No choice but to flee: the forced deportation and persecution of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh - a legal analysis

Abstract

This report, jointly prepared by Rerooted in collaboration with the Leiden International Humanitarian Law Clinic, and Harvard and Columbia Law Schools’ Advocates for Human Rights, presents the findings of primary and secondary testimonial evidence and jurisprudence of international courts, and concludes that the series of acts carried out by the state of Azerbaijan since the 2022 blockade, resulting in the "mass exodus"6 of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, constitutes the crimes against humanity of deportation and persecution. The evidence presented in this report establishes that the ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh did not voluntarily choose to leave their homes but were left with no genuine choice but to flee in order to escape grave fundamental human rights violations and the threat of imminent harm.

This report was written by a team of legal clinics and academics at Leiden, Harvard, and Columbia Universities. The team was supervised and the report edited by Associate Professor Dr. Robert Heinsch, Director of the Kalshoven-Gieskes Forum on International Humanitarian Law and Associate Professor of Public International Law at Leiden Law School, and attorney Anoush Baghdassarian of Rerooted. The team would like to thank everyone who came together to make this report possible, including those who helped by collecting, transcribing, and translating testimony, providing legal and open source research, and in other ways identified and unidentified herein. This report was contributed to by practitioners, academics, students and alumni Sirine Four, Belén Terzian, and Usra Qureshi of the International Humanitarian Law Clinic at Leiden University; Kara Fitzgerald Elgarhy and Iben Vagle of Columbia Law School’s Advocates for Human Rights; Talish Babaian, Iseult Theresa O’Callaghan, Felipe Lobo Koerich, Julia Kepczynska, and Philippa Frizzelle, students in Harvard Law School’s Advocates for Human Rights Student Practice Organization; Deepika Singh, Afrah Tahir, Amy Tong, Ariq Hatibie, Clinical Fellow Emily Ray, and Clinical Professor of Law Tyler Giannini of Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Entrepreneurs Clinic; Martina Kardashian-Sieger, and Mischa Gureghian-Hall of the University of Oxford, Hayarpi Matevosian of the Faculty of Law of the University of Hamburg, Salini Pillai of Harvard University, David Alaverdyan of the Global Studies Institute of the University of Geneva, Maria-Vera Azadian of Columbia University, colleagues at the International Criminal Court; and Ani Schug of Rerooted.