“Nothing More Than a Piece of Paper”: Armenians Displaced From Nagorno-Karabakh Say New Peace Accord With Azerbaijan Abandons Rights and Accountability
Trump’s gestural peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan ignores the conflict’s main victims from Nagorno-Karabakh and excludes their right to return home.
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TASHIR AND YEREVAN, ARMENIA—On August 8, U.S. President Donald Trump hosted President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan at the White House, where the three leaders signed a declaration they hailed as the end of decades of conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
“Many tried to find a resolution . . . and they were unsuccessful. But with this accord, we've finally succeeded in making peace,” Trump told the press following the meeting, adding that the two countries “are committing to stop all fighting forever, open up commerce, travel, and diplomatic relations, and respect each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity, so importantly. . . . So they're going to be able to really live and work together, and it's amazing.” Armenia and Azerbaijan are among the states signaling that the Nobel Peace Prize should go to President Trump, who recently referred to Armenia as Albania when touting his diplomatic successes regarding the conflict.
While the treaty process was initialized, no formal agreement has been signed. A draft released by Armenia and Azerbaijan includes provisions for the cessation of hostilities and recognition of respective sovereignty. The two South Caucuses countries—at war between 1988 and 1994 and again in 2020—have been engaged in complicated negotiations over a peace treaty and border demarcation for nearly two years.
But the announcement of the peace process made no reference to Nagorno-Karabakh—a self-governing region within Azerbaijan that was majority Armenian—or to the as many as 150,000 ethnic Armenians displaced between 2020 and 2023. Meanwhile, alongside the declaration, Aliyev and Pashinyan indicated they would sign a joint request to dissolve the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, the multilateral, European body formed in 1992 that was tasked and failed to facilitate a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and encourage the voluntary return of displaced people on both sides. Azerbaijani officials said the OSCE was set to terminate its Minsk Group operations September 1, a precondition for Azerbaijan to sign the draft agreement, Armenian outlets reported Tuesday.
“The conflict cannot be deemed resolved while an entire population remains uprooted, deprived of its inalienable rights. Our displacement was neither voluntary nor incidental—it resulted from siege, starvation, and military assault, actions that remain unaddressed by the international community,” the National Assembly of Nagorno-Karabakh wrote in a public appeal to the OSCE. The assembly was especially concerned that “[dissolving] this mechanism without consulting the elected representatives of the people for whom it was established is to disregard our voice and deny our role in the process.”
In September 2023, after years of alleged abuses by Azerbaijani forces against Armenian civilians and soldiers—including beheadings and torture—and a 9-month Azerbaijani military blockade of movement and humanitarian aid into the region, Azerbaijan began shelling the capital city of Stepanakert and other areas of Nagorno-Karabakh for two days. Following the surprise bombardment, Azerbaijan opened the one road from Nagorno-Karabakh into Armenia, and in the course of ten days, over 100,000 Armenians fled—an event that human rights experts described as ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Only a few dozen Armenian people remain in Nagorno-Karabakh, according to representatives, while the rest have resettled in Armenia, Russia, and elsewhere.
That November, the International Court of Justice issued provisional measures that Azerbaijan ensure the “safe, unimpeded and expeditious” return of displaced Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, a ruling echoed by the European Parliament and sought ever since by diplomatic efforts like the Swiss Peace Initiative. Despite this, in his address from the Armenian Parliament last week following the meeting in Washington, Pashinyan said that the continued pursuit of return for the displaced would threaten peace with Azerbaijan, and that “with our support and that of the international community, they should be resettled in the Republic of Armenia and live, create, and establish themselves here as full citizens of the Republic of Armenia.”
In response to the move to settle the conflict without guarantees for return, the Committee for the Defense of the Fundamental Rights of the People of Nagorno-Karabakh, a body in Armenia representing the displaced community, stated that “Any agreement that disregards their rights, erases their history, or sacrifices their future is not a peace agreement, but an act of appeasement that rewards aggression and source of future conflict.”
Human rights experts and analysts have cast doubt on the recent bilateral agreement, saying it shuts the door on accountability for victims of crimes and fails to lead to true justice and repair. "I think it is nothing more than a piece of paper that will not bring peace to this region, because it ignores the very reason for the conflict, and it fails to properly address the roots of the conflict," said Gegham Stepanyan, the human rights ombudsperson for Nagorno-Karabakh, also called the Republic of Artsakh, who retained his role after he was displaced to Armenia in 2023, in an interview with Drop Site News. "It means that Armenia, together with Azerbaijan, normalizes war crimes, normalizes the violation of basic human rights, and betrays the rights of 150,000 people. . . . It means human rights are being sacrificed to the economic interests of states or other interests I do not know."
Meanwhile, Richard Giragosyan, an analyst in Armenia’s capital of Yerevan, said that provisions in the agreement seem to require that Armenia “effectively abandon any support or backing for international legal challenges to Azerbaijan's war of 2020, the ethnic cleansing and forced expulsion for the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh."
Alongside the declaration to end the conflict, Trump claimed that Aliyev and Pashinyan also signed separate trade and economic cooperation deals with the United States, including waiving a U.S. law from the 90s banning U.S. military aid to Azerbaijan, though those agreements were not released. The three leaders announced a route along Armenia’s southern border with Iran to connect Azerbaijan to its exclave Nakhchivan, dubbed the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or the TRIPP.
Artak Beglaryan, former Artsakh human rights ombudsperson and current president of Artsakh Union, an NGO advocating for rights of the displaced community, told Drop Site that the communities most impacted by the conflict would not see immediate benefit as a result of the agreements. "Even if there are benefits, it will be in years, if not decades," said Beglaryan, who was himself forced to move in 2023. "Our social needs are quite immediate and urgent now."
