Country: Azerbaijan
Group: Armenian
Date Finalized: 9/21/21
Team: Natasha Chandra (lead), Zaida Arellano Reyes, Ash Pessaran
Content Warning: massacre, police negligence, forced relocation
Approximate Time Period: 1988-present
The Armenian people in Azerbaijan continue to suffer from forced displacement. The data quality is a 2 because there are detailed accounts of the Armenians being forced away from legitimate sources.
The Armenians are the third largest minority group living in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, with a majority speaking Armenian, and only 0.2 percent speaking Azerbaijani (Minority Rights Group, 2015). In 1921, The Bolshevik Caucasus Bureau designated the area as Armenian territory by, but Stalin over-rode this decision and gave it to Azerbaijan (Minority Rights Group, 2015). In 1988, following a campaign by Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians for reunification with Armenia, a conflict began over Armenian control (Minority Rights Group, 2015). Moscow returned the region to Azerbaijan after a year of the Armenians campaigning. In 1989, Armenia responded with a declaration that the region was rightfully theirs, a declaration declared which the Soviets ignored (Minority Rights Group, 2015). Episodes of violence against Armenians started in early 1988, with the massacre of Sumgait in which local Azerbaijan police did nothing to help the Armenians (de Waal, 2003). The Armenians sought to secede from Azerbaijan and form the Armenian Karabakh Committee (Minority Rights Group, 2015). The tensions over the Nagorno-Karabakh region prompted the displacement of 300,000 Armenians (Minority Rights Group, 2015). The creation of the Basic Principles for the Peaceful Settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict occurred in 2007; the last principle is “the right of all internally displaced persons and refugees to return to their former place of residence” (Welt & Bowen, 2021). Unfortunately, a renewed 2020 conflict surrounding the Nagorno-Karabakh region led to consequences where many Armenians are newly displaced and do not feel safe returning, though they have permission to do so (Welt & Bowen, 2021). Currently, the Azerbaijani government is working to resettle hundreds of thousands of people displaced during the 1990s (Welt & Bowen, 2021).
Sources
- de Waal, T. (2003). Black garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through peace and war. New York University Press.
- Minority Rights Group. (2015, June 19). Armenians. Minority Rights Group. https://minorityrights.org/minorities/armenians/.
- Welt, C., & Bowen, A. S. (2021). Azerbaijan and Armenia: The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/R46651.pdf.