The United Nations Charter states that “all peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”
Based on this tenet, on September 2, 1991, the people of Nagorno-Karabakh declared independence from the Soviet Union and became the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, later to be renamed the Republic of Artsakh. On December 10, 1991, an independence referendum was held in Artsakh, where 82 percent of all voters participated, 99 percent of whom resoundingly voted for independence.
Yet, during the past 33 years, no UN member-state has recognized Artsakh’s independence, thus ignoring the first article of the global organization’s founding charter. In fact, the international community sat idly by and watched as this very fundamental right to self-determination was stolen from the people of Artsakh by Azerbaijan, which launched a large-scale and brazen attack last September that resulted in the forced mass exodus of more than 100,000 Armenians from their ancestral homeland.
The UN Security Council held two emergency sessions last year to address the humanitarian crisis resulting from Azerbaijan’s complete blockade of Artsakh, which human rights groups and advocates had termed ethnic cleansing and genocide. The permanent members of the Security Council—European Union countries, the United States and Russia, among others—all called for urgent action, urging Azerbaijan to lift the deadly blockade, as was mandated by the International Court of Justice, but failed to hold the murderous Baku regime accountable for planning and perpetrating yet another Armenian Genocide.
The people of Artsakh endured the illegal 10-month blockade imposed on them by Azerbaijan with resilience and courage, wanting simply to exist and thrive on their ancestral lands, despite the havoc caused by the 2020 Artsakh War, which claimed thousands of military and civilian lives and forever changed Artsakh’s fate.
It can be said that the Armenian government’s policies and approach hastened the international community’s inaction and Azerbaijan’s hostility.
Mere months before the blockade of Artsakh in December, 2022, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, during a meeting with EU mediators, unilaterally declared that his government recognizes the 86.6 square kilometers of Azerbaijan’s territory. He emphasized his stance more vocally in 2023 as the people of Artsakh were enduring the blockade, cut off from the rest of the world, in what Artsakh leaders called a modern-day Concentration Camp.
“Armenia recognizes Azerbaijan’s territory of 86,600 square kilometers, assuming that Azerbaijan is willing to recognize the territorial integrity of Armenia’s 29,800 square kilometers. Azerbaijan’s 86,600 square kilometer territory includes Nagorno-Karabakh but we would like to point out that the issue of the rights and safety of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians should be discussed between Baku and Stepenakert,” Pashinyan said in May 2023, essentially washing his, and the government’s hands, of the role of guarantor of Artsakh, as was the case in the preceding three decades.
In fact, the words Nagorno-Karabakh—and especially Artsakh—have all but disappeared from the Pashinyan government’s vernacular and has been replaced by vague references to a future that envisions an Armenia without its national and historic identity and distinctiveness.
Artsakh’s declaration of independence 33 years ago was the expression of not only the will of the people of Artsakh, but a critical stepping stone to realizing our national aspirations. The heroism of the people of Artsakh to fight Azerbaijan’s aggression during the first Artsakh War and emerge victorious demonstrated the sheer collective determination of our Nation on that often turbulent road to attaining our national ideals.
Yes, the events of the past four years—the 2020 War, the blockade, the ethnic cleansing campaign that resulted in the forced evacuation of Artsakh—have taken an immense toll on the people of Artsakh and have impacted our national psyche. We as a nation have experienced, struggled through, and overcome injustices over the course of centuries.
As unfathomable as it may seem, the time has come to look forward and recommit ourselves to that very will and drive that moved the people of Artsakh to declare independence on September 2, 1991.
That courageous exercise of expressing their inalienable right to self-determination by the people of Artsakh—and the ensuing sacrifices that they made on behalf of our Nation—should serve as an important—and necessary—impetus to come to together and collectively re-establish the rights of the people of Artsakh that were violently and flagrantly taken from them and us, as a Nation.
