ARMENIA has called on the United Nations security council to hold an emergency meeting over the worsening humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh.
In his letter to the council’s president, sent on Friday and released publicly on Saturday, Armenia’s UN ambassador Mher Margaryan said the disputed region inside Azerbaijan was “on the verge of a full-fledged humanitarian catastrophe.”
Azerbaijan has blockaded the only road leading from Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh since December, severely restricting deliveries of food, medical supplies and other essentials to the region of about 120,000 people.
Mainly populated by ethic Armenians, Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognised Azerbaijanian territory but most of it has been self-governed since 1994.
Azerbaijan regained control of previously Armenian-occupied territory surrounding the region during a six-week war in 2020.
“The Armenian government asks for the intervention of the UN security council, as the main body responsible for maintaining international peace and security, to prevent mass atrocities, including war crimes, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and genocide,” Mr Margaryan said in the letter.
Armenia’s appeal comes after the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) warned on Tuesday that Azerbaijan is preparing genocide against ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Warning against the blockading of supplies, Luis Moreno Ocampo’s report called for the security council to bring the matter before an international tribunal.
“There is a reasonable basis to believe that a genocide is being committed,” he wrote, noting that a UN convention defines genocide as including “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.”
He added: “There are no crematories and there are no machete attacks. Starvation is the invisible genocide weapon.
“Without immediate dramatic change, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks.”
A government representative in Azerbaijan dismissed the report from Mr Ocampo, who was the ICC’s first prosecutor, telling The Associated Press it “contains unsubstantiated allegations and accusations.”