High-Level Segment of the 49th Regular Session of the Human Rights Council: Right of Reply to Azerbaijan

03 March, 2022

President,

Armenia requested the floor to exercise its right of reply to Azerbaijan.

In September 2020 Azerbaijan unleashed an aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh. It perpetrated ethnic cleansing over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh it captured, invaded, and occupied sovereign territories of the Republic of Armenia.

That is a blatant breach of the Charter of the United Nations, its purposes and principles of peaceful settlement of disputes, prevention and removal of threats to the peace and refraining from the use of force.

Azerbaijan’s conduct testifies that it is a serial violator of the international law. We recall the UN resolution 3314, which defines aggression and, furthermore, stipulates that it is the duty of States not to use armed force to deprive peoples of their right to self-determination. That is exactly what Azerbaijan has been doing against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh for more than three decades.

During and after the aggression Azerbaijan committed gross violations of the international humanitarian law and of the international human rights law. It indiscriminately targeted civilian facilities such as residences, schools, markets and hospitals, causing enormous suffering and civilian casualties. The cases of extrajudicial executions, decapitations, mutilations, cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment were documented by such organizations as Bellingcat, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House and Amnesty International.

Today Azerbaijan brazenly violates the IHL by keeping under its custody the Armenian Prisoners of War. It refuses to cooperate with the European Court of Human Rights on latter’s interim measures for those detainees. There are dozens of documented cases of enforced disappearances. Hundreds of missing persons came to add to a thousand from the first Nagorno-Karabakh war. 40.000 Armenians are deprived from returning to their ancestral homes. Half a million Armenians have been displaced by Azerbaijan since the beginning of the conflict.

Azerbaijan continues to hamper the safe and unhindered access of humanitarian organizations to Nagorno-Karabakh. Moreover, it is openly and impudently engaged in the ethno-demographic engineering in the Armenian villages and towns that it captured. It continues the destruction of Armenian monuments in a sheer defiance to the ruling of the International Court of Justice “to prevent and punish acts of vandalism and desecration affecting Armenian cultural heritage.”

The peace in Nagorno-Karabakh should be built on the premises of justice, accountability and respect to international law. It should fully take into account the human rights of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.

I thank you.

MFA RA
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