Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

A newly created international fund for democracy and human rights in the Netherlands will defend the rights of the Azerbaijani refugees and IDPs.

First Vice President of the Benelux Azerbaijanis Congress (BAC), Elsever Mammadov said the fund had for the first time addressed the Dutch parliament on the gross violation of the rights of refugees and IDPs from Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.

The appeal was also sent to the Hague court.

Mammadov said the new international organization was created by local communities closely linked with Azerbaijani communities in Europe, thus the issue of Azerbaijan's occupied territories became significant in their work.

"The official heads of the organization are the Dutch, but the fund's representative offices are operating in other European countries; it is planned to open a representative office in Baku as well. Aside from that, it is planned to send a demand on the above-mentioned fact to the European Parliament and the UN," Mammadov stressed.

The bloody war, which flared up in the late 1980s due to Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor, left 700,000 civilians of Nagorno-Karabakh and the regions adjoining it, as well as the regions bordering with Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh without homes.

They are temporarily settled in more than 1,600 settlements across 62 cities and regions of Azerbaijan.

Moreover, 250,000 Azerbaijanis were expelled from Armenia and became refugees due to Armenia's ethnic cleansing policy after the emergence of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijanis who had displaced from their homes as result of the brutal war were forced to live in refugee camps, tents and wagons in very difficult conditions.

As a result of the military aggression of Armenia, over 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, 4,866 are reported missing and almost 100,000 were injured, and 50,000 were disabled.

The UN Security Council has passed four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal from the Azerbaijani territory, but they have not been enforced to this day.