VZCZCXRO1164
RR RUEHDBU RUEHLN RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHKB #0725/01 1620820
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 110820Z JUN 07
FM AMEMBASSY BAKU
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 3216
INFO RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE
RUEHVEN/USMISSION USOSCE 0581
RUEHGV/USMISSION GENEVA SZ 0283

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 BAKU 000725 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR EUR/CARC, EUR/ACE AND PRM; MOSCOW FOR REFCOORD 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREF PREL PBTS PHUM PGOV EAID AM AJ
SUBJECT:  A SNAPSHOT OF BAKU'S IDP COMMUNITIES 
 
REF:  Baku 439 
 
SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED; NOT FOR INTERNET DISTRIBUTION. 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Over the next few months, the Embassy plans to take a 
closer at Azerbaijan's internally displaced persons (IDP) 
population, estimated at roughly 675,000 persons. The GOAJ has 
pledged to close all existing tent camps by the end of 2007, but 
hundreds of thousands of IDPs still live in very difficult 
conditions.  On June 4, Pol/Econ staff traveled with local 
representatives of UMCOR (United Methodist Crisis Organization for 
Relief) to IDP settlements in and near Baku to gain a better sense 
of IDPs' living conditions.  In FY07, the Department provided USD 
261,000 in funding for UMCOR IDP programs; U.S. donors also provided 
medicinal and non-medicinal goods worth $754,480. Most of the IDPs 
in the Baku-area settlements are from Kelbajar and Lachin; a few are 
from Shusha, Agdam and Barda. This is the first in a series of 
reports that we plan to complete over the summer. 
 
Difficult Living Conditions 
--------------------------- 
 
¶2.  (U) More than three hundred IDP families live in the Yasamal 
district of Baku.  Most live in a tightly-packed cluster of 
crumbling Soviet-era school buildings and hostels, belonging to a 
former technical university. Garbage and pieces of construction 
material were strewn everywhere, and dense thickets of electrical 
wires and broken glass littered the common areas.  The air outside 
smelled unhealthy, and there were pools of stagnant water 
everywhere.  Some families are lucky enough to live in the 
buildings, but others live in lean-tos, built out of sheets of 
aluminum and cardboard boxes.  Buzzing wires and long lines of 
laundry are strung between the buildings, including rows of 
frequently rewashed and reused children's diapers. 
 
¶3.  (U) The conditions inside the buildings of the Yasamal 
settlement were not much better.  Each apartment building has four 
or five floors, with only one, filthy toilet on each floor (an 
arrangement common to most IDP settlements).  Each two-bedroom 
apartment hosts anywhere from two to five families, with between 
four and seven people residing in each bedroom.  As a result of the 
high occupancy, several hundred people share the same toilet. 
 
¶4.  (U) UMCOR makes regular visits to two IDP settlements in Baku's 
Nizami District.  At one of these sites, several IDP families reside 
in spare rooms in a partially abandoned heating and cooling plant, 
in conditions just as grim as in Yasamal.  Many children live in 
this "boiler plant, 
" many of whom were born in the IDP settlements, and some of whom 
appeared to suffer from severe birth defects.  One girl appeared to 
be autistic; another had severe cerebral palsy, and yet others 
suffered from partial vision and hearing loss, a condition that 
UMCOR staff said was probably brought on by malnutrition.  "How can 
a child grow up here?" one IDP woman at the Fizuli site asked.  "We 
adults, we at least remember the fresh air of Lachin and Kelbajar. 
These children, the settlements are all they've ever known.  How can 
they hope?"  She gestured around the dismal conditions.  "There's 
nothing for them here." 
 
¶5.  (U) IDPs at both Nizami sites complained that the GOAJ did not 
provide utilities.  In a response to question about gas and water 
services, one IDP said, "You have to pay bribes for everything, and 
we have no money.  We have nothing; everything we had is back in 
Lachin."  UMCOR staff recounted a similarly grim story:  one family 
saved for fifteen years in order to pay the bribes necessary to 
secure GOAJ documentation entitling them, as IDPs, to subsided gas. 
Once the family had saved enough money to pay the bribe, the GOAJ 
cut gas benefits to IDPs and the family ended up without gas - or 
the financial resources to pay the new, unsubsidized rates. 
 
¶6.   (U) IDPs at the second of the two Nizami sites reside in what 
UMCOR staff called "half-buildings" - hollow shells of buildings 
that appear to be partially destroyed.  In reality, they are 
buildings that were partially complete when the IDPs moved into them 
fifteen years ago but have deteriorated with time.  UMCOR staff 
reported that many of the Nizami IDPs suffered from malnutrition. 
Two women, their teeth completely rotted-out and their cheeks hollow 
with lack of decent nutrition, pointed out a number of other women 
in similar situations.  In another part of the building, an IDP 
pointed out one older woman and one older man, whose rapidly 
accelerating dementia, she said, was exacerbated by lack of decent 
nutrition.  A little girl at a different Nizami site languished in 
what appeared to be a child's crib, her legs contorted and her eyes 
glazed white, with only a teenaged older sister to care for her. 
 
