An event was held in connection with World Refugee Day

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Mətbuat xidmətinin məlumatı 21 JUNE, 2012

An event was held in International Mugam Center in connection with World Refugee Day, on June 20. The participants of the event jointly organized by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the government of Azerbaijan first saw the photo stand reflecting the life of refugees and internally displaced persons in the foyer of IMC. The Deputy Prime Minister, chair of the State Committee on Deals of Refugees and IDPs Ali Hasanov made a speech at the event and stated that the aim of UN General Assembly in declaring the 20th of June every year as World Refugee Day is to bring this problem to the attention of the world community. The National Leader of Azerbaijani people Heydar Aliyev declared the problem of refugees and IDPs to be a priority problem of the government of Azerbaijan. The Great Leader in fact had said this problem to be a priority problem yet before and UN General Assembly confirmed the National Leader’s words by adopting such decision in 2000. I, as a person dealing with this problem for many years, think that this is one of the most painful problems of the world. Number of conflict zones and its sacrifices becomes more year by year. The world has more than 42 million refugees and IDPs today. 15.2 million of these are refugees, 26.4 million are IDPs and 900 thousand are refuge seekers. Ali Hasanov said with regret that no regulations and conventions specifying IDPs’ status in international arena exist today. We consider that the time came for adoption of regulations specifying IDPs’ status and their rights. Ali Hasanov also emphasized that today a lot of Western states, international organizations apply sanctions against the countries, heads of states who don’t execute the decisions adopted by them. This is very good. But unfortunately, those Western states and international organizations don’t impose any sanction against aggressive Armenia who ignores their decisions and resolutions. “Everybody knows that Kocharyan and Sarkisyan have headed occupation of Azerbaijani lands, committing Khojaly tragedy, deportation of people. Then a question arises: why the same sanctions are not imposed against these people? If applying a sanction is objective, then it should be imposed against all”. The head of the Azerbaijani representation office of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Dag Sigurdson stated that Refugee Day is observed in all countries of the world. He emphasized the activities of the government of Azerbaijan for the settlement of the problems of IDPs in last 20 years. It was noted that official Baku sensitively approached the problems of thousands of refugees of other states coming to Azerbaijan. Therefore, D.Sigurdson, on behalf of UNO, expressed his gratitude to the head and government of Azerbaijan. The event completed with a concert program prepared jointly by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and IMC. Exhibition and sale of handicrafts of refugees living in Azerbaijan was organized within the framework of the event.