Azizbek Ashurov wins Nansen Refugee Award
Kyrgyz lawyer honored for efforts to end statelessness
Photo: Chris de Bode / UNHCR
Azizbek Ashurov, Nansen Refugee Award recipient.
Marit Fosse
Geneva
On Oct. 2 in Geneva, Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, announced the 2019 Nansen Refugee Award winner in a press conference at the United Nations. This year’s laureate is Azizbek Ashurov, a lawyer, whose work has supported the efforts of the Kyrgyz Republic in becoming the first country in the world to end statelessness.
Statelessness affects millions of people worldwide, depriving them of legal rights or basic services and leaving them politically and economically marginalized, discriminated against and particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.
Ashurov, through his organization Ferghana Valley Lawyers Without Borders (FVLWB), has helped well over 10,000 people to gain Kyrgyz nationality. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the formation of new states, many people became stranded beyond newly established borders, often with invalid Soviet passports or no means to prove where they were born. This left hundreds of thousands of people stateless throughout the region, including in Kyrgyzstan.
UNHCR’s Nansen Refugee Award honors extraordinary service to the forcibly displaced. The award includes a commemorative medal and a $150,000 monetary prize, generously donated by the governments of Switzerland and Norway.
Read more about the Nansen Refugee award: www.unhcr.org/en-us/nansen-refugee-award.html.
This article originally appeared in the October 18, 2019, issue of The Norwegian American. To subscribe, visit SUBSCRIBE or call us at (206) 784-4617.
