflict, which briefly flared up again
last year in fighting that killed more than 120 people.