EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Over a year ago, in the wake of Azerbaijan's military offensive on Armenia in September 2022, the University Network for Human Rights (University Network or UNHR) issued a statement calling for the protection of vulnerable communities in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia. We warned,

Again, three weeks before Azerbaijan's final and decisive assault on Nagorno-Karabakh, we pleaded, “the window to prevent yet another collective failure to live up to 'never again' is closing.”²

When the University Network began documenting human rights abuses following the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War three years ago, our initial conclusion was not about the risk of ethnic cleansing nor genocide. Instead, we began preparing a report that would demonstrate that human rights violations were ongoing despite the ceasefire agreement that ended the war in November 2020. However, events unfolded in real time as we continued to visit the region, interview victims and witnesses, analyze data, and publish statements, reports, and op-eds cataloging the abuses we had documented. By our fourth fact-finding trip in July 2023, our understanding of the situation and thus, our conclusion, had changed. The warning signs of ethnic cleansing and genocide were too many and too clear to ignore. We and others rushed to mobilize the international community, issuing a briefing paper, presenting a submission to the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, and conducting real-time monitoring of Azerbaijan's decisive takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh and the mass exodus of ethnic Armenians in September 2023.³ 

This report, We are No One: How Three Years of Atrocities Led to the Ethnic Cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians, collates the findings of this multi-year research by the University Network for Human Rights, in collaboration with students, lawyers, and academics from the Harvard Law School Advocates for Human Rights, UCLA’s Promise Institute for Human Rights, Wesleyan University’s intensive undergraduate program in human rights advocacy, Oxford University, Yale's Lowenstein Project, and Yale's Jackson School of Global Affairs. In it, we make evident the scale, continuous nature, and overt genocidal character of the abuses that we and others have been documenting since the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War through the present day.

Our research uncovered evidence that since the November 9, 2020 ceasefire agreement, Azerbaijan has committed widespread rights abuses against ethnic Armenians within Nagorno-Karabakh and sovereign Armenia that we have divided into seven categories: arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, incitement to hatred, attacks on cultural heritage, and forced displacement. Many of the violations still require investigation and accountability, even as their circumstances have been overshadowed by the events of September 2023.

These violations began during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, during which Azerbaijani and Armenian forces engaged in full-scale combat in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. Rights violations continued unabated after the ceasefire agreement that formally ended the fighting. By the conclusion of that war, Azerbaijan had assumed control of a significant portion of Nagorno-Karabakh. Scenes from the towns that had been overtaken foreshadowed what was to come: No Armenians remained in those areas; if they had not fled before their villages fell, Azerbaijani forces captured or executed them. Fear of a similar fate is what compelled virtually all ethnic Armenians to attempt to flee to Armenia as soon as the exit route through the Lachin Corridor was opened on September 24, 2023.

Our report concludes that the Azerbaijani government, at the highest levels, has condoned, encouraged, and facilitated the commission of, or directly perpetrated, the most egregious forms of violence against Armenians. Together, these abuses reveal a well-organized, comprehensive campaign to empty Nagorno-Karabakh and parts of Armenia of Armenians. Moreover, the international community, time and time again, declined to take the measures needed to hold Azerbaijan to account and to deter the abuses that ultimately led to the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Recommendations

Despite the repeated warnings that we and others issued, the international community failed to take measures necessary to prevent ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. In light of this, it is urgent that measures be taken now to protect those still at risk,  ensure investigation and accountability for the crimes committed in the recent past, and to prevent further abuses in the region and beyond. There are opportunities for the international community today to uphold human rights, but they will close if action is not taken quickly:

CONTENTS

1. Arbitrary Detention

2. Torture

3. Enforced Disappearance

4. Unlawful Killings and Mutilation of the Deceased

5. Incitement to Hatred

6. Attacks on Cultural Heritage

7. Forced Displacement

8. The Last Voices from Artsakh

We have issued one chapter each day following 12 December 2023, one year after Azerbaijan began the blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, of our comprehensive report documenting the systematic campaign to empty Nagorno-Karabakh of Armenians.

Endnotes:

¹ University Network for Human Rights. 2022. “NK Statements — University Network for Human Rights.” University Network for Human Rights. https://www.humanrightsnetwork.org/nk-statements.

² “The Tip of the Iceberg: Understanding Azerbaijan’s Blockade of the Lachin Corridor as Part of a Wider Genocidal Campaign against Ethnic Armenians” (Middletown, Connecticut, August 24, 2023), https://humanrightsnetwork.shorthandstories.com/the-tip-of-the-iceberg-NK/.

³ Ibid; University Network for Human Rights. 2023. Submission to UN Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide. “Risk of Ethnic Cleansing and Possible Genocide in Nagorno-Karabakh.” Human Rights Network. https://bit.ly/3TgMk67; University Network for Human Rights. 2023. “NKLive Monitor — University Network for Human Rights.” University Network for Human Rights. https://www.humanrightsnetwork.org/nk-live-monitor.