HRC 56th Session: ID with Special Rapporteur on IDPs

21 June, 2024

Delivered by Mr. Hambardzum Minasyan, First Secretary

Vice-President,

We thank the Special Rapporteur for her Report.

Armenia is concerned about the increasing displacement figures globally.

As an affected country, Armenia has always strived to contribute positively to the international efforts to alleviate the plight of displaced people. It is our conviction that the phenomenon of the forced displacement should be addressed in a comprehensive manner addressing its root causes and respecting the human rights of refugees, internally displaced, stateless and other persons of concern.

Armenia sheltered a large number of people who were forcibly displaced by Azerbaijan in several waves of massacres starting from late 1980s. Overall, there were around 500.000 Armenians living in Soviet Azerbaijan. There are almost no Armenians living in Azerbaijan today.

Last September Azerbaijan committed an ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh, forcibly displacing its entire Armenian population of more than 100 000 people, who left their ancestral homes behind. “They had no choice but to do so immediately” the report of the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights concluded.

Furthermore, thousands of Armenians were internally displaced from border areas due to Azerbaijan's large-scale military attack and occupation of the sovereign territories of Armenia.

Thank you.

Right of Reply

We exercise our right of reply to Azerbaijan.

In its Order of 17 November 2023, the International Court of Justice stated that “according to United Nations reports, more than 100,000 persons of Armenian national or ethnic origin have found themselves compelled to leave their place of residence and reach the Armenian border since the operation commenced by Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh on 19 September 2023.” According to the Order, the mentioned operation “took place in the context of the long-standing exposure of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh to a situation of vulnerability and social precariousness.”

Indeed, prior to the military attack Azerbaijan committed an inhumane nine-month long blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh that the first Prosecutor of International Criminal Court Luis Moreno Ocampo identified as “the archetype of genocide through the imposition of conditions of life designed to bring about a group’s destruction”.

Azerbaijan’s unjustified and unprovoked military attack took lives of hundreds of people, including children, and resulted in mass forced displacement of the entire population. The people had to leave their ancestral homes to escape mass atrocities. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights observed in this regard that for Armenians “leaving home was the only reasonable option available” out of the “deep-rooted fear for their lives” and “future stemming from previous unresolved atrocities and ongoing intimidatory acts.”

The IOM reported on the ground that “many of those who sought refuge in Armenia undertook arduous journeys, often walking for days and finding shelter in caves or basements, enduring extremely challenging conditions. There were reports of malnutrition, particularly among the elderly and among children.”

The ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh was the continuation of the policy of anti-Armenian persecution and massacres committed in Azerbaijan in 1980-s and the early 1990-s. Thousands of people were killed, tortured, taken hostage and still remain missing. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan has been openly engaged in the ethno-demographic engineering in the Armenian villages and towns that it captured, looting, destroying and vandalizing cultural monuments and residential buildings in a sheer defiance of the ICJ orders.

As regards the alleged number of IDPs in Azerbaijan, we would like to draw the attention that they were continuously and systematically falsified and exaggerated for decades and has been used by Azerbaijan as a propaganda tool, rather than an effort for meeting their needs.

Thank you.

MFA RA
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