Since the events of September 11th, 2001 the Government of Azerbaijan has sought to improve its visa policy to further promote the development of free trade and tourism and prevention of illegal migration. However, the development and introduction was stagnating due to a difference of opinion on visa policy among government agencies and the lack of seed funding from the budget.
The Border Control Oversight Commission (BCOC) approached IOM as the entrusted partner for the Government to provide expertise for the introduction of a new visa system. This has included the formatting and design of a new, secure, machine-readable visa counterfoil, analysing different options for its printing, estimating necessary technical and financial support required for that, developing recommendations on changes to existing visa procedures and improvement of visa policy.