he first tragic anniversary on 19 September 2024 marked the expulsion of 120,000 Armenians from their ancestral lands in Nagorno–Karabakh (or Artsakh in Armenian) by the Aliyev regime of Azerbaijan. This was made possible by the actions of Azerbaijan, aided by Russia, Turkey, and Pakistan, and the inaction of the government of Armenia and much of the international community. Sadly, 108 years after the start of the twentieth century’s first genocide, ethnic Armenians again had to abandon their homes under the threat of extermination by the same regional actors.
Much has been written by journalists, human rights groups, and legal scholars about the atrocities committed by the Azeri army during 2020–2023. The international community has a responsibility to uphold justice and build a legally sound foundation for a lasting peace in the region.
The international community’s complacency
The International Association of Genocide Scholars recently passed a resolution concerning the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno–Karabakh, condemning Azerbaijan's actions in the region. The resolution specifically recognizes the blockade of the Lachin Corridor in 2022–2023, which cut off essential supplies such as food and medicine, leading to a humanitarian crisis. This action, combined with forced displacement and bombings, is characterized as ethnic cleansing and a violation of international humanitarian law. In addition, the association highlighted the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage sites, the forced displacement of ethnic Armenians, and what they termed “genocidal acts”—citing violations of the United Nations’ Genocide Convention. They called on the international community to recognize these atrocities as war crimes and genocide, urging sanctions and legal actions against Azerbaijan in international courts, and the return of Armenians to Nagorno–Karabakh under international protection.
Despite all the evidence of human rights violations, the international community has so far given Azerbaijan conflicting signals. A country with a dismal human rights record, according to many international human rights organizations, Azerbaijan continues to get away with: suppressing civil society, independent journalism, and political dissent; illegally retaining dozens of Armenian hostages and prisoners of war; and destroying Armenian cultural heritage throughout Nagorno–Karabakh. There appears to be little, if any, appetite within the international community to punish Azerbaijani leaders for these horrific acts and seek justice for the victims. Making matters worse, the international community’s expected participation in the UN Climate Change Conference in Baku in November could be viewed as whitewashing, if not a tacit approval, of Azerbaijan’s genocide in Nagorno–Karabakh.
From Stalin to present day
In the fall of 2020, the Azerbaijani army, backed by Turkish Special Forces and Syrian Islamic jihadists, launched a surprise attack on the region. They managed to annex a large chunk of Nagorno–Karabakh, not only due to their own military prowess but also because of the inaction of the Organization for Security and Co–operation in Europe’s “Minsk Group” (mandated with securing a negotiated settlement) and disastrous leadership of Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. When the ink dried on the Russia–facilitated cease fire agreement of 9 November 2020, it became clear that Pashinyan conceded nearly three times more territory than the Azeri army was able to wrestle from the Nagorno–Karabakh defense forces during the 44 days of war.
Following the full conquest of Nagorno–Karabakh in 2023, Azerbaijan’s Aliyev has sought to force Armenia to open a corridor across its sovereign and undisputed territory between its enclave of Nakhchivan and Azerbaijan proper. He also seeks to impose upon Armenia a demarcation and delineation agreement based on administrative borders imposed by Joseph Stalin between the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and Azerbaijani Soviet republic in 1921.
However, there is no reason why the international community, especially the United States, should accept Stalin’s borders. Legally, the U.S. government never fully recognized the 1920 Soviet annexation of Armenia by the Red Army. For example, the U.S. hosted an Armenian embassy in Washington through 1933 and, in 1959, designated Armenia as a “Captive Nation.” Even so, some pundits in Washington and internationally assume that the administrative borders between the Soviet Republics drawn by Stalin are legitimate borders between sovereign states.
Azerbaijan has de jure rejected those borders by declaring itself a legal successor of the first Azerbaijani Republic rather than of the Azerbaijan Soviet republic. On 30 August 1991, the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan adopted a declaration specifying “...the Restoration of the State Independence of the Azerbaijani Republic.” Subsequently, on 18 October 1991, it adopted a Constitutional Act “On the Restoration of the State Independence of the Azerbaijani Republic,” which declares in Section 2 that “the Azerbaijani Republic is the successor of the Azerbaijani Republic that existed from 28 May 1918, to 28 April 1920.” Therefore, the Soviet administrative borders cannot be considered the legal basis for the international borders between the present–day Republic of Armenia and the Azerbaijani Republic.
The Commission for the Delimitation of the Boundaries of Armenia, which met in London in February 1920 as an official sidebar conference to the Paris Peace Conference, assigned Nagorno–Karabakh as well as a large part of “Lower” Karabakh to be part of the Republic of Armenia based on demography prior to Armenia’s partition between Soviet Russia and Kemalist Turkey. President Woodrow Wilson subsequently included the commission’s findings in Document No. 2 in Annex I of his 22 November 1920, Arbitral Award. This indicated official acceptance of the legality of Armenia’s claims over its historic territory of Nagorno–Karabakh.
The way forward
To allow the current status quo to persist and force Armenia to relinquish its claims to Nagorno–Karabakh would be equivalent to legitimizing Stalin’s gerrymandering of borders in 1921. The international community has a moral responsibility to uphold justice (in the form of securing the right of return of Nagorno–Karabakh residents under credible international protection) and the international law (by initiating proceedings of the UN’s International Court of Justice on the final status of Nagorno–Karabakh). We should not be governed by realpolitik alone. Failure to secure justice and enforce international law would embolden aggressors and lead to more humanitarian disasters and human suffering around the world.
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Securing displaced Armenians’ ‘right to return’ to Nagorno–Karabakh
“We Are Our Mountains” sculpture in Artsakh, Stepanakert. Photo by Ani Adigyozalyan from Unsplash.
