Author: Sonya Jalatian

The intention to rename the name of Nagorno-Karabakh will not affect Russia’s position on the settlement to the conflict, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told APA.

Zakharova also touched upon the OSCE Ministerial Council in Hamburg on December 8-9, whether the Karabakh issue is expected to be discussed.

“The Nagorno-Karabakh settlement will be discussed at the Vienna meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council on November 10, and also at a meeting of the OSCE Minsk Group. We believe that this work will continue at the Hamburg meeting of OSCE foreign ministers,” the Spokeswoman said.

Head of the Armenian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly to the Council of Europe, PACE Vice-President Hermine Naghdalyan chairs the plenary sitting of PACE fall session that kicked off in Strasbourg on October 10, Press Service of the National Assembly of Armenia reports.

This will be the first time an Armenian delegate presides over the Assembly sitting.

French President Francois Hollande is expected to address the Assembly today.  The speech will be followed by a Q&A session.

Election of judges to the European Court of Human Rights and a debate on the OSCD activity are also on the agenda.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the BBC reports.

Judges in Norway praised him for his peace deal with Farc rebels, signed last month after four years of negotiations.

But the agreement was narrowly rejected by Colombians in a referendum last weekend.

The 52-year conflict has led to the deaths of an estimated 260,000 people with more than six million people internally displaced.

According to a decree signed by President Serzh Sargsyan, Levon Altunyan has been appointed Minister of Health.

The European Union needs a military headquarters to work towards a common military force, the Commission president has told MEPs in Strasbourg, the BBC reports.

Jean-Claude Juncker said the lack of a “permanent structure” resulted in money being wasted on missions.

Part of his annual state of the union address was devoted to the UK’s unexpected vote to leave the EU.

He insisted that the bloc was not at risk and urged Brexit negotiations to take place as quickly as possible.

Mr Juncker warned that the UK could not expect selective “a la carte” access to the internal market without accepting free movement of people.

A delegation of the distance learning group from the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Armenia, led by the coordinator of the information management system of the “Partnership for Peace” program and the “GlobalNet” program, Davit Ghazaryan, participated in the NATO distance learning forum, taking place at the modelling and simulation center in Suffolk, Virginia.

During the forum, the working group from the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Armenia presented its achievements in distance learning. The distance learning program designed for servicemen of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia took firm place in the presentation-competition that took place during the forum. Among the 11 participants in the competition were, NATO member states, the US, Finland, Turkey, as well as NATO institutions such as the NATO school, the NATO Defense College, etc.

Currently, the working group of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Armenia is cooperating with the “Partnership for Peace” consortium of the NATO reform command. Aid for the distance learning program is obtained from OSCE Yerevan.

The distance learning program that took first place is already being implemented in the education and academic programs of the staff of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia.

The Victor Ambartsumian International Science Prize will not be awarded will not be awarded this year as the Steering Committee says there was no reliable nominee among the candidates to fit all conditions for the Prize.

1. Ambartsumian International Science Prize has been established by the President of Armenia in 2009 and at present is one of the important awards in astronomy/astrophysics and related sciences. It is being awarded to outstanding scientists from any country and nationality having significant contribution in science. The Prize totals USD 500,000 and since 2010 is being awarded once every two years.

The International Steering Committee (ISC) consists of 9 outstanding scientists: Acad. Radik Martirosyan (President of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences, Armenia, ISC Chair), Prof. Catherine Cesarsky (Saclay Centre for Nuclear Research, France, Past International Astronomical Union President), Prof. Anatol Cherepashchuk (Director of Sternberg State Astronomical Institute, Moscow, Russia, academician), Prof. Norio Kaifu (Past General Director, Japan National Astronomical Observatory, Tokyo, Japan, Past International Astronomical Union President), Prof. Michel Mayor (Geneva University, Switzerland, First Winner of V. Ambartsumian International Science Prize), Prof. Vahe Petrosian (Chair of Astronomy Program, Stanford University, California, USA, NAS RA Foreign Member), Prof. Brian Schmidt (Australian National University, Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Mount Stromlo Observatory, Canberra, Australia, 2011 Nobel Prize Winner), Prof. Joseph Silk (Professor of Oxford University and Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris (IAP), Member of the Royal Society, UK) and Prof. Yervant Terzian (Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA, Chair of the Scientific Council of the Armenian National Science and Educational Fund, NAS RA Foreign Member).

According to the By-Laws, 2016 Prize was announced on September 18, 2015, March 18, 2016 was the deadline for nominations of candidates, and the ISC received nominations from national academies of sciences, universities, observatories and astronomical institutions for 6 individual scientists and teams from different countries: Armenia, Brazil, France, Germany, Switzerland, Ukraine and some other countries representing the team members. The nominated works were sent to famous independent experts of the given field suggested by ISC members and at least two referee reports were received for each work. The International Steering Committee, based on a thorough study of the nominated works, discussions and independent evaluation, summarized its opinion at a Teleconference meeting held on July 15.

According to ISC, V. Ambartsumian International Science Prize will not be awarded this year, as among the nominated candidates there was no reliable nominee to fit all conditions of the Prize.

