ICAO standard requires Armenia to mention Azerbaijan as place of birth in IDs of naturalized Karabakh refugees

The Armenian Ministry of Internal Affairs has explained why the passports of Nagorno-Karabakh forcibly displaced persons who have obtained Armenian citizenship mention Azerbaijan as the place of birth.

In a statement, the ministry said the passport issuance is conducted in line with international standards. 

“The issuance of machine-readable ID/travel documents is regulated by the standard 9303 of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which says that the place of birth section is regulated by the ISO 3166 standard,” it said.

The standard registers, according to states, the geographical units which are acceptable in passports, it added.

Any mark in the passport that is not ratified as part of the international regulatory framework is problematic in border crossing points, the ministry added.

The ministry said that its Migration and Citizenship Service had received numerous reports about such contentious records. 

“During the daily activities of the service such problems are maximally resolved in a collegial way. In case of new documentation of a person, the service is guided exclusively by international standards with the purpose of a legal resolution of the issue,” the ministry said.