General Information

Azerbaijcan Youth Union (AYU) has been established on September, 1991. It was registraited on 17.09.91 by the Ministru of Juseice. AYU is non-governmental, non-commercial, non-political public organisation. AYU has more than 60.000 members from 14 to 30, regardless of their nationality, religion and social posotion.AYU has head office in Baku and branches in the country districts. It has also a number of media units like "Youth of Azerbaijan" newspaper (in Azeri and Russian), "Dove" and "The Sun" children magazines, "Savalan" children newspaper. In addition to the media units, AYU has "SOY" broadcastong company, "Edem" show-center and "Genjlik" Scientific-Technical Centre of the Youth. AYU is a cofounder of the Cooperation-91` International Youth Organisation and Association of Young Innovators. AYU has good relations and cooperates with all youth, children and chairty funds in Azerbaijan. Members of the Organisation have participated at different international conferences, festivals and other activities related to youth problems.

Aim and objectives of the organisation:

• To encourage the active participation of the youth in Azerbaijan in the democracy and civil society building and development process;
• Monitoring of the rights of youth, particularly young women`s rights through media;
• To support innovatives of the youth;
• To create effective mechanisms for the youth policy realisation;
• To conduct development programmes for disabled people, orphans, IDP and refugees, youth, teenagers and children and support their activities;
• To organise educational and awareness campaigns on human rights;
• To conduct advocacy work on local and international laws among the youth, particularly women;
• To train the youth to work with mass media;
• To cooperate and represent the youth in the national and international netwoks.

IMPLEMENTED PROJECTS:

• Designing the "Youth State Policy Law of the Republic of Azerbaijan". The law has been adopted by the Milli Mejlis (Parliament) of Azerbaijan.
• "Training for IDP and refugees children" project. Funded by UNHCR.
• "The Sun" children magazine Publishing project. Magazines were ditributed among the IDP children. The project was funded by IRC (USA).
• "10 days with IDP children" project. Funded by UNHCR.
• "Stop Drigs of Abuse" project. Funded by ISAR/Azerbaijan.

July 2000