Azerbaijani demining agency, IOM sign coop agreement
By Nigar Orujova
The Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Action (ANAMA) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) signed a cooperation agreement on mine clearance efforts on Friday in Baku.
According to the agreement, the two organizations agree to consider a number of activities including mine action as standalone activity and integration of mine action into broader development projects and programs, facilitating cooperation at both national and international levels.
Since Azerbaijan's lengthy war with Armenia in the early 1990s that displaced over a million Azerbaijanis from their homes, ANAMA has been conducting mine clearance operations in the danger zone. The demining agency is working in the Terter, Aghdam, Fizuli, Tovuz, Aghstafa, and Goygol districts, as well as in the Garadagh district outside the Azerbaijani capital Baku.
The cooperation between ANAMA and IOM dates back to 2007, when the two organizations jointly implemented a two-phase project dedicated to mine victims in Azerbaijan. The project is supported by the Austrian Development Agency, the International Trust Fund for Demining and Mine Victims Assistance of Slovenia, Republic of Korea and others including local donors.
According to ANAMA Director Nazim Ismayilov, about 220 million square meters have been demined in the last ten years of the total 350 million square meters of Azerbaijani territory freed from Armenian occupation in the 1990s.
Some 600 people with all the necessary equipment are involved in demining activity, Ismayilov said.
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan emerged in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Since the war that ended with the signing of a fragile cease-fire in 1994, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory. Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions on a pullout from Nagorno-Karabakh and the seven surrounding regions.
The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group - Russia, France and the U.S. - are brokering peace negotiations, but their efforts have been largely fruitless so far.