The United Nations (UN) will accelerate its efforts to feed refugees who fled from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, the international organization’s World Food Program stated this Saturday.
The World Food Program (WFP) plans to increase the rate of food delivery to 21,000 meals in the next two weeks, to which must be added the delivery of ingredients such as cereals or oil to 30,000 people, the UN agency announced.
“WFP is prepared to deliver ration cards to more than 6,000 people and is committed to working with partners to increase the number as needed,” the agency said in a statement.
The World Food Program highlighted that the number of displaced people on the border with Armenia “has skyrocketed dramatically in recent days, causing long queues at border posts.”
In the statement, he regrets that many of the refugees arrive “exhausted” at the new reception facilities in Goris, in the Armenian province of Syunik, in the southeast of the country.
WFP Armenia director Nanna Skau said the UN agency is “extremely concerned” about the impact on the lives of displaced people, and called for those affected by the conflict to receive “constant and timely” humanitarian support.
According to official data, around 120,000 Armenians lived in that enclave, before the separatist government of Nagorno-Karabakh announced its dissolution.
Today, the Armenian Prime Minister’s spokesperson stated that more than 100,000 refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh have already arrived in that country.
“There are, at most, a few hundred officials, volunteers, civil protection officers and people with special needs left, who are also preparing to leave,” former Karabakh ombudsman Artak Beglarian said in an online post. social X (formerly Twitter).
The separatist government of Nagorno-Karabakh announced Thursday that it will dissolve and that the unrecognized republic will cease to exist on January 1, 2024.
The announcement was made after Azerbaijan carried out a military offensive to regain full control of the separatist region and demanded that Armenian troops in Nagorno-Karabakh lay down their arms and dismantle the separatist government.
Earlier this month, the European Council had warned of the “rapid deterioration” of the humanitarian situation in the region and had called on Azerbaijan and Armenia to safeguard the population and reduce tensions.
The two former Soviet republics of the Caucasus will face two wars, not starting in 1990 and in 2020, under the control of the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region whose population is predominantly Armenian and that has been separated from Azerbaijan for more than two years. 30 years.
At the end of the short war in which, in autumn 2020, Azerbaijan recovered territories in this separatist region, Baku and Yerevan signed a ceasefire promoted by Russia.
Tensions intensified this year, when Baku announced on April 23 that it had installed a first checkpoint on the highway at the entrance to the Latchin corridor, the only axis connecting Armenia with the separatist enclave, already under a embargo that caused a shortage of vehicles. essential goods and electricity outages.
Source: TSF
