Azerbaijan: Refugees' Misery Not Over Yet
New housing settlements a disappointment for displaced Azerbaijanis.
Azerbaijan: Refugees' Misery Not Over Yet
New housing settlements a disappointment for displaced Azerbaijanis.
The Azerbaijani authorities kept their word to close all the tent camps housing people displaced by the Nagorny Karabakh war by the end of 2007. But for many of the displaced people, their new lives under roofs are not much better than they were under canvas.
At first sight, the meticulous row of houses in the new settlements in the Aghdam and Fizuli regions, close to the ceasefire line with Armenian forces, is a pleasing site. But as you get nearer to them, the defects become more obvious.
Eighteen months ago, IWPR visited new settlements for the internally displaced persons, IDPs, and heard negative comments on life there. (See Azerbaijan: New Setbacks for Refugees, CRS No. 357 14-Sept-06.) After the article was published, several of the people quoted in got into trouble with the authorities. In this article, therefore, interviewees are not named.
Those resettled still complain of problems with the supply of water and electricity and the poor state of the roads. Their biggest grievance, though, is the poor quality of the houses assigned to them.
Following the end of the Karabakh war in 1994, Azerbaijan led the world in the number of refugees and IDPs as a proportion of the total population, with more than half a million refugees from the Karabakh war joining 200,000 who had fled Armenia at the end of the Soviet period.
Sanan Husseinov, chief spokesman for Azerbaijan’s state committee on refugees and IDPs, said that 12 tent camps were created for those who had fled the conflict, which housed nearly 16,000 families for more than 15 years.
In 2001, the then president Heidar Aliev signed the first of several decrees allocating money from Azerbaijan’s newly created Oil Fund to resettle refugees in proper housing.
Long-awaited plans to give the refugees new homes were warmly welcomed at first, but later the refugees said that they had not been properly consulted about the location of their new settlements. (See Azerbaijani Refugees Angered by Resettlement Plan CRS No. 416 26-Oct-07.)
At the end of last year, the tent camp in Fizuli region was dismantled and its inhabitants re-housed in a settlement named Zobuzhug, which has 2,104 houses.
However, on a recent visit to Zobuzhug, IWPR found that IDPs were deeply disappointed with the conditions they were now living in.
“It was very hard living in tents, but at least there we had learned to earn a living,” said one IDP. “We have no way of earning a living here and it’s just as cold as it was in the tents.”
Construction work at Zobuzhug was continuing and a bath-house, medical centre and school for the settlement had not yet been finished. Residents said the electricity supply was intermittent and their monthly fuel allowance was not large enough to give them constant heating. The village sits at the top of a hill and there was not enough water to go round, even in the cold season.
The two nearest population centres of any size are Horadiz, 20 km away, and Bala Bahmanli, 25 km from the settlement. But there is no public transport to either place and the road leading to Zobuzhug is unfinished.
Himayat Rizvangizi, who heads a non-governmental humanitarian group called Himayadar, said a survey it had carried out on the new settlements had uncovered evidence that the money allocated for them had not been fully spent.
“The monitoring we did in previous years had the same result,” she said. “This year, we even asked the state refugees committee to do its own survey, but it refused. I think that if everything had been OK and there was nothing to hide, they wouldn’t have been opposed to the idea.”
“The state committee is refusing to publish detailed information about its spending,” she went on. “The public is only given general information about how many houses have been built and where. The monitoring shows that in actual fact, the homes constructed do not meet normal living standards.”
In the new villages of Alybeyli-1 and Alybeyli-2 in the Aghdam region, residents express similar complaints to those in Zobuzhug, saying the medical centre and communal bath-house do not work, there are not enough class-rooms in the school, and the children have to do sport outside because there is no gym.
The nearby settlements of Dordyol-1 and Dordyol-2 do at least have a new hospital, but the bath-house that the authorities promised would be paid for by the Oil Fund is functioning as a commercial operation.
Rizvangizi said that there was substantial evidence that the government had failed to deliver on its promises of proper housing and services. “On the one hand, this points to inefficient use of oil money, and on the other, a violation of human rights,” she said.
Refugee committee spokesman Husseinov rejected the claims of that living standards were poor in the new villages.
“All conditions have been created in the new settlements for these people to live normally,” he told IWPR. “And all the residents of these new villages are content. If this weren’t the case, they would be complaining about their living conditions –but we haven’t received a single written complaint.”
The refugee committee says that all the IDPs who for many years lived in railway carriages have now been rehoused. However, IWPR found 12 families still living in carriages near the town of Barda.
One of them said he did not want to be rehoused near a front line with Armenian forces on the other side.
“Who wants to leave a quite place and go and live under the whistle of bullets and rockets? The house they promised me is on the Armenian-Azerbaijani front line, right next to the Armenians. I’d rather live in a railway carriage,” he said.
Even if living conditions are improved, experts warn that these settlements face deeper long-term problems.
Economist Allahyar Muradov said that the authorities had failed to tackle the issue getting the refugees into employment.
