The Lemkin Institute issued a statement last week urging the United Nations to withdraw its support from the organization’s Climate Change Conference, COP29, scheduled to take place in Baku, in November.
The Lemkin Institute calls on the United Nations to withdraw support for Azerbaijan as host of COP29, stressing that Azerbaijan is a genocidal state run by a president who routinely expresses genocidal ideology towards Armenians, including referring to them as dogs, jackals, and terrorists. Its full statement is provided below.
“The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention opposes the decision by the United Nations to name Azerbaijan as host of COP29, the annual UN climate change summit, given Azerbaijan’s genocidal strategies in Nagorno-Karabakh, the genocidal Armenophobic ideology of its leader, President Ilham Aliyev, and the extensive corruption and human rights abuses at home. By granting Azerbaijan the honor of hosting this important event, the UN is endorsing genocidal speech, genocidal policies, and dictatorship, which benefits neither the climate nor the people of the world. The choice of Azerbaijan as COP host legitimizes, rationalizes, and normalizes genocide in world politics. Furthermore, it threatens the credibility of the principles established by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. In the interests of genocide prevention, human rights, and the legitimacy of the United Nations as a body representing the people of the world, the United Nations must rescind Azerbaijan’s recognition as host of COP29 and either find another host country or hold this year’s meeting in Bonn, Germany, COP’s default meeting place.
Azerbaijan was chosen to host COP29 through an established UN mechanism in December 2023, less than three months after it had overseen the genocide through “ethnic cleansing” of Armenians from the region of Nagorno-Karabakh (“Artsakh” to Armenians) and following a ten-month-long genocidal blockade of the territory. The exodus from Artsakh — which ended an almost 4,000-year-old continuous presence by one of the oldest Christian communities in the world — was one of the most effective genocides of recent times. To celebrate Azerbaijan’s “victory” against the Armenians of Artsakh, President Aliyev even lit a bonfire in the Artsakh capital of Stepanakert for what he called a “final cleaning” on the occasion of Nowruz. President Aliyev viewed the choice of Azerbaijan as COP29 host to be an endorsement of his genocidal policies towards Armenians (among other things). Upon hearing the news, he stated: “We consider it as a sign of respect from the international community to Azerbaijan and what we are doing…”
It cannot be forgotten that during the 2020 war between Azerbaijan and Artsakh, Azerbaijani soldiers were guilty of engaging in extreme and horrific atrocities against disarmed Armenian soldiers as well as Armenian civilians, including elderly and disabled people. These documented atrocities include beheadings, mutilations of Armenians while still alive, torture, and ritual humiliations of Armenians solely because of their identity, as evidenced by the use of flags and songs. When Azerbaijan started an aggressive war against Armenia in 2022, it engaged in similar atrocities, including the use of sexualized violence against Armenian women and the massacre of disarmed Armenian soldiers. There has been no accountability for these crimes. They are reminiscent of the genocidal atrocities committed against Armenians by Turkish and Azeri troops, gendarmes, soldiers, and civilians from 1915-1923 and help explain why it was so easy for Azerbaijan to terrorize the Armenians of Artsakh into flight with its invasion of the territory on September 19, 2023.
Apart from blockading the estimated 120,000 Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh for ten months, invading the territory, and forcing the flight of almost the totality of that population, Azerbaijan also has been methodically destroying Armenian cultural heritage in Artsakh. If nothing is done about this, Artsakh will become like Nakhichevan, the Azerbaijani exclave that at one time had a significant Armenian population but now has none, where Azerbaijan has already destroyed an estimated 98 percent of Armenian cultural heritage, including churches, cemeteries, and monasteries.
