A meeting of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) was held in Armenia. The event was timed to coincide with December 9 – the day the Convention "On the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide" was adopted – and December 10, which is Human Rights Day. Once a year, PACE committees have the right to hold a meeting outside France, where the Assembly's headquarters are located. In 2024, with the Parliamentary Assembly's policy towards Azerbaijan exceeding all bounds of decency, Armenia was chosen as the venue for the event. This was to be expected.

By the way, December 10 is not only Human Rights Day but also the anniversary of the illegal "referendum" held in 1991 in Nagorno-Karabakh by separatists under the control of emissaries from Yerevan. Thus, the PACE committee meeting was quite fitting, and the issues discussed seemed to resonate with the Armenian audience.

Objectively speaking, it is strange to hold a meeting of such a commission in Armenia, and even stranger to coincide it with these particular dates. Armenia, a country with numerous crimes on its conscience that fall under the definition of genocide, has placed itself at the forefront of the fight against genocides, even though it is a nation where human rights are largely unknown. There, human rights are often limited to the rights of Armenians, to whom everyone else owes something.

The fact that the interests of terrorists, saboteurs, and separatists—Armenians claiming Azerbaijani lands—were discussed in present-day Yerevan, built on the site of the destroyed Azerbaijani city of Irevan, added a special piquancy to the event. Just imagine the absurdity of the moment—recording “ethnic cleansing of Armenians” in a report, all while standing on land from which the indigenous Azerbaijani population was forcibly expelled.

Recently, for the first time at the international level, the Armenian side was asked at the UN why there is not a single Azerbaijani living in Armenia. The Armenian deputy minister could not answer this question clearly. In 35 years of conflict and occupation, no one had ever asked Yerevan such a question, and the deputy minister was unprepared for it. Meanwhile, the world is well aware that Armenia is guilty of ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis and genocide. However, in the "democratic world," discussions about a peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia typically focus only on the 2020 war, leaving aside thirty years of Armenian barbarism and atrocities. The PACE Human Rights Committee is unlikely to take an interest in the glaring fact of Armenia’s mono-ethnicity. Mono-ethnicity, especially in the Caucasus, is an unnatural phenomenon, achieved only through artificial and violent means. But PACE and other structures that support Armenians consider this an internal matter for Armenia. Yet, at the meeting in Yerevan, the internal affairs of Azerbaijan were discussed, specifically the right of return for Armenians to Karabakh. Not a word was said about the right of Azerbaijanis to return to Armenia. This was a kind of demonstration, a challenge to Azerbaijan, with which PACE has managed to sever relations.

There is no detailed information about the content of the PACE Committee meeting in Yerevan. As Vladimir Vardanyan, Chairman of the Commission on State and Legal Affairs of the Armenian Parliament, explained to journalists, meetings of PACE committees, unlike plenary sessions, are held in a closed format. These are prepared reports that are discussed in committees and are intended to be adopted at plenary sessions. The issues raised in these meetings are also addressed in several reports, which are then adopted by PACE. In short, at the next PACE plenary sessions, documents against Azerbaijan will be put to a vote. After the withdrawal of the mandate of the Azerbaijani delegation, it will be possible to discuss and adopt such papers with complete comfort.

In his comments to the media, Vardanyan expressed one curious thought while trying to explain why PACE continues to meet without any tangible benefits for pressure on Baku. He stated that the committee's meeting discussed "the legal and humanitarian consequences of Azerbaijan's military operation in Karabakh," but added that it would be ineffective to demand actions from PACE that go beyond its mandate or cannot be implemented.

PACE has indeed done all it could, adopting many meaningless resolutions and statements demanding the return of Armenians to Karabakh and the release of separatist leaders and war criminals, touchingly referred to as "prisoners of war." The Assembly demanded the immediate release of Rubiks and Araiks. However, PACE is unable to do more because the limits of its powers have been reached. No international organization has the legal right to interfere in the judicial system of a sovereign state or its internal affairs. Vardanyan had to admit this fact. The only consolation for the Armenian side is the suspension of the powers of the Azerbaijani delegation, which he hastened to remind journalists of, perhaps to smooth out the bitter aftertaste of his revelations.

