Artak Beglaryan
On August 8, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev joined President Donald Trump at the White House to sign a joint declaration. That same day, the foreign ministers of both countries initialed a long-negotiated agreement on peace and inter-state relations.
Together, the declaration and agreement were hailed as a long-awaited diplomatic breakthrough: recognition of borders, renunciation of territorial claims, a ban on the use of force, and new connectivity projects—including the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP).
For diplomats, it looked like success. For the 150,000 Christian Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh)—ethnically cleansed and fully displaced in 2020 and 2023—it looked like a disappearance. Nowhere in these texts is there a single reference to the primary victims of this conflict, a people who lived in their ancestral homeland for millennia.
What the Peace Framework Ignores
The agreement emphasizes sovereignty, borders, and good-neighborly relations. Symbolically, it even condemns intolerance, hatred, and extremism. But it never names the displaced Armenians, never sets conditions for our safe return, and never acknowledges the destruction of our homes, churches, and cemeteries under Azerbaijani occupation.
Instead, the declaration speaks of "closing the chapter of enmity" and rejecting "revenge"—while ignoring the fact that Azerbaijan emptied Nagorno-Karabakh of Armenians through blockade, bombardment, and fear. That reality has been described as genocide by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, by Juan Méndez, the U.N.'s first special adviser on the prevention of genocide, and by Luis Moreno Ocampo, the International Criminal Court's first prosecutor. Meanwhile, Freedom House, the European Parliament, and many other institutions have called it ethnic cleansing. Notably, President Donald Trump himself publicly recognized that "Armenian Christians were horrifically persecuted and forcibly displaced in Artsakh" on October 23, 2024.
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