By Mark Dovich
Lawyers representing two officials who held senior human rights-related positions in Nagorno-Karabakh’s government have formally asked the International Criminal Court to investigate Azerbaijan’s leaders for crimes against humanity.
The petition, known as a communication, contends that Azerbaijan’s forcible displacement of nearly all of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians last year falls within the definition of deportation, which can be considered a crime against humanity under international law.
It marks the second such submission to the Hague-based tribunal since Armenia joined earlier this year, as well as the first time that a petition concerning Nagorno-Karabakh has been filed, and the first time that a communication has been made directly on behalf of victims.
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“The deportation of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh bears all the hallmarks of a crime against humanity,” Zimeray & Finelle, the Paris-based law group that filed the communication, said in a press release Thursday.
Zimeray & Finelle made the submission in association with the U.S.-based Tufenkian Foundation and Association de soutien à l’Artsakh, a Paris-based non-profit, on behalf of Artak Beglaryan and Gegham Stepanyan, who each served as Nagorno-Karabakh’s human rights ombudsperson.
The filing comes on the one-year anniversary of Azerbaijan’s decision to launch a lightning military offensive to take full control of Nagorno-Karabakh. That came after a more than nine-month, near-total blockade of the region and led to the collapse of the local administration.
Beglaryan and Stepanyan were among the more than 100,000 Armenians subsequently expelled in what the U.S.-based watchdog Freedom House and a number of other groups and prominent individuals have said meets the definition of ethnic cleansing or genocide.
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The fact that Thursday’s filing was made on Beglaryan and Stepanyan’s behalf represents a significant development, Beglaryan told CivilNet by phone.
“This is the first communication to the ICC on behalf of the victims,” Beglaryan explained. “It’s much more recommended by international lawyers and experts to submit on behalf of the victims themselves, and we did that. That’s why it has additional value.”
Continuing, Beglaryan said the fact that this latest communication covers only Azerbaijan’s deportation of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians to Armenia in a nod to the complex jurisdictional issues involved over the matter.
“We have been deported to Armenian territory. It’s like the Rohingya people case…This is a very similar case, and we used that precedent in order to request an investigation,” Beglaryan explained.
That refers to a landmark decision the ICC made in 2019 to launch an investigation into the mass flight of members of the Rohingya minority from Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh. In effect, the tribunal had moved to broaden its reach, declaring jurisdiction in cases where even just a part of the alleged crime took place in a member state.
Bangladesh is a party to the ICC, while Myanmar is not. Likewise, Armenia is a party to the ICC, while Azerbaijan is not.
Importantly, the communication by itself does not guarantee the ICC will open a preliminary examination of the evidence, let alone a full investigation. And even if the ICC were to launch an investigation, it would likely take years to complete, and even that does not mean a prosecution would ever be started.
Still, Beglaryan insisted he, together with Stepanyan and others, would continue pushing the ICC to act.
“This is a matter of justice not only for our people. This is justice for humanity, and for the prevention of further genocides or other international crimes,” Beglaryan said. “Justice means not only accountability, but also restoration of our rights, including our return to our homeland.”
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