UHML Activities

UHML activities on topic of hostage children

In 1992 Azerbaijan League on Defense of Child’s Rights Public Union came up with propositions to Parliament of Azerbaijan to join International Convention on Defense of Child’s Rights. But unfortunately the answer was negative, the reason was that Azerbaijan is country that newly gained independence in state of war and has a lot more other responsibilities. Then the League insisted and brought very convincing arguments that if Azerbaijan will join the convention, it will be easier to free more than 90 children taken hostage by Armenians. As a result Azerbaijani Parliament finally joined the Convention.

After that first time in history of Azerbaijan the League gave press conference about children that have been taken hostage and published their names in the newspaper.

Later the League approached Baku State Executive Power to get permission to hold a demonstration in front of United Nations Office. Although the permission was not granted head of UN representative office in Azerbaijan Mahmud Ali Said agreed on meeting NGOs and other stakeholders. At this meeting the League and other organizations asked UN to help to free Azerbaijani hostage children and spread information about children that are held hostages to the world.

In 1993 the League send letters to the world leaders informing them about the situation and received answers from prime minister of UK and Turkey’s president Suleyman Demirel expressing their regret for the situation and saying the children taken hostage should be returned immediately.

In 1994 the League approached Azerbaijni Artists’ Union asking them to create design for posters on topic of hostage children. The Union choose the artist Ismayil Mammadov for that. Posters’ created by him were then hang all across Baku.

The League together with Baku Education Department have visited most of the schools in Baku, gave information about hostage children and asked them to volunteerily sign the petition for freeing hostages.

Then the League held meetings with Consul of German Federal Republic in Azerbaijan Wolve Tis. During the visit of Butros Butros Gali UN Secretary General to Azerbaijan the league presented him the petition signed by 100,000 people to free the hostage children. Copy of the petition was also sent to head of UN office in Azerbaijan Mahmud Ali Said. Butros Butros Gali and Mahmud Ali Said expressed their gratittudefor the work done by the League.

Later during the year the League approached Azerbaijan State Television and proposed them to film documentary about hostage children. The television responded to this proposition postively and Yalchin Efendiyev then directed documentary named “Painful memory”.

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