Armenia’s withdrawal of claims from international courts, including the European Court of Human Rights, will lead to the loss of the legal mechanism necessary to protect the rights of the Artsakh people in the international arena, said Artsakh Human Rights Defender Gegham Stepanyan said in an interview with ArmInfo.
Stepanyan was commenting on remarks made by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan earlier this week regarding his government’s readiness to withdraw claims against Azerbaijan pending in international courts, to remedy one of two contentious points remaining in a peace deal with Azerbaijan.
Stepanyan said that this decision could have irreparable consequences not only for the protection of the fundamental rights of the Artsakh people, but also significantly affect the image of Armenia, undermining the country’s status as a state guided by the principles of the rule of law. The human rights activist emphasized that these concerns are shared not only by representatives of the Armenian human rights community, but also by the diaspora. The Artsakh Ombudsman noted that his opinion is shared by such prominent Armenian human rights activists as Siranush Sahakyan, Arman Tatoyan, Ara Ghazaryan and Artak Beglaryan.
“If the claims are withdrawn, this will cause irreparable damage to the rights of 150,000 Artsakh residents,” Stepanyan said.
“This will become another treacherous act, turning the rights of the Artsakh residents into a subject of political bargaining based on some agreements with Azerbaijan,” Stepanyan told Arm-Info.
“This will be yet another signal by Armenia to international arena that political, economic and other interests have priority over the protection of human rights. Furthermore, this will negatively affect the reputation and status of Armenia as a state committed to the rule of law, which is ready to trade the rights of 150,000 Artsakh residents, abandoning its legal priorities,” Stepanyan explained.
Speaking about the possible actions of the Artsakh residents, in the event of the withdrawal of the claims, Stepanyan said that they will only be able to file complaints to the ECHR on issues related to their property.
However, he added that such appeals will no longer be so effective. According to him, if the claims are withdrawn, then there will be an urgent need for support from international organizations and the Armenian diaspora in order to at least partially compensate for the lost opportunities to protect the rights of the people of Artsakh.
The human rights activist explained that, having found themselves in such a situation, they will have to start filing individual complaints to the court en masse regarding property claims and the protection of cultural heritage. He emphasized that this will create a serious situation in which as many individual or collective complaints as possible will need to be filed in a limited time frame.
“However, such actions will not be able to compensate and will not have the same importance as interstate complaints submitted by the state,” Stepanyan said.
At the same time, he noted that the condition of the Armenian authorities on the withdrawal of claims by Azerbaijan against the Republic of Armenia on the principle of reciprocity is of no significance, given that these cases are “not worth a damn.” Stepanyan expressed confidence that the real threat lies in Azerbaijan’s demand that Armenia withdraw its claims.
To this end, touching on the possibility of Pashinyan’s refusal to investigate in the International Criminal Court and the possible consequences of this step, Stepanyan assured that Pashinyan does not have such powers. He explained that at present the ICC only has applications, for example, those submitted by Artsakh’s former State Minister and Rights Defender Artak Beglaryan, but these cases have not yet been accepted for proceedings, so he is worried that something will be withdrawn from this institution prematurely.
“The claims filed by Beglaryan will be considered only if the court seriously addresses these issues. At the moment, there are no cases there that could have any guarantees. However, Armenia cannot withdraw the claims, since at the state level, it essentially did not submit them to the court,” Stepanyan assured. According to him, the claims filed to the ECHR by Armenia are another matter.
Stepanyan said that he believes that the only way to prevent the Armenian authorities from withdrawing claims from international courts under pressure from Azerbaijan is public protest and support from the professional community, under whose pressure the authorities in Armenia will abandon this disastrous step.
It should be noted that the Armenian Prime Minister, in an interview with the senior director of the Eurasia Center of the Atlantic Council in Washington, touching upon the withdrawal of mutual claims from international courts, once again expressed his readiness to do so on the condition that Azerbaijan abandons this issue in bilateral relations.
On September 28, 2023, Armenia filed a lawsuit against Azerbaijan in the International Court of Justice for the alleged violation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. In addition, the Republic of Armenia submitted four complaints to the European Court of Human Rights. One of them concerns the crimes and human rights violations that occurred during the 44-day 2020, the second concerns the trials of Armenian prisoners of war in Baku.
Another case concerns the invasion of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces into the territory of Armenia and the crimes committed here, and the last complaint concerns the blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, massive human rights violations and ethnic cleansing. At the same time, Azerbaijani media, citing the country’s Foreign Ministry, reported that on November 19, 2024, the Azerbaijani government submitted the main document of the claim against Armenia to the Permanent Arbitration Court, accusing the Armenian side of allegedly violating Azerbaijan’s sovereign rights to energy resources.
