Portraits of Erasure: The Ethnic Cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh
One year ago this month, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive into the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh which led to the total ethnic cleansing of over 100,000 ethnic Armenians in just one week. Until September 2023, Nagorno-Karabakh was overwhelmingly ethnic Armenian, self-governing as a de facto state that had declared independence from Azerbaijan in 1991.
From September 26-29, 2023, Anoush Baghdassarian, field researcher for the University Network for Human Rights, documented the experiences of refugees streaming into Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh. The photos and testimonies gathered along the border bore witness to the final stage of Azerbaijan’s years-long campaign to empty Nagorno-Karabakh of its Indigenous Armenian population.
The world must hear these stories, particularly now as Azerbaijan assumes the global spotlight. In two months, world leaders will convene in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, for the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29). As those expelled from Nagorno-Karabakh remain in exile, Armenia and Azerbaijan now negotiate a peace treaty1 that could require Armenia to withdraw2 its cases against Azerbaijan from international courts. Azerbaijan has yet to face any meaningful consequences for the atrocities it committed. Meanwhile, the rights of the people captured in these images—along with over 150,0003 others—remain unaddressed and unrestored.
For Yale’s undergraduate global affairs journal, UNHR student researcher Kathryn Hemmer published a photo essay of stills by Documentation Fellow Anoush Baghdassarian taken during the ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh.
See the full essay in YRIS.
