An international conference on “The Importance of Humanitarian Donorship Development and Partnership” was jointly initiated and organized by the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Azerbaijan to UN Office and other international organizations in Geneva and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the UN Geneva Office on May 7.   

Permanent Mission of the Republic of Azerbaijan to UN Office and other international organizations in Geneva, Ambassador Vagif Sadigov opened the conference held under the instruction of Ilham Aliyev, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Rashid Khalikov, Deputy Secretary General for Humanitarian Partnerships with the Middle East and Central Asia read the statement of the Secretary General Antonio Guterres to the conference participants. In that statement, the UN Secretary General highly appreciated Azerbaijan`s humanitarian assistance bilaterally, as well as within the UN and other multilateral formats as a partner and donor country to the people in need, and expressed gratitude to Azerbaijan.    

Mahmud Mammad-Guliyev, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan spoke about Azerbaijan`s activity in this area as a new donor. He underlined that currently Azerbaijan`s donorship activity is being carried out in parallel with the efforts of the Azerbaijani government to improve the state of IDPs displaced from their native lands as a result of Armenia`s ongoing military aggression against our country.

Later, in the conference continuing at the two sessions, representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, International Committee of the Red Cross, Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and World Health Organization considered praiseworthy that Azerbaijan turned from the assistance recipient country into a donor country in a short period of time. 

Fuad Huseynov, Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for Refugees and IDPs, made a speech at the first session “Perspectives of Donorship Development in a Changing Humanitarian State”.

At that session, representatives of the Center for Humanitarian Assistance named after King Salman, Development Assistance Agency under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea and the Ambassador of Haiti to UN Office in Geneva shared their experiences in the field of donorship with the conference participants.

Presentation of the book, which was published by AIDA and describing the activities of Azerbaijan in 2005-2018 as a donor country, was held within the framework of the conference, a video was shown to and a photo exhibition was organized for conference participants about the work of AIDA.