Azerbaijan's national statement was delivered at the UNESCO session

“This year we celebrate the 30^th anniversary of Azerbaijan’s membership to UNESCO. Within these 3 decades, Azerbaijan has always remained committed to supporting the Organization’s noble mission, made important contributions to various spheres of its mandate covering education, culture, science, intercultural dialogue and so on”, – said Elman Abdullayev, Permanent Delegate of Azerbaijan to UNESCO, at the plenary debates of the 215^th session of the UNESCO Executive Board.

The Ambassador noted the achievements of Azerbaijan in connection with UNESCO after the last session of the Executive Board, and informed about the 7^th International Conference of Ministers of Sports (MINEPS VII) to be held in March next year in Baku.

Ambassador informed about the number of initiatives put forward by Azerbaijan in its capacity as a Chair of the Non-Aligned Movement.

It was stated that Azerbaijan appreciates the work done by UNESCO against racism and all kinds of discrimination, and reminded that our country has been subjected to large-scale aggression for 30 years.

“Once a quite prosperous areas of Azerbaijan with its rich cultural and natural heritage have been razed to the ground, thousands of displaced Azerbaijanis were deprived of their right to exercise in their places of origin their cultural rights. For many years, in our various communications, Azerbaijan alerted UNESCO of these gross violations and illegal activities committed by Armenia and requested the need to dispatch a (since 2002) technical mission to the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. Unfortunately, each time the dispatch of this mission was prevented by Armenia”, – E. Abdullayev mentioned in his speech.

It was further emphasized that the issue of UNESCO mission to Armenia is solid demand of Azerbaijani society in order to document the wide-scale destruction of Azerbaijani cultural heritage in this country. Civil society, NGO representatives and different organizations have appealed to UNESCO in this regard.

At the end of his speech, the Permanent Delegate said that 2 draft decisions were proposed by Azerbaijan to the agenda of the 215^th session of UNESCO, one of which was dedicated to the Baku process established in 2008, and the other to MINEPS VII.