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CHECHENS PICKET UNHCR
Baku Sun, March 2, 2007
BAKU (AP) - Dozens of Chechens from the violence-wracked Russian region protested outside a United Nations refugee office in Baku Tuesday, demanding they be recognized as legal refugees.
More than 5,000 Chechens live in Azerbaijan now, activist Isa Akhyadov said - many without any sort of official recognition. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has registered about half that figure.
Some 100 rallied outside the UNHCR office in Baku, he said.
"Our main demand is for Chechens who have lived more than five or six years in Azerbaijan and who have provisional status, not receiving any allotments of donated aid, to be granted the legal status of refugees," he said.
He said authorities in Azerbaijan, as
well as in Kazakhstan, have made life much more difficult for Chechens who fled the two wars that have afflicted the North Caucasus region over the past 13 years. He also said few Chechens in Azerbaijan want to return to Russia, where he said, authorities view many of them as potential terrorists.
William Tall* the UNHCR's representative in Azerbaijan, acknowledged that the Chechens face uncertain legal status and often difficult living conditions, but would only say that UNHCR staff regularly met with them and other asylum seekers.
Azerbaijan also has a large population of refugees who fled the fighting in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in the early 1990s. The mountainous territory is now controlled by Armenian forces.
PRESIDENT ILHAM ALIYEV RECEIVES UN RESIDENT COORDINATOR BRUNO POUEZAT
MOTHER LANGUAGE DAY HELD IN AZERBAIJAN
BAKU HOSTS PARLIAMENTARY MEETING ON REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH PROBLEMS IN SOUTH CAUCASUS
IMF WARNS OF DOUBLE -DIGIT INFLATION
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March 2007,
Issue No. 47
Previous Issues
UNDP Azerbaijan Website
Bulletin Home Page
NOVRUZ RINGING THE DOORBELL
Azernews, March 20, 2007
Aliyev congratulates nation on historic date
The Azerbaijani people celebrated national holidays in a rather low-key way during the Soviet Union times. However, after they asserted sovereignty and established an independent state upon the Soviet collapse in 1991, March 20-21 - the Novruz Bayrami (Holiday) marking the advent of spring - were officially announced holidays. President Ilham Aliyev has lately issued a decree announcing the celebration of the holiday for five days for the first time in the republic's history. Under the decision, the people of Azerbaijan will celebrate the date for a full week starting this year.
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