BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 11. An event on the theme "The impact of mine aggression on human rights" was held in Warsaw within the framework of the conference entitled "Human Dimension", organized by the Permanent Mission of Azerbaijan to the OSCE, Trend reports.
One-tenth of Azerbaijan was purposefully mined by the Armenian armed forces during the nearly 30-year occupation, according to the event moderator, Ambassador-at-Large of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan Elshad Iskandarov. Over 1.5 million mines were installed. He claimed that the placement of fresh mines on Azerbaijani soil following the conclusion of the second Karabakh war was evidence of Yerevan's dishonesty in its pro-peace rhetoric.
"More than 300 Azerbaijanis have become victims of mine terror over the past two years. Azerbaijan put an end to this type of terror after short-term anti-terrorist measures in Karabakh," Iskandarov said.
At the event, the President of the Italian Federation of Human Rights, Antonio Stango, made a presentation of the first study on the topic "The destructive impact of mines on human rights", who assessed the contamination of Karabakh lands by mines as a humanitarian tragedy, as a result of which Azerbaijan was ranked second among the countries in Europe that were subjected to mine pollution.
In the report's analytical section, it was noted that Armenia gravely breached international humanitarian law, the law of justice, as well as fundamental human rights as a result of the 30-year mining terror. Stango discussed the need to provide compensation to Azerbaijani citizens harmed by the mine terror after pointing out the significant violations of 700,000 former internally displaced people's rights to health, labor, and education that prevented them from returning to their homes.
Ramiz Azizov, Head of the Department of the Mine Action Agency of the Republic of Azerbaijan, spoke about the work done, noting that 2,636 hectares of Azerbaijan’s Karabakh lands have been cleared of 30,000 anti-personnel and 17,000 anti-tank mines to date, while all this has been done at the expense of Azerbaijan's internal resources.
Dennis Sammut, Executive Director of the European LINKS Foundation and founder of the Landmine Free South Caucasus campaign, noted in his speech that regional cooperation in the field of mine clearance has created historic opportunities for mutual trust. He called on the EU to show effective support to the region, in particular Azerbaijan, in large-scale mine clearance actions, which will serve as a contribution by international partners to ensuring sustainable peace in the region.
The participants of the event took the initiative to prepare a report with the broad participation of a group of experts, which would reflect concrete proposals and an international mechanism for restoring the rights of mine victims as a result of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict that ended, and on the subsequent submission of this report to the UN.