Azernews.Az

Birth rates are reportedly booming in the Armenia-occupied Upper (Nagorno) Garabagh region of Azerbaijan after the launch of an Armenian-Diaspora-financed program that offers cash payouts for each baby born, the eurasianet.org news portal has claimed.
Russia-based, Garabagh-born entrepreneur Levon Hairapetian, along with Ruben Vardanian, the chief executive officer of the Russian investment bank and asset management firm Troika Dialog Group, laid the groundwork for the program with a pledge of $2,000 for each child born to those who took part in a mass wedding for 700 Garabagh couples.
Hairapetian financed the mass nuptials in 2008. The amount paid will increase with each subsequent child born, the report said.
With average monthly salaries in the occupied Azerbaijani region a mere $50, according to local statistics, the Hairapetian offer apparently has proven too good to pass up. Sixty-one percent of the couples who took part in the 2008 wedding had children as of January 2010, according to eurasianet.org.
The region’s separatist leadership has reportedly added to the payouts. Under their so-called "birth encouragement" program, newlywed couples now receive $300 for their first child, $600 for their second child, $3,000 for their third child and $4,000 for their fourth child and any subsequent children.
The region’s so-called "minister" for social welfare, Narine Astsatrian, credits these baby bonuses for an estimated 31.5-percent spike in the birth rate for 2009 (2,821 babies born) compared to the 2007 level (2,145 babies born).
"The birth rate has undoubtedly increased," she said. "And the big wedding has indeed contributed to it."
Upper Garabagh is an Azerbaijani region occupied by Armenia since a 1994 cease-fire ended hostilities that killed an estimated 30,000 people and ousted about one million Azerbaijanis from their homes. According to eurasianet.org portal, Garabagh’s population plummeted in the 1990s after the six-year war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Independently confirmed figures for the region’s current population are not available, but the self-proclaimed republic’s "government" puts the number at some 145,000. A 1989 Soviet census put the Garabagh population at 200,000 residents.
The report also said that boosting the population has become a priority for the separatist leadership, which expresses "increasing unease at comments from Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that Baku does not exclude the use of force to regain control over Upper Garabagh."
The article says, further, that the unease "has put the emphasis on making life easier for those individuals who have elected to stay" in the occupied region. The separatist leadership in 2009 boosted social welfare outlays to some 27.2 percent of all spending (roughly 16 billion Armenian drams, or about $41.9 million) -- a figure 2.5 billion drams more than the entire "budget" for 2005.
Aside from the baby-bonus payouts, Gohar Hakobjanian, the director of the only maternity hospital in Khankandi, the center of the self-proclaimed republic, also credits an improved post-war economy for the recent birth spurt. Statistics from the separatist leadership to back that claim are hit and miss - the so-called "Garabagh Republic’s mission to Washington" claims foreign investments of roughly $35.1 million and an economic growth rate of 10.4 percent.
"The situation has now changed drastically," Hakobjanian said. "You can see many pregnant women in Stepanakert [Khankandi] now." Not all of them are first-time mothers, she added. To accommodate the reported boom, another maternity hospital will be built in Khankandi in the next two years, she said.*