Representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians have appealed to the OSCE’s participating states to use all available powers—“including the right of veto if necessary”—to stop the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group, warning that dismantling the framework without safeguards for displaced Karabakh Armenians would entrench injustice and destabilise the region.
The appeal and surrounding developments were reported by OC Media, which published the text of a message signed by Ashot Danielyan, President of the internationally unrecognized Parliament of Nagorno-Karabakh, on behalf of all factions and members of the National Assembly.
The move follows a joint Armenian–Azerbaijani appeal, agreed upon in Washington on August 8 and circulated to OSCE capitals on August 11, requesting the closure of the Minsk process and its associated structures. Danielyan—elected by the region’s parliament in late May—framed the message as speaking “on behalf of the 150,000 Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh […] forcibly displaced from their ancestral homeland,” urging states to keep the Minsk Group intact until “robust guarantees are in place to ensure the safe and dignified return” of the displaced. Armenia’s government has rejected hosting any Nagorno-Karabakh state institutions in exile, citing risks for Armenia; officials in Yerevan have warned that the debate over a government-in-exile is a “ticking time bomb.”
The OSCE Minsk Group, co-chaired by France, Russia, and the United States, served as the primary international mediation format for the Armenian–Azerbaijani conflict before the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. Its dissolution has been one of Azerbaijan’s key preconditions for a peace treaty. While the treaty text was agreed in mid-March and initialled in Washington earlier in August, it remains unsigned.
The joint Armenian–Azerbaijani application to close the Minsk structures came despite Yerevan’s earlier position that the treaty should be signed and any move to dissolve Minsk mechanisms made “simultaneously.” The Karabakh representatives argued that shutting down the format “without consulting the elected representatives of the people for whom it was established” would disregard their voice and deny their role in the process. “The conflict cannot be deemed resolved while an entire population remains uprooted, deprived of its inalienable rights,” the appeal stated, adding that legitimising what they called “the ethnic cleansing carried out by Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh” would stain the OSCE’s history and principles.
Earlier this week, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called discussion of the return of Armenian and Azerbaijani refugees “a dangerous factor” that “damages” the peace established since the August 8 Washington agreements. It was not immediately clear how OSCE participating states would respond to the appeal or whether any would seek to block the Minsk Group’s closure.
Photo: Generated by Gemini AI.