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Governments involved in facilitating talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia should secure concrete commitments from Azerbaijan’s president on respecting, protecting, and implementing the right to return of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, Human Rights Watch said today. More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians, nearly the entire current population of the area, have fled in recent days.

Azerbaijan’s plan for reintegration of the region and its residents should set out how, in both the short and long-term, it will respect human rights, in particular those of ethnic minorities; and it should welcome an independent mission for sustained international monitoring of these commitments.

Azerbaijan’s partners should insist on an international monitoring mission to report publicly on conditions facing ethnic Armenians who have remained in Nagorno-Karabakh, and to identify human rights violations, particularly those that would undermine ethnic Armenians’ right to return to their homes. Partner governments should also urge Azerbaijani authorities to take substantive steps to facilitate the right to return, either for short-term visits or for the longer-term.

“Azerbaijan’s partners should send an unambiguous message to the country’s leadership that when it comes to the right to return, they will not accept hollow rhetoric and half measures,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The fear and lack of trust on all sides make a sustained international presence essential for the right to return to be meaningful, not theoretical.”