The Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights, Dunja Mijatovic

The Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights, Dunja Mijatovic, has urged Armenia and Azerbaijan to focus in their ongoing peace talks on ensuring rights for everyone affected by the conflict between the two Caucasus rivals.

In a statement on January 12, she said her visit to the Nagorno-Karabakh region in late October — the highest-profile rights visit to the Nagorno-Karabakh region in decades — highlighted the plight of more than 100,000 Karabakh Armenian refugees.

Following decades of control by ethnic Armenians, nearly all of the residents fled Nagorno-Karabakh after Baku wrested control of the internationally recognized Azerbaijani region in a lightning offensive in September.

Mijatovic said "Karabakh Armenians found themselves abandoned without any reliable security or protection guarantees by any party, and…leaving home was the only reasonable option available."

She said those former residents must be allowed to return with their properties intact.

Ethnic Armenians have accused Baku's forces of retributive attacks and other abuses, including the widespread destruction of property.

Mijatovic welcomed "the steps taken by the Azerbaijani government to facilitate the return of internally displaced persons to the Karabakh region" but "expressed the hope that all internally displaced persons who so wish will be able to return as soon as possible in safety and dignity."

She said that "pending a possible return, ways should be promptly found, including by establishing security guarantees, for Karabakh Armenians to temporarily access their homes or places of habitual residence, and visit graveyards where loved ones are buried."

She said the Azerbaijani authorities were responsible for ensuring the protection of property and the prevention of looting.

"The few ethnic Armenians who have stayed in the Karabakh region should also benefit from all human rights protection, including by having their freedom of movement secured," she added.

She encouraged both sides to build trust.

Mijatovic's statement was a follow-up to her visit to the region from October 16-23.

As international officials have pressed peace talks, the leader of Nagorno-Karabakh separatists ousted from the region in September, Samvel Shahramanian, said in December that a decree he signed on the dissolution of separatist institutions was no longer valid.

The United States in January put mostly Muslim Azerbaijan on a watch list for engaging in or tolerating “severe violations of religious freedom” since Baku retook Nagorno-Karabakh from mostly Christian ethnic Armenians.