The Border Determination Process Must Be Immediately Halted or Subject to Fundamental Review - Ombudsman

Today, I addressed the illegitimacy of the border determination process of Armenia and the gross violations of human rights accompanying it to the current President of the OSCE, the Secretary Generals of the UN and the Council of Europe (CoE), the UN and CoE human rights commissioners, the presidents of the Parliamentary Assembly of the CoE and the OSCE PA, the President of the European Court of Human Rights, as well as various other partners, including ombudspersons and their associations.

In the letters, it is noted that the border determination process between Armenia and Azerbaijan is being conducted under the threat of open war against the entire population of Armenia by Azerbaijan. The President of Azerbaijan speaks about the Armenian people and the population of Armenia in terms of overt threats of ethnic cleansing and genocide, mirroring the rhetoric of the President of Turkey.

Both the President of Azerbaijan and other public figures openly insult the dignity of the Armenian people and incite animosity based on ethnic affiliation (specific evidence attached). As a result of this, the border determination process in specific locations in Armenia’s Syunik and Gegharkunik provinces has already led to gross violations of internationally recognized socioeconomic rights [such as property rights, etc.] and has seriously endangered people's lives, physical integrity, and other rights.

The best interests of children living in a peaceful and violence-free environment have been compromised. The security of the state borders of the Republic of Armenia has been endangered. This means that the process is accompanied by an absolute disregard for the rule of law requirements and lacks legitimacy. Therefore, it must be immediately halted or subjected to fundamental review.

The Ombudsman’s letters emphasize that the border determination process employs only internationally absolutely unacceptable mechanical approaches, including the use of private organizations’ maps like GPS or Google. No internationally established criteria are taken into account. Professional approaches are completely absent; commission work is not conducted, preliminary inventory and needs assessments are not carried out, and there are no appropriate legal foundations.

Azerbaijani military personnel, meaning armed individuals, have been deployed either in direct proximity to the peaceful residents of Armenia or even within residential areas (for example, on interstate or intercommunity roads in the enlarged communities of Goris and Kapan in Syunik Province or directly within the residential areas).

There is no established accessible and predictable timeline for the process of determining the state borders of the Republic of Armenia, as stipulated by the trilateral statement of November 9, 2020, or any other document regarding the people. Due to all this, the unacceptable speed of the border determination process and particularly the absence of proper information directly related to the rights of border residents has led to uncertainty and unpredictable situations without any justification.

The letters from the Ombudsman record that any process concerning a person should be based on the rule of law and, therefore, on the internationally recognized rights of the individual [also guaranteed by the Constitution within our country]. This is a fundamental principle of democracy.

It is clear that the entire process of determining the borders of the Republic of Armenia, as outlined above, undermines the foundations of the international human rights system and is fundamentally contrary to the very principles for which modern international law was created post-World War II to guarantee human rights and peace. Individual signed letters have been sent to each of the international organizations and partners according to their jurisdiction with detailed analyses.