Author: Ani Kharatian

Nov 2 2023

Watertown High School’s Armenian Club raised more than $1,100 to donate to the Armenian Relief Society in the wake of the ongoing conflict in Artsakh.

The Armenian Weekly reported that the students held a bake sale recently to raise money to help people impact in the region, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, which has displaced over 100,000 Armenians from the region.

The funds raised will provide food, shelter and medical assistance to the affected Armenians of Artsakh, according to the story.

Read the Armenian Weekly story by clicking here.

https://www.watertownmanews.com/2023/11/02/watertown-students-raise-money-to-support-the-armenian-relief-society/

Council on Foreign Relations

Oct 4 2023

Azerbaijan’s push into the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh is drawing comparisons to other episodes of ethnic cleansing. What can be done under international law?

Article by David J. Scheffer

The ethnic Armenian population of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in Azerbaijan, a largely Christian community in a predominantly Muslim nation, is experiencing ethnic cleansing at warp speed. Over the last week, almost all of the estimated 120,000 ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh have fled west to Armenia. This exodus follows clashes with the Azerbaijan army that have reportedly killed upwards of four hundred people, including some civilians. The renewed conflict demonstrates the failure of years of diplomatic efforts to prevent the persecution of ethnic Armenians, and remaining options to address the situation with the tools of international law are limited.

The Armenian government has accused Azerbaijan of ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. The term “ethnic cleansing” has garnered varied definitions over the years, but the United Nations describes it as “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.” The use of starvation tactics against ethnic Armenians during the monthslong closure of the so-called Lachin Corridor between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, combined with Azerbaijani army intimidation, resulted in an exodus of Armenians that has triggered the charge of ethnic cleansing.  

More on:

Armenia

Azerbaijan

Nagorno-Karabakh

International Law

Human Rights

While ethnic cleansing is not defined as a matter of criminal law, its attributes appear in the crime against humanity of persecution and as predicates for acts of genocide. International criminal tribunals prosecute those atrocity crimes, and in many such cases, claims of ethnic cleansing have been front and center. The most prominent example of ethnic cleansing in the last few decades was the forcible removal of the Muslim Bosniak population of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Bosnian Serb (Orthodox Christian) and Bosnian Croat (Roman Catholic) forces in the early 1990s. 

An explicit invocation of ethnic cleansing also can be found in the Responsibility to Protect principle (R2P) adopted by consensus by the UN General Assembly in 2005. R2P states that nations have the responsibility to protect their own populations from “genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes.” But if a government fails to do so, R2P proclaims, then the UN Security Council can act with enforcement power under the UN Charter to prevent and confront such assaults on a civilian population. The Security Council has not acted under R2P in the current Nagorno-Karabakh crisis because Russia, as one of the five veto-wielding Permanent Members of the Council, almost certainly would block any such action while it remains focused on waging a war of aggression against Ukraine.

Deterrence, including measures that could discourage ethnic cleansing, reached its expiration date in Nagorno-Karabakh. It is now too late for international monitors to bear witness to the fate of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. The UN observers that have arrived in the enclave have confirmed that nearly all ethnic Armenians have already fled to Armenia. 

The history of monitoring in the region is mixed. In the wake of the 2020 resurgence of conflict over the enclave, Russia deployed peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh, an echo of the small contingent of monitors sent by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) years earlier. The Russian force, which normally would act as a de facto monitoring mission, has proven itself to be remarkably ineffective. It refused to intervene to open the Lachin Corridor, and it has now failed to deter a renewed assault on the enclave. 

However, one other prospect could be the deployment of OSCE or UN monitors under a fresh mandate to patrol the Armenia-Azerbaijan border in hopes of deterring cross-border movements by either country’s armed forces. This approach would have to include a negotiated withdrawal of Azerbaijani forces from the Armenian territory that they occupied in 2021 and 2022 and a return to internationally recognized borders. If that idea proves unworkable, the two countries could agree to take the dispute to the International Court of Justice for adjudication.

Azerbaijan claims that it will treat the remaining Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh just like any other minority population. That promise likely will not instill much confidence among the small number of Armenians who now face the prospect of Baku dominating their governance in Nagorno-Karabakh. 

Azerbaijan is party to multiple multilateral treaties that include obligations that either explicitly protect or reflect the rights of minority populations. OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Kairat Abdrakhmanov could intensify his monitoring of Azerbaijan’s compliance with and any violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Aggrieved ethnic Armenians can lodge claims against Azerbaijan in the European Court of Human Rights, the legal arm of the Council of Europe, a human rights body to which Armenia and Azerbaijan both belong.

To demonstrate its respect for R2P, Azerbaijan should prevent ethnic cleansing, including its incitement, against ethnic Armenians. While that could seem inconceivable given what has occurred in Nagorno-Karabakh, the United Nations and influential actors such as the United States, Turkey, and the European Union should be pressing the point in all diplomatic exchanges with Baku.

There is long-standing animosity between the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan’s majority-Muslim population, whose resentment has been stoked by the brutal war and subsequent Armenian occupation of the enclave and surrounding Azerbaijani districts in the early 1990s. The resulting armed conflicts of recent years and the rout that has driven most ethnic Armenians onto Armenian territory demand some sort of dialogue. Otherwise, resentments and insecurities will govern the future relationship between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

As a start, the Council of Europe should explore a truth and reconciliation commission that brings both government officials and average citizens together to address grievances and hopes. There likely is no turning back on the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh as a territory now—it will be absorbed into the nation-state of Azerbaijan. But the ethnic Armenians who have called Nagorno-Karabakh home will still seek an end to persecution and hatred. Respect and dignity are the pillars of any truth and reconciliation commission. Armenia and Azerbaijan should work to restore both to their peoples, starting with an initiative that seeks the truth and creates momentum for reconciling divisive prejudices. Nor need there be a trade-off between justice and transparency, as both could be uniquely balanced in the outcome, as proved to be the case in Sierra Leone after its civil war.

One approach to justice would be to turn to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which can investigate and prosecute charges such as ethnic cleansing. On October 3, the Armenian Parliament ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC and two months after its formal deposit of that instrument of ratification—probably early December 2023—will become a state party. The news was not welcomed by Armenia’s longtime (now fading) ally Russia, whose leader, President Vladimir Putin, has been charged by the ICC with war crimes in Ukraine and who now could be arrested if he were to visit Armenia. Azerbaijan remains a non-party state of the court.

Armenia’s embrace of the ICC can be a powerful weapon of lawfare. Indeed, even before it formally becomes the 124^th member of the ICC, Armenia could file immediately a special “Article 12(3)” declaration granting jurisdiction to the Court over the forcible deportation of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh onto Armenian territory. This option would be similar to the ICC’s current jurisdiction for atrocity crimes committed on Ukrainian territory (a non-party State).  Ukraine had filed two such declarations, triggering an official ICC investigation into the Ukraine situation (and of Russian officials). The investigation commenced following referrals by scores of ICC countries; a similar course of events could be a plausible prospect for Armenia’s injury in the Nagorno-Karabakh situation. Once Armenia’s status at the ICC is settled, Azerbaijan political and military leaders could be drawn into the jurisdiction of the ICC because of the character of the alleged crime, just as the forcible deportation (ethnic cleansing) of the Rohingya minority onto the territory of ICC member Bangladesh by military forces of Myanmar (a non-ICC country) in 2017 exposed Myanmar officials to ICC investigation. 

Baku might want to capitalize on the depopulating of Nagorno-Karabakh with a swift military movement across Armenian territory to control access to Nakhchivan, an exclave region of Azerbaijan bordering Iran. But now that Armenia is poised to join the ICC, Azerbaijan’s political and military leaders would likely risk investigation by the ICC prosecutor of the crime of aggression. That may explain the Armenian Parliament’s rapid move to ratify the Rome Statute—to address not only the fate of ethnic Armenians but to deter any Azerbaijani aggression across its territory.

Jerusalem Post

Oct 6 2023

The Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in Azerbaijan, historically inhabited by ethnic Armenian Christians, has been at the center of a longstanding conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

“A few weeks ago I warned that staying in Armenia is dangerous for Jews.”

Rabbi Zamir Isayev

Isayev’s plea, via a video and tweet on X (formerly Twitter), resonates with urgency and fear, a sentiment that has been building over the past few weeks. As the director of the Baku Jewish school and of the Georgian-Sephardic Jewish community in Azerbaijan, Isayev urged Armenian Jews to leave their country, in order for them to stay safe.