It should be noted that PACE has repeatedly issued resolutions and statements in support of Armenian interests. The attacks of Armenophilia became especially active after the anti-terrorist operation in September 2023. Angry resolutions followed one another. Prior to that, in a resolution dated June 2023, the Assembly persistently demanded that the Lachin road be handed over to the Armenians to continue the lawlessness, end the "blockade," and enter into a dialogue with the separatists within the framework of the "international mechanism." Armenia responded to this document with delight, considering it an important development and rejoicing that the amendments proposed by the Azerbaijani delegation had failed. A few months later, the Lachin road was indeed opened to Armenians, but only for one-way travel. The resolutions of PACE, the European Parliament, and other guardians of Armenian interests played an important role in this outcome. PACE should not have turned into a mouthpiece for the Armenians but should have attempted to approach the issue objectively and from the standpoint of international law. Azerbaijan knows its rights very well and has never crossed its borders.

Therefore, the demands of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe hang in the air and serve only as a temporary source of satisfaction for the Armenian side.

And, by the way, Armenia should not be offended by PACE's incapacity. After all, strangely enough, there have been a couple of instances when objective documents were unexpectedly adopted by European structures, but the Armenian side never considered their implementation.

For example, Resolution No. 1416, dated January 25, 2005, entitled "On the Conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh Region, which is being addressed by the OSCE Minsk Conference," stated that "a significant part of the territory of Azerbaijan is still occupied by Armenian forces, and the Nagorno-Karabakh region is still controlled by separatist forces." PACE "referred to UN Security Council Resolutions 822 (1993), 853 (1993), 874 (1993), and 884 (1993), urging the relevant parties to comply with them, particularly to refrain from hostile acts and to withdraw armed forces from all occupied territories."

You won’t believe it, but in May 2010, the European Parliament (!) adopted a resolution titled "Requirements for the European Union Strategy for the South Caucasus." It expressed concern about the "expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes" and demanded the "withdrawal of Armenian forces from all occupied territories of Azerbaijan."

In those years, Europe still tried to protect its image and maintain its dignity by avoiding pro-Armenian adventures. Today, everything has changed: the image and dignity have been lost. European structures and officials have chosen a side and stopped pretending to be neutral. But even despite the volumes of anti-Azerbaijani decisions, PACE, the European Parliament, and others cannot practically help their proteges, only observing as Azerbaijan implements its legitimate rights and solves problems with remarkable efficiency.

"The world reacts to mass crimes after they have been committed, as we witnessed in our region in 2023," Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said resentfully at a strange forum on genocide prevention held in Yerevan. Holding an event on genocide prevention in Armenia is as strange as the meetings of the PACE Human Rights Committee.

But we will agree with Mirzoyan. Indeed, the world reacts to mass crimes too late, and often not at all. If, back in the late 1980s, the world had reacted to the brutal ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijanis in Armenia, if it had taken measures against the aggressor in the early 1990s, condemned the organizers of the Khojaly genocide, and spoken out from high rostrums about the unprecedented barbarism and vandalism of Armenians in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, the events of 2023 might not have happened.

In conclusion, we recall that December 10 is associated not only with Human Rights Day and the separatist "referendum," but with another event—one that is not just important, but essential for the present and future of this region, making all discussions, meetings, and resolutions irrelevant. On December 10, 2020, a Victory Parade was held in Baku. And no matter how much the Armenians and their supporters would like to focus on other matters, this factor must be taken into account, because it will determine the fate of Armenian statehood—not the human rights days devalued by the diversity of European politics or the concept of "genocide" cheapened by the Armenian narrative.