Statement delivered by H.E. Andranik Hovhannisyan, Permanent Representative of Armenia during the General Debate under Agenda Item 3 at the 46th Session of the UN human Rights Council

10 March, 2021

HRC 46^th Session: General Debate under Agenda Item 3

Delivered by Amb. Andranik Hovhannisyan

President,

Covid-19 pandemic poses an unprecedented threat to the realization of human rights worldwide, endangering the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The safeguarding of peace and justice, preservation and development of strong democratic institutions bear particular significance in these exceptional circumstances and should be a matter of concern and concerted action for all those who stand for our common principles and goals.

President,

International humanitarian law and international human rights law uphold the right of families to know the fate and whereabouts of their relatives who went missing during the armed conflict. Parties to the conflict must take all possible measures to elucidate the destiny of such persons. This obligation has been continuously violated by Azerbaijan, which has refused to share information about numerous Armenian combatants and civilians, who went missing during the recent war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan has displayed poor cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross allowing it to visit only some of the captives and only several months after detention. With regard to the Armenian captives the European Court of Human Rights has recently stated that “The Azerbaijani Government have frequently failed to provide the information requested by the Court.”

Many of the missing persons appeared on the short videos and images disseminated in the social media of Azerbaijan, which as a rule depict cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment against them. Numerous families went through anguish and pain long after the hostilities have ceased identifying their loved ones in such videos but not being able to clarify their fate. There were 31 confirmed cases of Armenian civilians killed in the Azerbaijani custody, including through decapitation. Hence, Armenia is very much concerned that many of those persons who went missing face an existential threat in the Azerbaijani custody. We would like to stress that enforced disappearance of persons is considered as one of the acts constituting crimes against humanity if it is committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.

I thank you.

First Right of Reply

Madame Vice-President,

Armenia would like to exercise its right of reply to the statement made by the representative of Azerbaijan.

A number of international watchdogs have prepared reports on Azerbaijan’s recent violence against Nagorno Karabakh. The Human Rights Watch alone issued the following 5 reports “Unlawful Attacks on Medical Facilities and Personnel in Nagorno-Karabakh”; “Attack on Church Possible War Crime”; “Unlawful Strikes in Nagorno-Karabakh”; “Armenian Prisoners of War Badly Mistreated”; “Cluster Munitions Used in Nagorno-Karabakh”. The titles speak for themselves.

The use of force, violence and coercive measures by Azerbaijan cannot serve as any basis for just and durable solutions. They just exacerbate the wounds and further protract the conflict. The lasting and sustainable settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict rests on the recognition and respect of the human rights of its people.

The historic Armenian name of Nagorno Karabakh is Artsakh. It has always been overwhelmingly populated by indigenous Armenian population. On February 20, 1988 the parliament of the Armenian Autonomous Region of Nagorno Karabakh formally applied for the implementation of its right to self-determination. In response to this peaceful call Azerbaijan unleashed murderous violence, deportations, premediated massacres, abolishment of the autonomous constitutional status. The impunity granted to the perpetrators paved the way for the ethnic cleansing of Armenians throughout Azerbaijan. It reached its culmination during the outbreak of anti-Armenian violence in Baku in January 1990, and it further led to a full-scale military aggression against the people of Nagorno Karabakh.

As Andrei Sakharov, Nobel Peace Prize Winner stated: "For Azerbaijan the issue of Karabakh is a matter of ambition, for the Armenians of Karabakh, it is a matter of life and death".

The international mediators of the conflict, the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, give full credit to the right of people to self-determination as one of the principles of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement. This has been supported by the all OSCE participating states. Furthermore, the mediators have reiterated on numerous occasions that the future legal status of Nagorno Karabakh should be determined by the legally-binding free expression of will of its population.

After the war the mediator countries both reaffirmed these principles of conflict resolution and explicitly made references on the determination of the final legal status of Nagorno Karabakh as an indispensable element of the pending comprehensive conflict settlement.

I thank you.

Second Right of reply

Madame Vice-President,

Armenia would like to refute all allegations made by the representative of Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan has never made a secret out of its intention to ethnically cleanse Nagorno Karabakh from its indigenous Armenian population. During the war of 1990s, military offensive of April 2016 and the recent hostilities, it employed the very same tactics of intimidation, killings and destruction. One of the most notorious examples was the massacre of Maragha village of Nagorno Karabakh where, according to Amnesty International during one day alone in 1992 around 45 women, children and elderly were tortured and killed by armed forces of Azerbaijan.

These horrors repeated in April 2016 when 28 Armenians, military and civilian alike, captured by Azerbaijan were all tortured and killed. Three of them were decapitated. The high-level anti-Armenian State rhetoric encouraged this inhumane treatment.

Last year there were at least 31 cases reported of the Armenian civilians killed in the custody of Azerbaijan. The international media reported about the cases of extreme cruelty, including the ISIS-style beheadings.

The protracted displacement is one of the consequences of consecutive waves of massacres, ethnic cleansing and aggression unleashed by Azerbaijan. As a result, the once thriving Armenian minority of Azerbaijan ceased to exist, once multicultural Azerbaijan has been gradually turning to monoethnic, mono-religious country.

In its judgment Sargsyan v. Azerbaijan, the European Court of Human Rights observed “the applicant is one of hundreds of thousands of Armenians who fled Azerbaijan during the conflict leaving property and home behind”.

I thank you.

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