Internally Displaced Persons

Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)

“Persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border.”
—Definition of “Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs),” United Nations (UN)

Some 600,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), constituting some 7% of the Azerbaijani population, have been ethnically cleansed from their homes in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan as a result of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that began in 1988. IDPs lost their homes when Armenian forces began illegal military occupation of the area called Nagorno-Karabakh (“mountainous Karabakh”).

IDPs  live in government housing, private dwellings, and temporary camps in Azerbaijan.

Views of Home: Karabakh through IDP Eyes

Paintings by Khayala Mammadova and Joshgun Salmanov, who have IDP status, suggest a longing for Karabakh—for the home where their forebears lived. Several of these works show the town of Shusha, known from the 19th century as the conservatory of the Caucasus.
With thanks to the Coordinating Council of the Azerbaijani Community of the Nagorno-Karabakh.
 
Read about IDPs and IDP Issues
 
Scholar Jennifer Wistrand “Economic Migrants and Displaced People in Azerbaijan” 
 
Website of the State Committee of the Republic of Azerbaijan on Deals of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons