Baku, January 27, AZERTAC
A report by Milica Markovic entitled “Inhabitants of frontier regions of Azerbaijan are deliberately deprived of water” has been adopted at the PACE plenary session.
The reports says: “Access to drinking water and sanitation has been recognised by the United Nations as a human right. States have an obligation to secure their population’s access to sufficient, safe and affordable water resources. In the case of the frontier regions of Azerbaijan depending on water supplies from the Sarsang water reservoir located in Nagorno-Karabakh, the population faces environmental and humanitarian problems, as well as security risks in the whole border region linked to the lack of regular maintenance work on the Sarsang dam.”
The report therefore calls for unimpeded access by independent engineers and hydrologists to inspect and assess the situation on site. It emphasises the need for global management of the use and upkeep of the Sarsang water resources, with international supervision of the irrigation canals, the Sarsang and Madagiz dams, the schedule of water releases during the autumn and winter, and aquifer overexploitation. “The Parliamentary Assembly is invited to ask the Armenian authorities to cease the use of water resources as a political tool.”
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