On January 15, 2020, Azerbaijan submitted an application to the European Court of Human Rights against Armenia, Azerbaijani state news agency reports. The application addresses “rights and freedoms of Azerbaijani citizens affected by Armenia’s military aggression against Azerbaijan”. This adds up another case to the list of interstate cases in the ECHR, which began to rise considerably in recent years.
“The application raises the issue of violation of the right to life, respect for personal and family life, freedom of religion, torture and ill-treatment, violation of the right to property and movement of citizens of the Republic of Azerbaijan as a result of the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts on the part of Armenia for nearly 30 years. There is also evidence that 3,890 Azerbaijani citizens went missing and Armenia has not taken any action to investigate the fate of these individuals.”
– Azertag
Azerbaijan invoked the right to self-defence on September 27, 2020 concerning its internationally recognized but occupied territories, a full-scale war of 44 days ended with a trilateral ceasefire agreement of Armenian, Azerbaijani and Russian leaders. Russian peacekeepers would be deployed in part of Nagorno Karabakh (where ethnic Armenians live) along with the withdrawal of Armenian forces, as agreed by article 4 of the agreement.
The UN Security Council asked Armenia four (Resolutions 822, 853, 874, 884) times to withdraw its forces from occupied territories of Azerbaijan – Nagorno Karabakh and seven adjacent districts back in 1993. However, the occupation did not end until the 2020 Karabakh War while peace talks failed.
700,000 Azerbaijanis were internally displaced from Karabakh back in the early 1990s as the result of hostilities. Although Armenian occupation ended, houses and buildings in previously occupied territories are practically non-habitable since settlements were destroyed throughout the last 30 years.
Although there was an unrecognized government in the occupied territories, in Chiragov and others v. Armenia (para. 186), the ECHR found Armenia having effective control in the occupied territories. Additionally, it is solely Armenia that took the obligation of withdrawing forces from Karabakh in the latest ceasefire deal. However, Armenia can be expected to contest its responsibility for violations alleged in the application.
The case is worth watching in the light of ECHR’s latest decision on Ukraine v. Russian Federation (VII), which declared Ukraine’s certain complaints against Russia admissible. Ukraine’s complaints concern events that happened in Crimea in 2014 and later on, which are similar to events that happened in Karabakh, at least to alleged violation of property rights.