BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 23. An international conference on "The right of return and self-determination: double standards and selective approaches" will be held in Washington, at the Capitol Hill, organized by the Baku Initiative Group on June 24, 2026.
This was announced in the report by the Baku Initiative Group.
According to the report, this will be remembered as the first such event held in the U.S. Congress on the ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijanis by Armenia.
The conference will be attended by experts specializing in the protection of the rights of refugees and national minorities, human rights defenders, specialists in international law, representatives of diaspora organizations that have been subjected to violence, discrimination, and persecution based on their ethnicity, representatives of civil society institutions, and representatives of affected communities.
The conference participants will discuss the issue of maintaining the recognition of fundamental rights - the right to safe, voluntary, and dignified return to their historical lands - in the focus of attention of international organizations, following the example of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis who were forcibly expelled from their historical lands in Armenia as a result of the policy of ethnic cleansing.
The participants will exchange views on the possibility of providing a legal assessment of the facts of the systematic destruction, insult and appropriation of the cultural, religious and historical heritage of the Azerbaijani people remaining in Armenia, including toponyms, mosques, cemeteries, shrines and other monuments, in the international legal framework, bringing the mentioned violations to international accountability and monitoring mechanisms within the framework of the UN and its relevant structures, investigating and documenting them on site, involving fact-finding missions for this purpose, as well as developing investigation and accountability mechanisms at the level of special rapporteurs and other international mandate holders.
The event will also discuss the implementation of the right to self-determination of peoples suffering from colonialism, in particular, the inclusion of colonies on the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories to be Decolonized on the UN agenda.
Background
Throughout the 20th century, Western Azerbaijanis were systematically forcibly removed from their historical lands located in present-day Armenia in several stages — in 1905–1906, 1918–1920, 1948–1953, and 1987–1991 — and subjected to ethnic cleansing. As a result of this process, hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis were displaced from their homelands, numerous people were killed, subjected to torture and inhuman treatment, and the socio-moral and economic foundations of families were destroyed.
The policy of ethnic cleansing was not limited to the physical removal of the Azerbaijani population from their historical lands, but was also aimed at erasing their cultural, religious, and historical heritage, which had been formed over centuries. Mosques, cemeteries, shrines, and other examples of material and cultural heritage belonging to the Azerbaijani people remaining in Armenia have been destroyed, insulted, or appropriated, more than 2,000 toponyms of Azerbaijani origin have been changed and Armenianized, thereby implementing a systematic policy aimed at falsifying historical memory and the ethno-cultural identity of the region.
The 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees confirms the right of return as one of the important requirements of international law, the restoration of the rights of persons displaced as a result of ethnic cleansing. In this regard, ensuring the safe, voluntary, and dignified return of Western Azerbaijanis forcibly expelled from the territory of present-day Armenia to their historical homeland, the restoration of their rights to housing, land, property, cultural and religious heritage should be assessed in the context of Armenia's international legal responsibility.
Conference venue and time: Washington, U.S. Congress, Kennedy Caucus Hall, Russell Senate Office Building, June 24, at 09:00.
