The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights will be visiting Armenia and Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region, from 16 to 23 October.
She will meet with representatives of the States concerned, international organisations and civil society and will issue a statement at the end of her mission.
On 12 October, during an urgent debate on the humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution highlighting “the long-standing and continuing failure on the part of the authorities of Azerbaijan to reassure the Armenian population of the region of their safety and the full respect of their rights”.
This population, which has had to flee “their ancestral homeland”, is prey to a “genuine threat of physical extinction” and “a lack of trust in their future treatment by the Azerbaijani authorities”, emphasises the text, which mentions “a long-standing policy of hatred in Azerbaijan towards Armenians” and “allegations and reasonable suspicions that this can amount to ethnic cleansing”.
Azerbaijan must “redress the situation”, put into practice its promises to reintegrate displaced persons and “prove its goodwill”.
Otherwise, warn the parliamentarians, the Assembly would have “no other alternative” than to call for the launch of the complementary joint procedure (Assembly and Committee of Ministers) provided for in the event of a serious failure by a Member State to meet its obligations regarding the values of the Council of Europe.
From January 2024, the resolution states, the Assembly could challenge the credentials of the Azerbaijani delegation.
This threat, which was also brandished last week against Turkey in the context of the Kavala affair, was made against the Russian delegation after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Link to the resolution: https://aeur.eu/f/924 (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)