Top: Displaced ethnic Armenians boarding buses in Nagorno-Karabakh Bottom: Explosion at a fuel-distribution center amidst the evacuation | |
Date | 24 September 2023 – 3 October 2023 (1 week and 2 days) |
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Location | Nagorno-Karabakh |
Cause | 2023 Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh |
Deaths | 218 from the Berkadzor fuel depot explosion 70 en route to Armenia |
Displaced | Over 100,617 (99% of population) as of 3 October 2023[1][2][3][4][5] |
On 19–20 September 2023 Azerbaijan initiated a military offensive in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region which ended with the surrender of the self-declared Republic of Artsakh and the disbandment of its armed forces. Up until the military assault, the region was internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but governed and populated by ethnic Armenians.
Before the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, the region had an estimated population of 150,000 which decreased in the aftermath of the war.[6] Faced with threats of ethnic cleansing by Azerbaijan and struggling amid a nine-month long blockade, 100,400 ethnic Armenians, representing 99% of the remaining population of Nagorno-Karabakh,[7][8][9] fled by the end of September 2023,[2][3] leaving only a couple of dozen people within the region as of November.[10]
This mass displacement of people has been described by international experts as a war crime or crime against humanity.[11] 218 civilians died during an explosion at a fuel distribution center, and 70 civilians died en route while fleeing to Armenia.[12][13][14][15] While the Azerbaijani government issued assurances that the Armenian population would be safely reintegrated,[16] these claims were not deemed credible due to Azerbaijan's established track record of authoritarianism and repression of its Armenian population.[17][18][19]
Arm
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Azerbaijan's military aggression against Artsakh on 19 September 2023, which resulted in massacre and atrocity and the consequent flight of almost 100 percent of its indigenous Armenian population to neighboring Armenia. The aggression, atrocity and forced displacement amount to a very thorough genocide of an ancient, continuous indigenous civilization.
Coercion
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).The Commissioner was also informed that some people reportedly died from health complications during the displacement to Armenia
After three days in the car with very little food or water—or, in some cases, hours of walking miles and miles—many grew malnourished or fell ill. Some of the most vulnerable or eldest of the group died along the way.
With Azerbaijan now starving the 120,000 people it claims are its citizens, many observers now agree that the idea that Karabakh Armenians can live safely in Ilham Aliyev's Azerbaijan is hardly credible. "The blockade renders irrelevant any talk of the civil integration of Karabakh Armenians," wrote Laurence Broers, Caucasus programme director at Conciliation Resources. "It vindicates the worst fears of the Karabakh Armenian population vis-a-vis the Azerbaijani state… [and] will leave a new legacy of unforgiving distrust cancelling any hopes of reconstituting community relations," Broers said.