Armenian human rights advocates highlight plight of hostages at OSCE’s 50th anniversary conference
This year, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) marked the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act by organizing a 10-day conference dedicated to human rights and fundamental freedoms across the OSCE region. The conference took place from October 6 to 17 in Warsaw, Poland and was organized by the OSCE Finnish Chairpersonship 2025 with the support of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).
During the conference, participants discussed current developments in the OSCE region, their consequences and the ongoing relevance of the Helsinki principles and OSCE human dimension commitments for the region’s common security. The event provided a platform to evaluate the implementation of commitments across the 57 OSCE participating states and offered a forum for exchanging views, sharing best practices and raising issues for international attention.
Plenary sessions and side events covered the full spectrum of OSCE human dimension commitments, including democratic institutions, the rule of law, tolerance and non-discrimination, fundamental freedoms and humanitarian issues.
The Director of the International and Comparative Law Center (I.C.Law Center) and human rights defender Siranush Sahakyan, along with Philipp Raffi Kalfayan, the Center’s representative, actively participated in the conference sessions. Colleagues from the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), including Garen Jinbachyan, ANCA’s community coordinator, as well as representatives from the European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy, were also present.
For the I.C.Law Center, the OSCE conference offered another platform to draw international attention to the situation of hostages held in Baku, Azerbaijan’s discriminatory policies regarding these cases and the fabricated court proceedings. According to Sahakyan, Armenian hostages are targeted not for their actions, but for their identity. She also refuted the false claims made by the Azerbaijani delegation during the conference.
“Azerbaijan deprives Armenian hostages of the opportunity to have independent lawyers,” Sahakyan stated in her speech. “The court hearings are not independent or impartial and resemble staged performances of humiliation. Meanwhile, the government of Azerbaijan assures participants at this conference that Armenian prisoners enjoy all rights, including access to legal counsel. The reality is that Baku has rejected my requests, as an ECtHR-authorized representative of these hostages, to meet with the prisoners. For five years in a row, the number of ‘permitted’ meetings has been zero.”
She added, “If ‘protection of rights’ is like this, then we can only imagine the state of all other rights to a fair trial in Azerbaijan.”
Other representatives of Armenian civil society also participated in the conference. Following the sessions, human rights defenders from Armenia held separate meetings with delegations from OSCE states, raising the issue of Armenian hostages in Azerbaijan and providing information about the illegal and fabricated court proceedings in Baku.
To watch Siranush Sahakyan’s speech at the OSCE Conference, click here.
