By Lusine Vardanyan and Alexander Pracht
A court in the German city of Kassel issued a landmark ruling on Monday, declaring that Karabakh Armenians are stateless persons rather than Armenian citizens and confirmed that they cannot return to Nagorno-Karabakh due to persecution risks from Azerbaijan, in a final and non-appealable decision that was achieved through significant contributions from the Armenian-German Lawyers Association.
“While this is a decision made within a national judicial system, it can be used in larger international courts to prove racial discrimination against Armenians. This is a very important achievement,” said Gurgen Petrossian, President of the Armenian-German Lawyers Association and international law expert at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
The Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh fled the region in September 2023 after a blockade that lasted more than nine months and was followed by a one-day offensive of the Azerbaijani military that resulted in Baku taking Nagorno-Karabakh under its full control and ethnically cleansing the breakaway region’s population.
Following the forced displacement, some Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians sought refuge outside Armenia, including Germany, where they filed numerous applications for refugee status
The decision carries particular significance given its timing before the International Court of Justice’s upcoming ruling on November 12, 2024, regarding Azerbaijan’s objections in the case Armenia v. Azerbaijan concerning alleged violations of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
The German court’s ruling effectively addresses the complex legal status of Karabakh Armenians. Despite Azerbaijan’s claims that they all hold Armenian citizenship, Yerevan’s stance is that the passports with the 070 code that were issued for all Karabakh Armenians prior to 2023 only provided travel capabilities and did not automatically make them Armenian nationals. This precedent is expected to influence similar cases across Germany and potentially other European countries.
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