Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on January 16, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 27, 2026
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Azerbaijan has suspended its cooperation with USAID, accusing the agency of political motives. This decision follows criticism from USAID about Azerbaijan's military actions in Nagorno-Karabakh.
BAKU (Reuters) - Azerbaijan has refused to renew its cooperation agreement with The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said on Thursday, accusing Washington of using USAID to pursue its political agenda.
Bayramov, who was speaking at a news conference with his Georgian counterpart, said that Baku had suspended cooperation with USAID in June 2024.
USAID was not immediately available for comment.
Azerbaijan began criticising USAID in late 2023 after Samantha Power, the agency's head, said that Azerbaijan's military operation to return its breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh had "forced more than a hundred thousand people to leave their homes and move into neighbouring Armenia."
In response to Power's statement, Hikmet Hajiyev, a foreign policy adviser to President Ilham Aliyev, said that USAID "has no place in Azerbaijan anymore."
USAID describes itself as the U.S. government agency which leads international development and humanitarian assistance efforts to partner countries. On its website it says its mission is also to "promote and demonstrate democratic values abroad, and advance a free, peaceful, and prosperous world" in support of American foreign policy.
Azerbaijan is not the first country in the post-Soviet space to stop cooperation with USAID.
In 2012, the agency's activities were halted in Russia, and in 2023, Abkhazia, a Russia-backed breakaway region of Georgia withdrew from USAID projects.
(Reporting by Nailia Bagirova; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
The main topic is Azerbaijan's suspension of cooperation with USAID due to alleged political motives.
Azerbaijan suspended cooperation with USAID, accusing it of pursuing a political agenda against Azerbaijan.
USAID criticized Azerbaijan's military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh, stating it displaced over 100,000 people.
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