“Two or three public buildings in each village cannot solve the employment problem facing the whole of the population,” he said.
Shahla Abusattar works for the Azerbaijani Network of Investigative Reporters in Baku.
At first sight, the meticulous row of houses in the new settlements in the Aghdam and Fizuli regions, close to the ceasefire line with Armenian forces, is a pleasing site. But as you get nearer to them, the defects become more obvious.
Eighteen months ago, IWPR visited new settlements for the internally displaced persons, IDPs, and heard negative comments on life there. (See Azerbaijan: New Setbacks for Refugees, CRS No. 357 14-Sept-06.) After the article was published, several of the people quoted in got into trouble with the authorities. In this article, therefore, interviewees are not named.
Those resettled still complain of problems with the supply of water and electricity and the poor state of the roads. Their biggest grievance, though, is the poor quality of the houses assigned to them.
Following the end of the Karabakh war in 1994, Azerbaijan led the world in the number of refugees and IDPs as a proportion of the total population, with more than half a million refugees from the Karabakh war joining 200,000 who had fled Armenia at the end of the Soviet period.
Sanan Husseinov, chief spokesman for Azerbaijan’s state committee on refugees and IDPs, said that 12 tent camps were created for those who had fled the conflict, which housed nearly 16,000 families for more than 15 years.
In 2001, the then president Heidar Aliev signed the first of several decrees allocating money from Azerbaijan’s newly created Oil Fund to resettle refugees in proper housing.
Long-awaited plans to give the refugees new homes were warmly welcomed at first, but later the refugees said that they had not been properly consulted about the location of their new settlements. (See Azerbaijani Refugees Angered by Resettlement Plan CRS No. 416 26-Oct-07.)
At the end of last year, the tent camp in Fizuli region was dismantled and its inhabitants re-housed in a settlement named Zobuzhug, which has 2,104 houses.
However, on a recent visit to Zobuzhug, IWPR found that IDPs were deeply disappointed with the conditions they were now living in.
“It was very hard living in tents, but at least there we had learned to earn a living,” said one IDP. “We have no way of earning a living here and it’s just as cold as it was in the tents.”
Construction work at Zobuzhug was continuing and a bath-house, medical centre and school for the settlement had not yet been finished. Residents said the electricity supply was intermittent and their monthly fuel allowance was not large enough to give them constant heating. The village sits at the top of a hill and there was not enough water to go round, even in the cold season.
The two nearest population centres of any size are Horadiz, 20 km away, and Bala Bahmanli, 25 km from the settlement. But there is no public transport to either place and the road leading to Zobuzhug is unfinished.
Himayat Rizvangizi, who heads a non-governmental humanitarian group called Himayadar, said a survey it had carried out on the new settlements had uncovered evidence that the money allocated for them had not been fully spent.
“The monitoring we did in previous years had the same result,” she said. “This year, we even asked the state refugees committee to do its own survey, but it refused. I think that if everything had been OK and there was nothing to hide, they wouldn’t have been opposed to the idea.”
“The state committee is refusing to publish detailed information about its spending,” she went on. “The public is only given general information about how many houses have been built and where. The monitoring shows that in actual fact, the homes constructed do not meet normal living standards.”
In the new villages of Alybeyli-1 and Alybeyli-2 in the Aghdam region, residents express similar complaints to those in Zobuzhug, saying the medical centre and communal bath-house do not work, there are not enough class-rooms in the school, and the children have to do sport outside because there is no gym.
The nearby settlements of Dordyol-1 and Dordyol-2 do at least have a new hospital, but the bath-house that the authorities promised would be paid for by the Oil Fund is functioning as a commercial operation.
Rizvangizi said that there was substantial evidence that the government had failed to deliver on its promises of proper housing and services. “On the one hand, this points to inefficient use of oil money, and on the other, a violation of human rights,” she said.
Refugee committee spokesman Husseinov rejected the claims of that living standards were poor in the new villages.
“All conditions have been created in the new settlements for these people to live normally,” he told IWPR. “And all the residents of these new villages are content. If this weren’t the case, they would be complaining about their living conditions –but we haven’t received a single written complaint.”
The refugee committee says that all the IDPs who for many years lived in railway carriages have now been rehoused. However, IWPR found 12 families still living in carriages near the town of Barda.
One of them said he did not want to be rehoused near a front line with Armenian forces on the other side.
“Who wants to leave a quite place and go and live under the whistle of bullets and rockets? The house they promised me is on the Armenian-Azerbaijani front line, right next to the Armenians. I’d rather live in a railway carriage,” he said.
Even if living conditions are improved, experts warn that these settlements face deeper long-term problems.
Economist Allahyar Muradov said that the authorities had failed to tackle the issue getting the refugees into employment.
“Two or three public buildings in each village cannot solve the employment problem facing the whole of the population,” he said.
Shahla Abusattar works for the Azerbaijani Network of Investigative Reporters in Baku.
