Ombudsman made a speech at the conference dedicated to the International Migrants Day

A conference with regard to December 18- International Migrants Day was jointly organized by the State Migration Service of the Republic of Azerbaijan and International Organization for Migration (IOM) Mission to Azerbaijan. Along with the representatives of state bodies, higher education institutions, non-governmental organizations and mass media, delegations of several international organizations and foreign countries to Azerbaijan also participated at the event.

The Commissioner for Human Rights (Ombudsman) of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Sabina Aliyeva, Deputy chairman of the State Migration Service, Parviz Musayev, UN Resident Coordinator in Azerbaijan, Ghulam Isaczai, Chief of the IOM Mission to Azerbaijan, Vladimir Gjorgjiev, as well as the Chairman of Board of Directors of the Azerbaijani-Turkish Businessmen’s Union, Jamal Yangin delivered speeches noting the importance of attracting attention of the public to the migration issues, implementation of mobile mechanisms aimed at development in this field and ensuring participation and massiveness in this process.

The Ombudsman Sabina Aliyeva spoke about the features of regulation and development of migration processes in modern time, also the Azerbaijani practice in this field. S.Aliyeva provided broad information on the activity directions of the Ombudsman institution in the field of promoting, ensuring and protecting migrants’ rights. She noted that the status, shortcomings, problems and appeals of this population group were analyzed through investigation and on the basis of the outcomes, effective cooperation is developed with relevant state bodies for improvement of legislation, raising quality of services for citizens and of data basis, ensuring the compliance of the state policy with international documents, to which the country is a party, by application of innovative approaches.

It was noted that besides the migrants within the country, the situation of citizens of the Republic of Azerbaijan residing beyond the borders of the country were always kept in focus. For this purpose, the collaboration was established with the State Migration Service, foreign ombudspersons, also with diplomatic missions of foreign countries in Azerbaijan and diplomatic missions of Azerbaijan in foreign countries. The Ombudsman mentioned that meetings and consultations were regularly held in regions for the solution of problems of compatriots residing and working abroad and for the promotion of legal migration. The status of persons living in uncertain conditions is legalized, and appropriate steps are taken.

The Ombudsman noted the paramount importance of joint and coordinated activity aimed at effective protection of migrants’ rights, acceleration of their adaptation to language and cultural diversity, integration in society.

At the end of the event, a film about the Azerbaijani Diaspora titled “Homeland is not far away” was displayed.  At the same time, Global Migration Film Festival was presented; also, a film selected from the festival was displayed.