¶7.  (U) The final settlements on the itinerary were the "Gizil-Gum" 
and "Gilavar " Sanatoriums, in the Sabunchi District.  More than 300 
 
BAKU 00000725  002 OF 003 
 
 
IDP families live at each of these two sites, in abandoned Soviet 
summer spas located on the shores of the Caspian.  What was once a 
brightly painted luxury hotel is now the hollow, gutted home to IDPs 
in extremely difficult conditions.  Like in the other settlements, 
IDPs here could be found hunched over tiny electric hot-plates, 
heating a lump of potatoes no bigger than a man's fist in order to 
feed five or six people.  (IDPs in the Fizuli settlements described 
frequently having to dig through the trash to find scraps of food.) 
 
Health Care and Education 
------------------------- 
 
¶8.  (U) The medical care that these IDPs can receive is extremely 
limited; as a result, they are overwhelmingly grateful for what 
UMCOR is able to provide.  The Azerbaijani government is supposed to 
provide free healthcare to IDPs, but IDPs who arrive at free clinics 
report that must pay a hefty bribe in order to receive the barest of 
care.  UMCOR staff report that, as a result, men, women and children 
alike are constantly fighting off rashes and scabies, as well more 
serious diseases, such as tuberculosis.  One IDP brought out her 
child, whom the Azerbaijani government had pronounced as "sure to 
die" two years ago.  Now, thanks to U.S. medicines distributed by 
UMCOR, the girl had lived, and thanks to body braces provided by 
UMCOR's traveling doctor, the girl was able to walk. 
 
¶9.  (U) Reproductive health, too, is a serious problem. While the 
issue is still somewhat stigmatized, IDPs we spoke to were very open 
about the problems they had encountered, both in terms of 
contraception and in terms of diseases.  One woman described to in 
great detail a painful uterine surgery she'd been able to receive 
through UMCOR -- a surgery she never would have received otherwise. 
UMCOR staff reports that AIDS and other sexually transmitted 
diseases are serious problems in the IDP settlements, particularly 
for men who go to Russia in order to find work, and return having 
brought with them diseases carried by Russian prostitutes.  UMCOR 
has public health education programs but reports that IDP women find 
it difficult to persuade their husbands to even talk about the 
subject. 
 
¶10.  (U) Not all IDP children are able to attend school. Though GOAJ 
has established schools in some areas, many are in disrepair, and 
funding for these schools is restricted. In some settlements 
enterprising IDPs (many of whom have extensive educations 
themselves) appear to have made it a point to set up makeshift 
schools for IDP children.  Still, IDPs can afford schoolbooks no 
more than they can afford food, so the classroom experience is 
necessarily extremely limited. 
 
Views on the Government 
----------------------- 
 
¶11.  (U) IDPs in the Absheron settlement complained about the lack 
of work and generally poor living conditions.  One IDP woman said, 
"We can't even think about work. Our health is so poor, and the 
conditions so bad.  We can't think about schools, because when it 
rains our apartments flood, and all the children are sick."  The 
IDPs complained that the GOAJ was not responsive to their concerns; 
one said that "it's been years since anyone from our settlement has 
even laid eyes on anyone from the Azerbaijani Government."  In 
contrast, the IDPs were extremely grateful for the assistance 
provided by UMCOR and the United States Government. 
 
Views on Repatriation 
--------------------- 
 
¶12.  (SBU) One UMCOR volunteer said that the IDPs still appear to 
believe that they will return to their settlements, but that their 
enthusiasm has faded in recent years.  Many IDPs spoke at length 
about their homes in Nagorno Karabakh; rather than simply describing 
their poor living conditions in the settlements, IDPs almost always 
contrasted the Baku settlements to their former homes in areas such 
as Lachin and Kelbajar.  "The air here is terrible, the water is 
terrible," one IDP woman said.  "It is worse because I remember the 
clean air and water of my home in the mountains."  While most IDPs 
appear to believe that a return is forthcoming, it was difficult for 
some IDPs to imagine any repatriation without the government doing 
something at the same time to address their substandard living 
conditions. 
 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
¶13.  (SBU) UMCOR's work in these settlements clearly is making a 
difference in IDPs' lives.  UMCOR volunteers, Azerbaijani 
themselves, make constant trips to the settlements, delivering 
packages of basic food items, as well as hygiene kits and school 
kits.  UMCOR-sponsored doctors step in where government doctors do 
 
BAKU 00000725  003 OF 003 
 
 
not, making rounds and distributing medicine to populations stricken 
by tuberculosis, malaria, and a variety of ailments.  USG funding is 
key to UMCOR's operations; without USG assistance, many of these 
"invisible IDPs" would slip between the cracks. 
 
DERSE