HRC 54th Session: Agenda item 10 – General Debate - Embassy of Armenia to Switzerland and Permanent Mission of Armenia to the UN office at Geneva

HRC 54th Session: Agenda item 10 – General Debate

13 October, 2023

Delivered by Hrachuhi Katvalyan, Deputy Permanent Representative

Mr. President,

More than 100.000 refugees were forcibly displaced by Azerbaijan in what the recent European Parliament resolution defined as a “situation [that] amounts to ethnic cleansing”. It also “strongly condemned the threats and acts of violence committed by Azerbaijani troops against the population of Nagorno-Karabakh”.

These violations of human rights should be thoroughly registered, examined and the perpetrators should be brought to justice. Ethnic cleansings do not happen overnight. The situation should be assessed in analyzing the patterns of violations of human rights that led to the mass atrocity, including the reports of the UN special procedures and treaty bodies. This is also necessary for preventing the similar tragedies in the future.

The international human rights institutions, including the UN Human Rights Machinery have an important role to play in this regard. It is, therefore, regrettable that the recent UN mission to Nagorno-Karabakh did not include any human rights expert.

There is a need for the technical assistance and capacity building by the UN to address the plight of refugees, ensure respect of their human rights, including the right of safe, voluntary and dignified return, in line with the humanitarian principles. An independent international monitoring of the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh is essential also for preservation of the cultural and religious rights of the indigenous Armenian population. These cannot be done without the meaningful engagement of the human rights pillar of the UN and other specialized human right watchdogs.

The Human Rights Council is the primary platform for the UN in addressing the human rights violations of the magnitude and severity that the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh has faced. The HRC should not fail these people in need.

I thank you.

Right of Reply

President,

Armenia exercises its right of reply to Azerbaijan.

In just a few days, the entire population of Nagorno-Karabakh was uprooted and forced to leave their ancestral homeland due to the large-scale military offensive of Azerbaijan, unleashed on 19 September 2023. This pre-planned unjustified aggression claimed more than 200 lives, with more than 500 wounded, according to preliminary reports.

Azerbaijan's military aggression was the culmination of its long-standing policy aimed at achieving complete extermination and destruction of the indigenous Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. It was preceded by the 10 months-long siege of Nagorno-Karabakh, which caused a critical shortage of food, medicine, fuel, electricity and other critical goods, creating a full-fledged humanitarian crisis and starvation.

These actions pursue one main objective to create conditions unbearable for life and to force displacement. In the statement of 22 September 2023, the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide expressed her alarm over the military escalation by Azerbaijan, stressing that it can put the civilian population in the area at risk of violence, including risk of genocide and related atrocity crimes.

Throughout many years Azerbaijan has been denying the deployment of the UN interagency fact-finding mission to Nagorno-Karabakh to assess the needs of the affected population and provide humanitarian assistance. Only after committing complete ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan did allow a limited and curtailed mission led by the UN resident-coordinator in Baku. Armenia expressed its disappointment on the press release issued in this regard by the UN resident-coordinator, since it failed to address a number of important issues, among them the most essential one – the root causes of the ethnic cleansing. The UN mission did not include a human rights expert. Hence, we believe that it failed to have a comprehensive approach lacking one of the UN pillars on board. In fact, it is our conviction that given the human rights and humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh, the UN human rights pillar should have been the core of the mission. We urge to rectify this.

Armenia also strongly condemns the arrests by Azerbaijan of the leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan arbitrarily detained the very people with whom it was conducting a dialogue, which Azerbaijan claimed was aimed at ensuring the rights of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan has effectively put the dialogue behind the bars.

I thank you.

MFA RA
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