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Azerbaijan -- Nardane Umuyeva lives in the village of Vandam in the district of Gabala. She is 45 years old and looks after her sick mother and a nephew, who is a student at the university in the capital, Baku. She inherited a small shop from her father. After the republic became independent, her sole source of income was her mother’s pension and a small profit from the shop.

In an idyllic setting, the last words someone expects to hear is "our water is bad." However, these words are echoed throughout the small mountain town of Shaki, in northern Azerbaijan.

After four years of operation, Elvin 2 had gained a reputation as a reliable supplier of high quality potatoes, but the Jalilabad-based company was still struggling to meet production costs. Without storage facilities, it had to send products to market soon after harvest, when prices were low.

One of the biggest problems facing watermelon growers in rural Azerbaijan is predicting market demand. Every year farmers raise thousands of tons of watermelons. Most rely on wholesalers to buy their goods and transport them to the cities. Since most farmers plant their melons at the same time, they also harvest simultaneously, often leading to a surplus of watermelons and prices below actual production cost.

With some of the biggest oil reserves in the world, Azerbaijan is fast becoming an energy giant. But although foreign investors have pumped billions into the economy in the 15 years since the country gained independence, some grim aspects of the Soviet legacy remain.

With some of the biggest oil reserves in the world, Azerbaijan is fast becoming an energy giant. But although foreign investors have pumped billions into the economy in the 15 years since the country gained independence, some grim aspects of the Soviet legacy remain.

Lachin Wintergrounds is a vast resettlement zone in Azerbaijan's Agjabedi region. The wintergrounds are made up of 25 distinct settlements, each of which is made up of several displaced villages from Lachin region. Each village, in turn, is made up of several hundred internally displaced peoples. And each IDP is made up of a story and a history and a life lived between and across and within and outside borders, depending upon one's perspective.

More than 100 Azerbaijani children have taken part in an art exhibition in Baku in an effort to tell others about global poverty. 

Nearly 2,000 people attended a festival in Barda, central Azerbaijan, to mark the launch of a national campaign to end poverty.