Azernews.Az

1,025 people from Azerbaijan applied for asylum in Western countries in the first half of 2011, the United Nations body for refugees has said in a report.

575 of the asylum seekers filed their applications to the regional offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and relevant bodies of developed countries in the first quarter of 2011 and 450 in the second quarter. About half of the applicants sought asylum in Scandinavian and European Union countries, according to the UNHCR report, titled Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries.

In Armenia, Azerbaijan’s long-time foe, there were 2,872 asylum seekers in the first half-year.

The report also said that an estimated 198,300 asylum applications were recorded during the first six months of 2011 in the 44 countries included in the report. The figure is 17 percent more than during the same period of 2010 (169,300). The number of applicants is expected to further double in the second half of 2011, the UN experts said.

The UNHCR said most of the asylum seekers are from Afghanistan, China, Serbia (Kosovo), Iraq and Iran. They mostly sought to move to the United States, France, Germany and Sweden.