Previous winners were:

2010 – Michel Mayor (Obs. de Genève, Switzerland), Garik Israelian (Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Spain), Nuno Santos (Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto, Portugal)

2012 – Jaan Einasto (Tartu Observatory, Estonia) and Igor Novikov (Astro-Space Center, P.N. Lebedev Physics Institute, Russia)

2014 – Felix Aharonian (Ireland and Germany), and jointly Igor Karachentsev (Russia) and Brent Tully (USA),

2016 – The Prize was not awarded.

The Call for the next Prize will be released on September 18, 2017 and the award will take place in September 2018.

Photo: Alexandra Mudrats/TASS

Well-known journalist Pavel Sheremet has been killed in central Kiev, the Ukrainskaya Pravda newspaper reported on Wednesday, reports.

According to the publication, “On Wednesday morning, well-known journalist Pavel Sheremet was killed in a car bomb explosion. The car belonged to the Ukrainskaya Pravda head Yelena Pritula, but she was not in the car, the report says.

The car in which Sheremet was riding exploded at the corner of Bogdan Kmelnitsky and Ivan Franko streets.

Pavel Sheremet was born in Minsk on November 28, 1971. In 1998, he took a job as a special correspondent of the Novosti program on Russia’s ORT TV channel and in January 1999 took the post of the managing editor of the Russian and foreign bureau of the TV channel’s information programs. He was the presenter of the weekly analytical program Vremya. Since 2009 he was editor of the politics and society in the Ogonyok magazine.

For the past five years, Sheremet had been staying in Kiev, working for Ukrainskaya Pradva and Vesti radio.

The Worldwide Movement for Human Rights (FIDH) has studied comprehensively both Armenian and Azerbaijan sources and, based on the figures and facts confirmed by both sides, has publishes a situation note denouncing the violations of international humanitarian and human rights law during the April clashes along the Nagorno Karabakh line of contact.

“Whereas some of the human losses reported might have occurred as a result of failure to take precautionary measures and assess the effects of the attack towards the civilian population, at least three elderly civilians, residents of Talish village in Nagorno-Karabakh were reportedly killed deliberately and their bodies mutilated when the Azerbaijani troops entered and took control over the village16. Ears of the above-mentioned three civilians were cut off,” FIDH said.

It reminded that “the killing of civilians is prohibited both in the Geneva Conventions and as a norm of customary international humanitarian law.”

“Arbitrary deprivation of life and murder of civilians are prohibited under international human rights law and this prohibition is non-derogatory and therefore applicable at all times. On 4 April 2016, it was reported that Azerbaijani forces decapitated a soldier from the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh of Yezidi origin, Kyaram Sloyan, who had been killed in combat. The video and pictures of his severed head later appeared on social networks. Soldiers and civilians were shown as holding up his head as a military trophy and a sign of victorious act. Later, reports appeared about two other beheaded soldiers of the army of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh. In all three cases families later lodged an application before the European Court of Human Rights,” FIDH said.

FIDH quotes Nagorno-Karabakh Ombudsman as saying that Kyaram Sloyan’s head was returned and buried next to the soldier’s body while no action was taken by the Azerbaijani authorities with respect to returning the heads of the two other soldiers. “Additionally to being absolutely prohibited by national and international law, such inhumane treatment reinforces the inter-ethnic hatred and contributes to further conflict escalation. On April 8, 9, 1020, and 2021, 2016 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) facilitated a handover between the sides, of the bodies of those killed in combat along the Line of Contact. According to information provided by the Ministry of Defense of Armenia, bodies of at least 18 soldiers of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh were transferred to Armenian side. There were reports that the bodies were handed over mutilated. For the time being, there is no possibility to confirm the reports of mutilation by an independent source, neither is it possible to affirm independently whether they were subjected to torture when alive. The Azerbaijani media reported similar crimes by the Armenian forces referring to the refusal of the Armenian side to return a slain body of an Azerbaijani soldier. It was not possible to independently verify these reports, neither was this information publicly confirmed by the ICRC. Non-verified and non-reliable information actively spread during the military conflict feeds the escalation and is a further show of the urgent need for an independent international monitoring and investigation,” the report reads.

If accurate and confirmed, these reports amount to war crimes. Torture, ill-treatment and mutilation of the dead is strictly prohibited under both conventional and customary international humanitarian law. FIDH urges both sides to impartially investigate these allegations, to bring those responsible to justice and to cooperate with international mediators ensuring the handover of soldiers’ bodies to their families. FIDH calls on all parties to the conflict to:

• Respect and apply the provisions of the international humanitarian law and human rights law; · Ensure full respect to the right to life and security of people affected by the conflict;
• Hold accountable those responsible for violations of international humanitarian and human rights law and fight impunity;
• Respect the 1994 ceasefire, refrain from using force, not promote the use of force, and end the arms race in the region;
• Refrain from promoting hate and war propaganda;
• Accept an independent fact-finding mission into the conflict zone and provide the members of the mission with full access to places and persons affected by the conflict.

FIDH urges Azerbaijan and Armenia to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

FIDH calls on Azerbaijan to ratify two Additional Protocols (1977) to the Geneva Convention (1949).

Read the situation note .