August 28, 2024

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Anti-Armenian discrimination has been and remains a persistent issue in Azerbaijan, and is frequently noted by international bodies. Following the end of the 2020 War in Artsakh, Azerbaijan took control over significant parts of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO), a region formerly controlled by its Armenian residents, who had rejected Azerbaijani control of the former NKAO and exercised self-determination and self-rule since the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in the 1990s.

None of the Armenians who lived in the areas Azerbaijan took control of in 2020 returned, despite constituting the majority of the population in those areas before the war. All were aware of extremely violent acts committed against Armenian civilians unable to flee during the war, as well as the history of institutionalised anti-Armenian discrimination in Azerbaijan, which often took the form of hate speech and violence. The lack of ability for Armenians to return to their homes in communities such as Hadrut makes this a de facto ethnic cleansing; those who remained in their homes were killed, with forensic evidence that indicates the brutal and intentional nature of such killings, and those who fled before the conflict reached their homes were unable to return.

The blockade of Artsakh that began in December of 2022 was another act of ethnic cleansing. The Azerbaijani military offensive of September 2023 marked the final catalyst that began the almost-total forced deportation of the Armenians of Artsakh to the Republic of Armenia.