In September 2005 a total of 27 people were granted with refugee status in Azerbaijan. The announcement was made at the workshop, organized by the Azerbaijani office of the UNHCR.
The statistics of refugees from the third countries, registered in Azerbaijan over the past few years remains stable, William Paul, the head of the Baku Office of the UNHCR. At present around 12,000 refugees from other countries have been registered in Azerbaijan. Roughly 85% of all the registered are from refugees from the Russian Federation вЂ" Chechens. The rest are Afghans (1500 people), Iraqis (100 people), Iranians (200 people), and small number of people driven out from Pakistan, Turkey and different countries. The statistics cover the last 11 years. UNHCR Office in Azerbaijan carries out registration of refugees since the commencement of the activities of the representative office in 1992.
According to Paul, from 1994 the organization has been assisting to the resolution of the social problems of the internally displaced people in the country and it has built 2800 houses for 11,000 Azeri IDPs.
As of official data, 650,000 internally displaced people from the Azerbaijani territory under the Armenian occupation вЂ" Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent regions, over 200,000 refugees from Armenia, over 50,000 refugees from the Central Asia вЂ" Mesheti Turks.