Raising awareness on statelessness and illegal migration is in the focus

An event on raising awareness about statelessness and illegal migration, as well as ensuring more effective and flexible cooperation in this area in the future has been held at the State Migration Service with the participation of authorized persons of the district municipalities of the capital.

With the opening speech, Rza Talibov, Chief of the Citizenship issues head department of the SMS, III rank state migration service counselor, informed the participants of the event about the targeted and humanitarian policy pursued by our state in the reduction of statelessness and the fight against the causes of these situations. He noted that in order to facilitate the naturalization of persons living in the territory of country without citizenship, the Law "On citizenship of the Republic of Azerbaijan" was amended. Moreover, Azerbaijan joined to the “Global Action Plan” adopted in the framework of the UNHCR’s “End of Statelessness in 10 Years” campaign. R. Talibov noted that the State Migration Service attaches great importance to strengthening cooperation with the executive authorities of the districts in order to raise awareness in the fight against statelessness and to effectively protect the rights of these individuals. Chief of the head department highlighted the importance of cooperation of the regional departments of the SMS with the district municipalities of the districts for identifying and documenting persons from this category living in different regions of the Republic of Azerbaijan, as well as the necessary activities carried out by SMS in accordance with the legislation to legalize the residence of these people in the country.

Thus, 389 people were received at the service areas of the regional migration departments of the Service during 2016-2018. Work on the legalization of 194 of these persons were carried out.

As a result of the successful and result oriented activities of the State Migration Service over the past 11 years, 1.619 stateless persons adopted he citizenship of the Republic of Azerbaijan by the relevant orders of the Head of the State, as well as 51 stateless persons restored their citizenship.

At the event, Samira Allahverdiyeva, representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Azerbaijan, employees of the Citizenship issues head department, Migration processes regulation head department, as well as Migration control head department of the SMS gave detailed information about ongoing awareness-raising activities in the field of statelessness and illegal migration, challenges and upcoming issues in our country.

At the end of the event, questions interested participants were answered.