Madame President,
Today, a humanitarian convoy of 10 trucks chartered by France, accompanied by a delegation of cross-party elected officials, will attempt to bring relief to the besieged and starving population of Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh, including 30,000 children. Knowing your commitment to the education, health and well-being of children, I would like to draw your attention to the catastrophic humanitarian situation experienced by these children and their families, victims of an illegal blockade imposed by Azerbaijan since the closure of the Lachin Corridor on December 12, 2022.
For more than 8 months, this indigenous population of 120,000 Armenians, including 30,000 children, 2,000 pregnant women, 20,000 elderly people and 9,000 disabled people, has been under siege, depriving them of food, milk, medicine, care, hygiene, electricity, gas, fuel, internet and water. A blockade is an act of war: it aims at the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.
These shortages have very serious nutritional, medical, psychosomatic and social consequences for the entire population, of which children and pregnant women are the first victims. The number of spontaneous abortions and stillbirths has tripled. Pregnant women are starving and cannot breastfeed their children. They cannot be transported to the hospital due to lack of fuel. Newborns requiring urgent surgery cannot be operated on due to lack of electricity, anesthetics, sutures, antiseptics. The incubators no longer work, the most basic hygienic care cannot be provided, serious infections cannot be treated for lack of antibiotics. Malnutrition and multiple vitamin deficiencies are responsible for anemia, rickets, abnormal growth, vision, teeth, endocrine disturbances that can lead to serious and permanent sequelae. The absence of medicines, infant milks, hygiene products and basic medical devices makes it impossible to treat fevers, infections, pains, epileptic attacks, asthma attacks, diabetic children and surgical interventions. The absence of vaccines exposes the population to serious risks of epidemic favored by the shortage of water and the precarious living conditions.
The international community has reacted little and belatedly, without taking concrete action, denouncing this violation of the ceasefire of November 2020 which endangers the survival of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh in the very short term. In particular, the International Court of Justice, in its order of February 22, 2023, ordered Azerbaijan to ensure the free movement of goods and people in the Lachin corridor. The former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Mr. Luis Moreno Ocampo, and the former special adviser to the Secretary General for the Prevention of Genocide, Mr. Juan Ernesto Mendez have confirmed that the blockade of the Lachin corridor by Azerbaijan constitutes a genocide against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. Since July 15, 2023, the International Committee of the Red Cross is no longer able to provide assistance to Armenians and has expressed its fear that the humanitarian situation will deteriorate very quickly.
Despite this, since July 27, 2023, the Azerbaijani government has blocked a humanitarian convoy of 19 trucks carrying emergency aid chartered by the Armenian government (360 tons of food, medicine, hygiene products) that the current convoy will join the August 30.
This deliberate will to create unbearable and now impossible living conditions for the population of Nagorno-Karabakh constitutes an act of mass atrocity targeting the indigenous people of Nagorno-Karabakh and forcing them to leave their homes and their homeland. Famine is the invisible weapon of the genocide suffered by this population, other members of which survived the 1915 genocide.
Children are the first to suffer from this violation of the most basic human rights, international and humanitarian rules. They are deprived of the right to live their childhood, their innocence, their right to education and to a future. Many of them are separated from their parents due to the blockade. They live in a climate of permanent terror, with a feeling of incomprehension and, even worse, of abandonment. The children who survive this will have to be able to rebuild themselves, because all their landmarks will have been erased, their right to education violated and their trust in adults lost. Their fear, their suffering and their distress will leave indelible wounds, because the unspeakable cannot be forgotten.
It is difficult for us doctors and paediatricians who spend our lives trying to save those of children stricken by disease, to understand how such a will to destroy a population can be born in the minds of people with such disastrous designs. .
What will become of these children, besieged and starving, whose only crime is to be Armenian? They live in an open-air prison on the land of their ancestors, in inhumane conditions imposed by a total blockade that aims to destroy them and their families. History and the countless Armenian heritage monuments and churches that are ubiquitous in Nagorno-Karabakh attest to the centuries-old nature of the Armenian presence in these breathtakingly beautiful lands.
Armenia and France have very strong secular ties. France is a historical friend of Armenia. In February 2023, the French Parliament unanimously passed a resolution condemning Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin Corridor, calling for its immediate reopening and sanctions against President Aliyev. Since then, many French politicians, intellectuals, philosophers, artists and journalists have committed themselves to this cause by signing articles and op-eds in newspapers and magazines including Le Figaro, Le Point, Le Monde…
France, one of the first countries to have recognized the 1915 genocide, cannot remain silent in the face of this new genocide.
The children of Artsakh have the right to live and live free. They have the right to education, health and well-being like other children in the world. They are guilty of no fault except for being Armenians.
I humbly ask you, Madam, to do everything in your power to save these children and their families who are threatened with imminent death. They are deprived of everything and they are terribly afraid, but they sing and dance despite everything to show their hope and their will to live free.
Please accept, Madam President, the assurance of my most respectful feelings.
* Professor Alain Hovnanian is Director of the Laboratory of Genetic Skin Diseases at the Inserm Imagine Institute in Paris for Genetic Diseases Hôpital Necker-Enfants Malades.
