This essay, which is taken from a fuller report published by the United States Committee for Refugees, was written in early 1994 and is based in part on a site visit in September 1993. It focuses on the critical needs of the estimated 100,000 newly displaced persons from Azerbaijan's southwest who were fending for themselves with little or no outside support, the most destitute and vulnerable among a population of about a half million who became displaced in 1993 as a result of a push by ethnic Armenian forces into Azerbaijani-populated areas outside the boundaries of Nagorno-Karabakh. It also looks at the humanitarian toll generally, both in Azerbaijan, which now is struggling to accommodate as many as 1,000,000 refugees and displaced persons, dating to the beginning of the conflict in 1988, as well as in Armenia, which is attempting to cope with an estimated 300,000 refugees, at a time when the society as a whole is barely managing to survive the effects of years of war, natural disaster, and isolation. Finally, the paper attempts to examine the nationalities conflict with a view toward understanding why a humanitarian disaster on such a scale has occurred and continues unabated. © 1994 Oxford University Press.

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