Nearly two years following the mass exodus, the majority of the displaced live in Armenia, where they face enormous economic disadvantages, competing in tight housing and job markets and having to start over after leaving almost all their material possessions, land, and memories behind. "This situation, this social crisis that we are now in, is the consequence of the displacement. We don't need to address those problems. We need to address the reasons for those problems, and we want to return to our homes," Beglaryan said.
The government of Nagorno-Karabakh formed after the enclave declared independence from Azerbaijan by popular referendum in 1991. Since its September 2023 disbandment, the embattled republic has reconstituted in skeleton form in an unofficial embassy building in Yerevan, where it now primarily advocates for the socioeconomic welfare and human rights of the displaced community in Armenia. Civil society in Armenia has also organized around these issues, most recently in a series of sit-ins at the capital attracting thousands over the spring and summer.
According to the displaced community’s representatives, the people of Arsakh have been excluded from the peace and normalization process not only in Washington but also in Armenia. No member of the displaced community was engaged in or has been notified of the deals made at the White House, Beglaryan said.
“It was not a surprise for me, because we have a long history of being ignored,” Beglaryan said. He disputed that the meeting has generated a peace agreement, but rather a "geopolitical trade deal mostly for PR purposes." Stepanyan agreed that Friday proved that it is “very much like we do not exist, like we do not have any rights, like we are no one.”
Real justice that can lead to sustainable peace, Beglaryan said, requires that the communities whose rights were violated be “invited into the negotiations as a party, or included in the Armenian delegation. Our voice should be heard.”
The Right to Return After Two Years of Displacement
On a wet June afternoon, two months prior to the White House’s announcement, around two dozen people sat in a wide circle on the second floor of the cultural center in the northern Armenia city of Tashir when Irina Grigoryan arrived. An educator and organizer from Nagorno-Karabakh, Grigoryan had traveled two hours to Tashir from Yerevan to meet with resettled Artsakhtsis and conduct a needs assessment—one of several she has done with Indie Peace, a British organization, that works in areas where those who left Nagorno-Karabakh between 2020 and 2023 reside.
Around 1,500 Artsakhtsis have resettled in Tashir. Those in attendance that day shared with Grigoryan how they are struggling with a host of economic and social issues. Some described discrimination against the Artsakh dialect of Armenian. Many lamented difficulties finding employment. Most were concerned about the impending end to an aid program for displaced people by the Armenian government, without which "they will be in a very dangerous position and even lose the houses that they are renting," said Grigoryan.
"We can't plan our future, because every day we face changes, and we don’t know what will happen," said one elderly woman.
In the subsequent months the situation has only worsened, according to Beglaryan, with "the number of people in poverty and the depth of poverty . . . increasing," he said. Following cuts to the social support program over the summer, human rights ombudsperson Stepanyan said, he has received over 100 calls a day to his office phone from people "saying they do not have money to cover rental costs."
Alongside wage and rent troubles, many also live with the memory of major traumatic events—particularly the children who endured drone bombardment and extreme deprivation during the blockade, Grigoryan said. In the Tashir meeting, a child sitting with her mother shyly refused a cookie from a plate Grigoryan had passed around, only conceding with encouragement from the entire room.
"Our children grow up earlier because of the war. The blockade, the war, this displacement, took childhood from our children," Grigoryan said. She recalled how her own grandson, at just 8-years old, woke up early in the morning to wait in line for bread during the height of food shortages in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Some felt their struggles could be resolved if they could safely return to their homes. One woman, Liana, told Grigoryan that she would know how to subsist on less back in Nagorno-Karabakh: "I can grab anything to live off, even from the ground, but only in our home."
People are working to survive in Armenia and want supportive policies, like continued aid from the government, Beglaryan said. "On the other hand, the majority of people want to return upon the chance.”
Grigoryan agreed that, in her assessments, "every person wants to go home, but it depends on the circumstances,” such as guarantees for protection of language and culture. Though there has not been a formal survey of the issue among the Artsakhtsi community, Beglaryan added that, according to his communication and outreach, “Nobody thinks that it’s possible to return under Azerbaijani genocidal control.”
Sayida Poghosyan, an Artsakhtsi organizer providing cultural and social services for other displaced families across Armenia, said that "although we know that this is temporarily impossible, we do not give up our right to . . . the collective and safe return to our homeland."
Azerbaijan has called the mass flight of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians voluntary and promised to protect the rights of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians. Human Rights Watch, however, said in October 2023 that “such assertions are difficult to accept at face value after the months of severe hardships, decades of conflict, impunity for alleged crimes, in particular during hostilities, and the Azerbaijani government’s overall deteriorating human rights record.”
International human rights lawyer and University of Southern California professor Steve Swerdlow met with members of the displaced community in Armenia over the summer, and he said that the right of return, though politically deprioritized, is “still in the hearts of more than 120,000 people."
Though the deal makes formal mention of abiding by states’ obligations under international law by claiming that the agreement “does not infringe upon the rights and obligations of the Parties under international law,” Stepanyan was not convinced that such language would genuinely extend to the right of return, referring to it as "diplomatic jargon, nothing else."
Both Stepanyan and Beglaryan contended that the exclusion of the conflict’s primary victims, now ratified in the trilateral document, is evidence of the weakness and failure of the international legal system—laid bare by mounting belligerence elsewhere. “All that we read in our textbooks, all that we studied in our international law classes, is something like a fairytale,” Stepanyan said. “It is written on papers but it is very much ignored when states are being guided by their economic and political interests.”
Disclosure: Emily Wilder is an independent journalist and a researcher for the University Network for Human Rights, which has investigated human rights issues in Armenia since the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.
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Thank you for enlightening us on this situation.
Donald Trump... the master of "Clueless Diplomacy". Nuance is overrated.