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Fatima Latifova

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The European Union (EU) plans to allocate an additional 2 million euros to Azerbaijan for demining, Azernews reports, citing Gert Jan Kopman, Director General of the European Commission for Enlargement and Neighborhood Policy, as he telling at the "European Team Anti-Mine Initiative" event held in Baku.

Recall that last year, ANAMA, the European Union, UNDP launched a demining project to help save lives and enable internally displaced persons to return home. The project covered 20 villages and have 33,604 families as direct beneficiaries. The project also established the first female teams in Azerbaijan to carry out demining operations,

It is worth noting that despite attempts at formally requesting information about the location of those mines, Armenia repeatedly denied that it possessed the relevant information and refused to engage on the issue.

Finally, in February this year, Armenia has submitted 8 minefield maps of territories located in the liberated lands to Azerbaijan. These maps cover some of the areas along the former contact line. However, the maps covering part of the former contact line passing through Khojavand, Tartar, and Goranboy districts, as well as the areas mined by Armenian military units when they retreated in November 2020, has not been submitted yet.

Many have suspicions about these maps because previous minefield maps submitted by Armenia were inaccurate. Only 25 percent of these maps were correct. Especially submitting minefield maps of the height where civilians do not live increases this suspicion. It is also worth noting that more than 55% of recent landmine cases have occurred outside the areas covered by the information provided.

The behavior that Armenia displayed by relation to the landmine threat is indeed another setback to the peace and confidence-building measures taken during the post-conflict period in the region.

It is worth noting that because of Azerbaijan's liberated territories remain contaminated with mine, the new infrastructure and green energy projects remains a risky and problematic goal. These obstacles to a legal peace are part of the challenges facing the repopulation, development and integration of the liberated territories on the path to a full peace.

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