Refugees and oil boom in Azerbaijan
In her contribution "Living under the bullet: Internal displacement in the Azerbaijani oil boom", NUPI researcher Heidi Kjærnet focuses on how internally displaced persons (IDPs) cope with the oil boom in Azerbaijan.
- Azerbaijan has got around 600.000 internally displaced persons. Since the IDPs were displaced as a result of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s, they have been kept in limbo by the government. Azerbaijani authorities have used the fate of the displaced people to legitimize their uncompromising stance in the negotiations over Karabakh, says Heidi Kjærnet.
Separated from the general society
Even today, the IDPs are largely segregated from the rest of the community, and although poverty is widespread also among non-IDPs, the displacement aggravates poverty issues.
- The exiles are caught on the wrong side of the widening social gap associated with the economic boom.
In addition, they find themselves at the crux of developments related to the country’s petroleum-fuelled military rearmament and the issue of the settlement of the Karabakh conflict.
The chapter is based on Kjærnet’s fieldwork and interviews with displaced people in their settlements in Azerbaijan as well as with actors in domestic and international humanitarian agencies in the country.