October 17, 2024
To achieve a long–lasting and dignified peace in Nagorno–Karabakh, the international community needs to uphold justice by securing the return of displaced residents and initiating proceedings on the final status of the region, writes David A. Grigorian, Ph.D. and Ambassador Ara Papian (ret.).
T
he first tragic anniversary on 19 September 2024 marked the expulsion of 120,000 Armenians from their ancestral lands in Nagorno–Karabakh (or Artsakh in Armenian) by the Aliyev regime of Azerbaijan. This was made possible by the actions of Azerbaijan, aided by Russia, Turkey, and Pakistan, and the inaction of the government of Armenia and much of the international community. Sadly, 108 years after the start of the twentieth century’s first genocide, ethnic Armenians again had to abandon their homes under the threat of extermination by the same regional actors.
Much has been written by journalists, human rights groups, and legal scholars about the atrocities committed by the Azeri army during 2020–2023. The international community has a responsibility to uphold justice and build a legally sound foundation for a lasting peace in the region.
The international community’s complacency
The International Association of Genocide Scholars recently passed a resolution concerning the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno–Karabakh, condemning Azerbaijan's actions in the region. The resolution specifically recognizes the blockade of the Lachin Corridor in 2022–2023, which cut off essential supplies such as food and medicine, leading to a humanitarian crisis. This action, combined with forced displacement and bombings, is characterized as ethnic cleansing and a violation of international humanitarian law. In addition, the association highlighted the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage sites, the forced displacement of ethnic Armenians, and what they termed “genocidal acts”—citing violations of the United Nations’ Genocide Convention. They called on the international community to recognize these atrocities as war crimes and genocide, urging sanctions and legal actions against Azerbaijan in international courts, and the return of Armenians to Nagorno–Karabakh under international protection.
Despite all the evidence of human rights violations, the international community has so far given Azerbaijan conflicting signals. A country with a dismal human rights record, according to many international human rights organizations, Azerbaijan continues to get away with: suppressing civil society, independent journalism, and political dissent; illegally retaining dozens of Armenian hostages and prisoners of war; and destroying Armenian cultural heritage throughout Nagorno–Karabakh. There appears to be little, if any, appetite within the international community to punish Azerbaijani leaders for these horrific acts and seek justice for the victims. Making matters worse, the international community’s expected participation in the UN Climate Change Conference in Baku in November could be viewed as whitewashing, if not a tacit approval, of Azerbaijan’s genocide in Nagorno–Karabakh.
From Stalin to present day
In the fall of 2020, the Azerbaijani army, backed by Turkish Special Forces and Syrian Islamic jihadists, launched a surprise attack on the region. They managed to annex a large chunk of Nagorno–Karabakh, not only due to their own military prowess but also because of the inaction of the Organization for Security and Co–operation in Europe’s “Minsk Group” (mandated with securing a negotiated settlement) and disastrous leadership of Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. When the ink dried on the Russia–facilitated cease fire agreement of 9 November 2020, it became clear that Pashinyan conceded nearly three times more territory than the Azeri army was able to wrestle from the Nagorno–Karabakh defense forces during the 44 days of war.
Following the full conquest of Nagorno–Karabakh in 2023, Azerbaijan’s Aliyev has sought to force Armenia to open a corridor across its sovereign and undisputed territory between its enclave of Nakhchivan and Azerbaijan proper. He also seeks to impose upon Armenia a demarcation and delineation agreement based on administrative borders imposed by Joseph Stalin between the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and Azerbaijani Soviet republic in 1921.
However, there is no reason why the international community, especially the United States, should accept Stalin’s borders. Legally, the U.S. government never fully recognized the 1920 Soviet annexation of Armenia by the Red Army. For example, the U.S. hosted an Armenian embassy in Washington through 1933 and, in 1959, designated Armenia as a “Captive Nation.” Even so, some pundits in Washington and internationally assume that the administrative borders between the Soviet Republics drawn by Stalin are legitimate borders between sovereign states.
Azerbaijan has de jure rejected those borders by declaring itself a legal successor of the first Azerbaijani Republic rather than of the Azerbaijan Soviet republic. On 30 August 1991, the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan adopted a declaration specifying “...the Restoration of the State Independence of the Azerbaijani Republic.” Subsequently, on 18 October 1991, it adopted a Constitutional Act “On the Restoration of the State Independence of the Azerbaijani Republic,” which declares in Section 2 that “the Azerbaijani Republic is the successor of the Azerbaijani Republic that existed from 28 May 1918, to 28 April 1920.” Therefore, the Soviet administrative borders cannot be considered the legal basis for the international borders between the present–day Republic of Armenia and the Azerbaijani Republic.
The Commission for the Delimitation of the Boundaries of Armenia, which met in London in February 1920 as an official sidebar conference to the Paris Peace Conference, assigned Nagorno–Karabakh as well as a large part of “Lower” Karabakh to be part of the Republic of Armenia based on demography prior to Armenia’s partition between Soviet Russia and Kemalist Turkey. President Woodrow Wilson subsequently included the commission’s findings in Document No. 2 in Annex I of his 22 November 1920, Arbitral Award. This indicated official acceptance of the legality of Armenia’s claims over its historic territory of Nagorno–Karabakh.
The way forward
To allow the current status quo to persist and force Armenia to relinquish its claims to Nagorno–Karabakh would be equivalent to legitimizing Stalin’s gerrymandering of borders in 1921. The international community has a moral responsibility to uphold justice (in the form of securing the right of return of Nagorno–Karabakh residents under credible international protection) and the international law (by initiating proceedings of the UN’s International Court of Justice on the final status of Nagorno–Karabakh). We should not be governed by realpolitik alone. Failure to secure justice and enforce international law would embolden aggressors and lead to more humanitarian disasters and human suffering around the world.
