Azerbaijan is among a few possible candidates for downgrade to Tier 3 at the State Department's Trafficking in Persons report this year, the lowest classification that opens the countries to sanctions from the US government, TURAN's Washington DC correspondent reports.
Besides Azerbaijan, five more countries are now on the Watch List -- Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Iraq and Republic of Congo; they have been places in Tier 2 in the past few years and now under US law, must be moved off the Tier 2 Watch List in the 2013 Trafficking in Persons report, which is set to come out in June.
"Countries cannot stay on the Tier 2 Watch List forever, and now the State Department must either promote them to the Tier 2 status or demote those countries to Tier 3, which is shared by the countries like of Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Zimbabwe," TURAN's correspondent was told by the Congressional sources.
According to the 2012 Trafficking in Persons report, Azerbaijan is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and women and children subjected to sex trafficking, the government prosecuted fewer alleged trafficking cases and convicted fewer trafficking offenders than in the previous year, and it did not identify any labor trafficking victims; therefore, the country is placed on Tier 2 Watch List for a fifth consecutive year.
"The State Department has made crystal clear that the Government of Azerbaijan should: Transparently punish complicit government officials; Train labor inspectors to boost victim identification and improve a national victim referral mechanism; Amend its law to require work permits for migrant construction workers, and improve inspections of those workers' conditions; Improve access to justice for victims including by protecting them during court proceedings; Enforce its own ban against withholding of migrant workers passports; and Train working-level law enforcement on treating victims as victims", Mark Lagon, the State Department's former ambassador-at-large for trafficking in persons, mentioned during Congressional panel on "Grading States For Not Degrading People: Human Trafficking Assessments" later last week.
Lagon, currently a Professor in the Practice of International Affairs at Georgetown University, stated that absent tangible progress on these counts, Azerbaijan "merits the automatic downgrade provided for by Congress".
A cross-the-board downgrades of countries to Tier 3 are not to be justified unless based on objective assessment, Lagon emphasized..
"I favor encouraging further progress by merited upgrades. Yet China, Russia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Republic of Congo, and Uzbekistan deserve close examination... I urge against using alleged "extenuating circumstances" as an excuse for inflating grades," he added.
Alakbar Raufoglu
Washington, DC
04/22/2013
Politics
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Armenia is not against the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group, but does not consider it appropriate to discuss this issue now. "In the context of peace, we consider it possible to make a decision on the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group. When peace is an established fact, the existence of such a format may raise questions," Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at a press conference today. "The whole question is about the timing, we need to understand how effectively and correctly to turn such topics into a subject of discussion right now," the Armenian Prime Minister added.
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He expressed his willingness to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at the border between the two countries. "A meeting with Ilham Aliyev could take place at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. I am open to such a format," Pashinyan said at a press conference today. According to Pashinyan, Armenia recently presented another proposal for a peace treaty to Azerbaijan.
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On August 31, Azerbaijan observes a "day of silence" before the Sunday’s early parliamentary elections for the unicameral Milli Majlis. All electoral campaigning is prohibited 24 hours before the voting. The early elections were initiated by the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party. This decision was motivated by the overlap of the scheduled elections in November with the global UN forum - the COP20 climate conference taking place in Baku.
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On August 30, at approximately 22:55, the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant in Metsamor was disconnected from the country's power grid, as reported by the Armenian Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure. The shutdown was caused by a lightning strike, which triggered the plant's safety systems to switch the station to a safe shutdown mode. Currently, the plant's staff is working on restarting the facility.
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