Margaret Ritchie (right) with a friend at Shushi’s cathedral. It was damaged when the Azerbaijanis took over Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020.
This joint statement was released November 11, the first day of COP 29 (the United Nations Climate Change Conference) which is being held in Baku, Azerbaijan until November 22.
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The World Evangelical Alliance [WEA], in collaboration with the World Council of Churches (WCC), Christian Solidarity International and a coalition of global organizations, has issued a joint statement urging international attention on Azerbaijan’s actions in Nagorno-Karabakh [Artsakh] as COP29 begins in Baku.
Azerbaijan has pledged that COP29 will be a “COP of peace.” It points to its negotiations towards a peace agreement with Armenia as indicative of its own promotion of peace.
Yet Azerbaijan’s actions leading up to COP29 have been anything but peaceful. On 12 December 2022, Azerbaijan began a blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the only road between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, then populated by 120,000 ethnic-Armenian Christians.
This blockade was intensified in violation of an order from the International Court of Justice on 22 February 2023, and an outcry from the international community.
After a nine-month blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan launched a military operation against Nagorno-Karabakh on 19 September 2023, leading to the forced displacement of the entire ethnic-Armenian population.
‘We Are Our Mountains’ is widely regarded as a symbol of the Armenian heritage of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan now claims it as “one of the many examples of Azerbaijan’s tolerance of multicultural and national-religious monuments.”
Today, the region’s Armenian heritage and culture is being erased by Azerbaijan. Churches, cemeteries and entire villages have been razed to the ground. The destruction of Christian sites illustrates the threat to religious freedom and pluralism in the region posed by Azerbaijan’s aggression.
Moreover, Azerbaijan is still holding 23 Armenians hostage, including civilians, soldiers and political leaders from Nagorno Karabakh whom it captured during its blockade and military campaign. They languish in prison alongside numerous Azerbaijani political detainees. Many of these individuals are imprisoned in Baku, not far from the site of the COP29 conference.
Azerbaijan’s well-orchestrated depopulation of Nagorno-Karabakh has been qualified by numerous authorities as ethnic cleansing.
A fact-finding mission by a number of prominent human rights organizations found significant evidence that Azerbaijan committed crimes against humanity and war crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and recommended the investigation and prosecution of those responsible in Azerbaijan.
We express our solidarity with the displaced peoples of Nagorno-Karabakh. We deplore the use of the UN Climate Change Conference to cover up the crimes against humanity that led to their displacement.
We call on the government of Azerbaijan to make good on its vision of a ‘COP of Peace’ by unconditionally and immediately releasing all of the Armenian hostages and Azerbaijani political prisoners it is currently holding.
We furthermore call on Azerbaijan to contribute to a lasting peace in the region, by facilitating the safe return of the ethnic-Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh to their homeland.
We also call on all states participating in COP29 to raise these issues directly with the government of Azerbaijan.
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Go here for the statement and the full list of signatories.
My wife and I spent a few days in the small and lively state of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) in 2018, so we feel some particular sadness about the way things have gone.
There is a significant Christian presence at COP 29; Church for Vancouver should have a report soon from a local participant.