In a statement on the floor at the Human Rights Council, CSI urges support for Armenians’ right to return.
CSI’s Abi McDougal presenting her statement at the Human Rights Council. screenshot: un web tv
MEDIA RELEASE
“It is still not too late to undo the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh,” Christian Solidarity International’s UN representative Abi McDougal told the Human Rights Council in a statement on the floor on Thursday.
The statement came during the two-year anniversary of the exodus of the 120,00 Armenian Christians of Nagorno Karabakh (or Artsakh), who were forcibly displaced from their homeland by Azerbaijan’s military invasion in September-October 2023. McDougal pointed to the Swiss Peace Initiative for Nagorno Karabakh as a viable means to implement the right of return of these Armenians.
McDougal noted that on November 17, 2023, the International Court of Justice ruled that Azerbaijan must “ensure that persons who have left Nagorno-Karabakh after 19 September 2023 and who wish to return to Nagorno-Karabakh are able to do so in a safe, unimpeded and expeditious manner.”
“Thus far, the international community has taken no steps to ensure this order is implemented,” McDougal pointed out.
The CSI representative touted the Swiss Peace Initiative as a “neutral, credible, and law-based framework to acknowledge and operationalize the right of return for Nagorno Karabakh’s Armenian population.”
In March, the Swiss parliament mandated the Swiss government to hold a peace forum under international supervision between Azerbaijan and the representatives of the displaced Armenians from Nagorno Karabakh, “in order to negotiate the collective return, in complete security, of the Armenian population.”
On Monday, CSI held a parallel event at the Human Rights Council, where two members of the Swiss parliament, Erich Vontobel and Nicolas Walder, presented the Swiss Peace Initiative to assembled diplomats and NGO staff. They were joined by Artak Beglaryan, the former human rights ombudsman of the Republic of Artsakh and president of the Artsakh Union, as well as Dr. Paul Williams, a world-renowned peace negotiator.
On September 26, Hugues de Woillemont, the director-general of the French charity l’Oeuvre d’Orient, also intervened on the floor of the Human Rights Council to urge the international community to support the right of return for Karabakh’s Armenians. “Without truth and justice, there will be no better future and no durable peace,” he stated.
