Bringing Azerbaijan to justice for its war crimes against Armenians and preventing more Azerbaijani attacks on Armenia was the main official rationale for Yerevan’s accession to the ICC completed in February this year. It followed the ratification by the Armenian parliament last October of the court’s founding treaty known as the Rome Statute.
Armenia’s Constitutional Court gave the green light for the ratification in March 2023 one week after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over war crimes allegedly committed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow, which vehemently denies the accusations, said the “unfriendly” move welcomed by the West will cause further damage to Russian-Armenian relations. Russian officials dismissed Yerevan’s assurances that it will not be obliged to arrest Putin in case of his visit to Armenia.
Armenian opposition politicians argued, for their part, that Azerbaijan is not a party to the Rome Statute and would therefore ignore any pro-Armenian ruling by ICC. They said the real purpose of joining the court is to drive another wedge between Russia and Armenia and score points in the West.
According to Rubina Mkhitarian, a legal adviser at the Armenian Ministry of Justice, the government is not yet preparing to take Baku to the ICC.
“No such process is underway at the moment,” Mkhitarian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. She did not say whether it could be launched in the near future.
Yeghishe Kirakosian, who represents the Armenian government in international tribunals, said late last year that recourse to ICC action will discourage further Azerbaijani military attacks on Armenia. The ICC, he said, can also be asked to rule on the displacement of Nagorno-Karabakh’s entire population that followed Azerbaijan’s September 2023 military offensive.
Kirakosian has kept a very low profile since Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian expressed readiness in March this year to withdraw Armenian lawsuits against Azerbaijan filed at other international courts.
Pashinian’s government filed four such cases after the 2020 war in Karabakh. It accused Azerbaijan of committing war crimes, violating the rights of Armenian prisoners, occupying Armenian territory and forcibly displacing Karabakh’s population. Baku likewise sued the Armenian side, alleging various violations of international law.
Pashinian suggested that it would be “logical” for the two sides to mutually drop these cases if they manage to finalize an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. Armenian civic organizations and legal experts denounced his statement.
Gurgen Petrosian, who teaches international law at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, also expressed concern about such a course of action advocated by Pashinian when he spoke to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service at the weekend.
“It would be a crushing defeat for us,” said the Armenian scholar. “Legally, we would no longer have any opportunity to present our demands to a state that has violated human rights, committed crimes and also breached international agreements. Our actions would be unforgivable to our generations.”