In the tweet, Isayev added: “A few weeks ago I warned that staying in Armenia is dangerous for Jews. Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry raised the possibility of violence against Jews twice during the last month. The reason is Israel’s close relations with Azerbaijan, and also the fact that we, rabbis, oppose the usage of the Holocaust topic for propaganda purposes.”

Earlier this week, the World Jewish Center in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, was vandalized in an act thought to be directly related to Israel’s growing relations with neighboring adversary Azerbaijan.

According to the estimates of the local Jewish community and the World Jewish Congress, Armenia is home to around 500-1000 Jews, mostly of Ashkenazi origin with some Mizrahi and Georgian Jews, localized in the capital, Yerevan.

The European Union on Thursday invited the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan for talks to try to revive a peace process thrown into crisis by an Azerbaijani military operation that prompted more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee Nagorno-Karabakh.

Charles Michel, the president of the European Council of EU leaders, said he had invited Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to meet in Brussels by the end of October.

“We believe in diplomacy. We believe in political dialog,” Michel told reporters as he announced the meeting at a summit in the Spanish city of Granada of the European Political Community, a forum of more than 40 countries.

Aliyev snubbed a proposed meeting with Pashinyan, Michel, and the leaders of France and Germany at the summit. But Michel said he expected both sides to attend the Brussels talks, noting Baku had said it would take part in future EU-mediated meetings.

At the summit, leaders also pledged support for Armenia as it grapples with the fallout of the Azerbaijani military operation last month to seize control of the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, mainly populated by ethnic Armenians.

Insider

Sept 29 2023

• At least 70,000 ethnic Armenians have fled the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh this week.
• Azerbaijan gained full control of the contested area after a surprise military attack last week.
• Now, the line of cars bringing Armenian refugees to Armenia is so long that it’s visible from space.

Tens of thousands of refugees have fled the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in the last week, leaving a traffic jam between Azerbaijan and Armenia so long that it’s visible from space.

At least 70,000 ethnic Armenians have fled the territory, which was under a separatist rule associated with Armenia, while internationally, the area has been recognized as belonging to Azerbaijan, per The New York Times.

In a military attack last week, Azerbaijan seized control of the entire territory, driving out many of the 120,000 ethnic Armenians and the separatist Armenian administration, causing a mass exodus of families so large that the traffic jam was visible from space.

Satellite imagery from Maxar taken on September 26 showed a long line of cars along the Lachin corridor, as Armenians and troops left Stepanakert, and headed into mainland Armenia in fear of ethnic persecution from Azerbaijan.

The mass outpour of refugees has intensified in recent days, with locals taking their bare essentials with them. The number of refugees is expected to rise significantly in the coming days, the Times reported.

By September 20, the separatist Armenian leader of the territory signed a decree dissolving the local government and asking Armenian troops to disarm, handing over the territory in exchange for safe passage for ethnic Armenians returning to Armenia, according to the Associated Press.

In 1994, after a six-year separatist struggle and the end of the Soviet Union, the territory was largely governed by an ethnic Armenian government backed by Armenia.

Internationally it was recognized as Azerbaijan’s territory.

But by 2020, and several wars later, Azerbaijan regained large amounts of the land in a six-week war, where Russia helped negotiate a peace deal that largely fell in Azerbaijan’s favor.

As part of the deal, Russia installed 2,000 peacekeepers along the Armenian border with Turkey and Azerbaijan, meant to quell future conflicts. 

But Azerbaijan’s recent aggression largely went unchallenged.

Last week, Armenian officials accused Azerbaijan of blowing up an oil depot that killed dozens and restricted peoples’ abilities to flee by car, according to the Daily Beast.

But by 2020, and several wars later, Azerbaijan regained large amounts of the land in a six-week war, where Russia helped negotiate a peace deal that largely fell in Azerbaijan’s favor.

As part of the deal, Russia installed 2,000 peacekeepers along the Armenian border with Turkey and Azerbaijan, meant to quell future conflicts. 

But Azerbaijan’s recent aggression largely went unchallenged.

Last week, Armenian officials accused Azerbaijan of blowing up an oil depot that killed dozens and restricted peoples’ abilities to flee by car, according to the Daily Beast.