The Treaty of Sevres was signed on August 10, 1920
To mark the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Sèvres Treaty, the Armenian Cause Foundation on Monday released the recently updated study entitled “On the Validity of the Treaty of Sèvres and the Arbitral Award of Woodrow Wilson” by Dr. Aida Avanessian a legal expert with a concentration on international law.
From a purely legal perspective, Avanessian’s study concluded that it is impossible to separate President Wilson’s Arbitral Award from the Treaty of Sèvres. She also advances several legal theories that allow her to conclude the following:
a. The issue of validity of the Treaty of Sèvres must be separated from the issue of its enforceability;
b. The Treaty of Sèvres was a valid legal document at the time that President Wilson’s Award was issued; and
c. As a result, the Arbitral Award, having been issued under the authority of jurisdiction granted by a valid legal document, itself was and remains a valid legal document.
The publication also includes defining excerpts from the Sèvres Treaty, culls materials from papers relating to U.S. foreign relations in 1920 and presents Wilson’s letter to the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers in which the U.S. president delineates the borders between Armenia and Turkey and expands on his arbitral award.
Avanessian first published the article in 2017, in the “Armenian Yearbook of International and Comparative Law.” She revised the document on May 1, 2020.
Read Avanessian’s “On the Validity of the Treaty of Sèvres and the Arbitral Award of Woodrow Wilson.”