On Thursday, March 13, Armenia and Azerbaijan announced that they had finalized a peace agreement supposed to close almost 40 years of conflict. But behind this historic facade hides another reality: the abandonment of the 120,000 Armenians of Haut-Karabakh, victims of an ethnic cleaning after the Baku flash offensive in September 2023.
The text, still confidential, provides for the opening of borders, the end of territorial claims, in particular those of Armenia on Haut-Karabakh, and the dissolution of the Minsk group. It also requires Erevan to give up any foreign military presence on its soil, a point which could compromise the European Union observation mission (Euma). Normalization of bilateral relations? Rather a diktat imposed on Armenia.
The Armenian Haut-Karabakh is striped from the card. In Baku, 23 Armenian hostages, including former leaders like Ruben Vardanian, are currently undergoing a parody of trials. On the ground, the Christian churches and monuments are destroyed without the slightest opposition. As for the right to return from refugees, however required by the International Court of Justice on November 17, 2023, it was purely ignored. Azerbaijan is not content to erase a multimiller’s Armenian presence, it replaces it, repopulating the enclave with its own nationals.
Survival at the price of capitulation?
Nikol Pachinian plays the survival of weakened and isolated Armenia. But by yielding everything to Baku, he takes the political risk of too much humiliation. Bakou demands the abolition of a key passage from the declaration of independence of Armenia, adopted in 1990 and part of the Constitution, which evokes the “reunification of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia and the mountainous region of Karabakh”. This region, historically Armenian, had been awarded to Azerbaijan by Stalin in 1921. Part of public opinion, and even more the Armenian diaspora, three times more numerous than the population living in the country, see it an unacceptable surrender.
“So is the strongest reason always the best?” »»
The Armenian Prime Minister even was zealous, going so far as to abandon the question of the Armenian genocide in the hope of unlocking relations with Ankara. Officially, everything is done to promote regional cooperation. But in reality, the central issue remains the Zanguezour Panturc corridor, a strategic project that would allow Azerbaijan a territorial continuity with its exclave from Nakhitchevan but also with Turkey, crossing the Armenian province of Syunik.
There remains a final concession: the commitment of Armenia and Azerbaijan to abandon their international legal proceedings against each other. Before the European Court of Human Rights, the two states accuse each other of abuses during the 2020 war, in particular extrajudicial executions and acts of torture. At the International Court of Justice, they accuse violations of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination. By renouncing these procedures, Armenia would allow Bakou to impose his story of the conflict. A diplomatic victory for Azerbaijan, and a final burial of justice.
Is the reason for the strongest therefore the best? While Armenia renounces to demand justice, the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe is content to suspend the delegation of Azerbaijan, since January 2024. As for the European Parliament, it voted on March 13, 2025 a resolution which “requires the immediate and unconditional liberation” of the Armenian hostages which are “unfairly maintained in detention”, as well as the suspension of the strategic partnership The energy passed with Baku in July 2022. But do these words are enough in the face of the erasure of a people? Yerevan, which aims for membership of the European Union, expects acts from us, not speeches.
