With respect to IDPs during the First Karabakh War, there were no Armenian IDPs, because Azerbaijan did not occupy the territory of Armenia. They occupied our territory. That’s why we had so many refugees and IDPs who lived in difficult conditions during those years.

Axar.az informs Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev made these remarks in an interview with Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya television channel.

"We introduced the program of resettlement even during the times of occupation, because the absolute majority of them had lived in tent camps for more than a decade. So we started to abolish tent camps as soon as I became president, and we finished that process in 2007. But still, tens of thousands of them lived in very poor conditions. So now the process of return, based on the program called the “Great Return” program, has started, and we have already settled more than 50,000 people in the liberated territories. And the process is continuing.

There have been two major impediments. First, landmines; Armenians planted more than a million landmines during the times of occupation. After the Second Karabakh War ended in November 2020, until today, we have had almost 400 casualties, more than 70 killed and the rest severely injured, because of the landmines. These landmines do not allow us to have a broad, large-scale reconstruction process, because we need, first, to provide safety.

Second, there was total destruction of infrastructure in Karabakh. Our cities and villages were leveled to the ground — sanitation, water supply, electricity, railroads, highways — all was totally ruined. So we spent most of our money in the first years of reconstruction to build infrastructure, and in parallel, to rebuild villages and cities. Now we are almost in the final stage of infrastructural development. I think full infrastructure projects will be ready in maybe two to three years.

And now we are spending more money on housing projects. It is now visible — buildings are rising from the middle of nowhere, and our plan is to provide decent housing conditions and jobs for all the former IDPs. The process has started. As I said, more than 50,000 already live on their ancestral lands," the president stated.