Armenia’s Representative on International Legal Matters Yeghishe Kirakosyan on April 16 delivered opening remarks at a hearing of Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (Armenia v. Azerbaijan) at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), The Hague.
Kirakosyan’s full statement is provided below with minor edits for space considerations.
On 16 September 2021, Armenia instituted these proceedings against Azerbaijan because of that State’s egregious policies and practices of racial discrimination against ethnic Armenians. Azerbaijan’s government has for decades cultivated an echo chamber of racist hatred against ethnic Armenians. The children of Azerbaijan are taught to hate and kill Armenians in their school textbooks. The State media spews vile hate speech. Public officials dehumanize ethnic Armenians and call for their complete elimination. This is the pervasive State-sanctioned racism that Azerbaijan’s counsel dismissed yesterday as “so-called” Armenophobia. A climate in which literal axe murderers are awarded, promoted, and glorified as national heroes for killing Armenians in peace time.
This longstanding State policy of racial hatred came to a violent head in September 2020 when Azerbaijan launched a war of aggression against the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. The stated goal was to eliminate and expel ethnic Armenians from their homeland. As President Aliyev later revealed “Hatred for the enemy … was driving us forward.” For 44 days, Azerbaijani soldiers systematically murdered, tortured, and abused ethnic Armenians. They gleefully filmed themselves carrying out unspeakable acts of violence against ethnic Armenian civilians and prisoners of war, all while shouting racial slurs and insults. Through this violence and intimidation, Azerbaijan ethnically cleansed large swathes of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, expelling at least 30,000 people from their homes. President Aliyev declared victory, proclaiming that no songs would be sung in Armenian in those lands ever again.
In the aftermath of these shocking atrocities, which were the culmination of decades of racial discrimination against ethnic Armenians, Armenia sought accountability under the CERD [Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination]. Importantly, Armenia also sought the Court’s urgent protection for those vulnerable ethnic Armenians who, at that time, had not yet been killed or expelled from their homeland.
Mr. President, Members of the Court, we all know what has happened since then. To the deep regret of Armenia and the international community, not even the Court was able to stop the tide of Azerbaijan’s racist campaign of ethnic cleansing. In September 2023, after starving the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh for nine months by blocking the Lachin Corridor, in flagrant violation of the Court’s first two Orders on Provisional Measures, Azerbaijan launched an unprovoked attack, killing hundreds and forcing over 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee their ancestral homeland. To this day almost 200 remain missing, and their families suffer without knowing the fate of their loved ones. Just as with the Court’s previous Orders, Azerbaijan remains in defiance of the Court’s third Order of 17 November 2023. It has done nothing to “ensure that persons who have left Nagorno-Karabakh after 19 September 2023 and who wish to return to Nagorno-Karabakh are able to do so in a safe, unimpeded and expeditious manner.”