ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief historical background and a description of major events in Azerbaijan. It also provides basic political, economic, and social data arranged in the following categories: polity, economy, population, purchasing power parities, life expectancy, ethnic groups, capital, political rights, civil liberties, and status. The chapter discusses the progress and decline of political rights and civil liberties in Azerbaijan. A government campaign against Azerbaijan's independent broadcasters and press outlets, including the forced closures of several leading private newspapers and the arrests or intimidation of prominent journalists, intensified during much of 2001. In June 1992, Abulfaz Elchibey, leader of the nationalist opposition Azerbaijan Popular Front (APF), was elected president in a generally free and fair vote. In a widely expected outcome, the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party captured the majority of seats in the November 5,2000, parliamentary election. The more than 750,000 refugees who fled the war in Nagorno-Karabakh remain in Azerbaijan, often living in appalling conditions.
