ICLaw continues engagement with UN Working Group on enforced disappearances
On Aug. 18, 2023, the International and Comparative Law Center submitted a report to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. The report presented documented information on Armenians who were forcibly disappeared during the 2020 44-day war, raising the issue at the international legal level.
In the same year, the center provided a comprehensive overview of the total number of persons captured and missing as a result of the war, highlighting six cases. The International and Comparative Law Center submitted evidence to the Working Group confirming the circumstances of their capture and subsequent disappearance. Azerbaijan’s failure to properly investigate this evidence and clarify the fate of the missing persons was recorded. The report also highlighted racial discrimination and ethnic hatred against Armenians as a systemic factor contributing to enforced disappearances. Within standard procedure, the Working Group transmitted these cases to Azerbaijan.
In March 2024, on behalf of the relatives of the missing persons, the center submitted another report to the Working Group, detailing the circumstances of the disappearance of eight individuals. The report also included information about the general situation in Artsakh during the blockade and the Sept. 19, 2023 war.
Despite the submissions, the government of Azerbaijan provided a response regarding only 15 of the unresolved cases registered by the Working Group. These clarifications were deemed insufficient, prompting the Working Group to request additional information.
Since 2020, the International and Comparative Law Center has maintained active and constructive engagement with the Working Group, consistently responding to Azerbaijan’s replies, which are often of a dismissive nature and contain claims regarding the absence of information.
At a later stage, the center submitted an additional application summarizing all cases transmitted through the Working Group in chronological order. For each case, it provided specific factual data regarding the circumstances of disappearance, the last known location and the conditions under which the person was last seen. The report also referenced videos and photographs circulating in Azerbaijani sources as additional evidentiary material, and once again emphasized that a systemic cause of enforced disappearances is the policy of racial discrimination and ethnic hatred against Armenians.
In February 2026, the Working Group transmitted Azerbaijan’s responses concerning 18 forcibly disappeared persons to the center. The International and Comparative Law Center met with family members, shared the information, discussed it and incorporated their comments into a report submitted to the Working Group.
The report states that the information provided by the government of Azerbaijan does not demonstrate any prompt, effective or impartial investigation aimed at clarifying the fate and whereabouts of the missing persons. Some individuals were last seen alive under the control of Azerbaijani forces, in which case the state bears responsibility for clarifying their fate. Nevertheless, the responses provided are largely formal in nature, lacking evidence of concrete investigative steps and failing to clarify the fate of the missing persons.
It should be noted that as early as 2022, the director of the center, Siranush Sahakyan, stated that there were at least 80 documented cases of enforced disappearances of Armenians, a figure confirmed by the University Network for Human Rights.
