On 2 July at the United Nations, Christian Solidarity International raised the issue of Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of 150,000 Armenian Christians from their homeland in Artsakh/Nagorno Karabakh.
CSI’s intervention was delivered by Joel Veldkamp, CSI’s director for public advocacy, during an interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Ashwini KP.
Azerbaijan’s expulsion of Artsakh’s Armenians from their homeland in September 2023 represents “one of the most complete ethnic cleansing campaigns in modern history”, Veldkamp said.
Veldkamp noted that Azerbaijan is defying multiple International Court of Justice orders in refusing to allow the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh to return to their homeland, and by destroying Armenian religious and historic sites in Nagorno Karabakh.
“We urge the President of the Human Rights Council and the High Commissioner for Human Rights to take concrete measures against the aforementioned gross violations of international law,” he said.
Veldkamp also urged the Special Rapporteur “to undertake a fact-finding visit to the displaced people of Nagorno Karabakh, and submit a report on the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh to the Human Rights Council”.
The video of the intervention follows.
