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.