PACE co-rapporteur’s report highlight occupation of Azerbaijani teritories

/By AzerNews/

By Sara Rajabova

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has heard a report on Azerbaijan on the second day of its summer session.

Tadeusz Iwinski, the co-rapporteur of the PACE for the monitoring of Azerbaijan, issued a report on "The functioning of democratic institutions in Azerbaijan."

Iwinski said in the report that twenty percent of Azerbaijani territory is occupied and there are more than a million refugees and internally displaced people.

He also noted that the report was difficult for him.

"It was difficult. Twenty percent of Azerbaijani territory is occupied, more than a million refugees exist. Unfortunately, it's true. Recently, the European Court of Human Rights in its decision on the case of ‘Chiragov and others against Armenia’ notes Armenia's effective control over Nagorno-Karabakh and the adjacent territories, and finding Lachin under the jurisdiction of Armenia," Iwinski said.

The European Court of Human Rights reaffirmed Armenia’s responsibility in the occupation of Azerbaijani territories.

The court ruled in favor of the applicants, recognizing Armenia’s continuing violations of a number of their rights under the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

The court’s decision on the lawsuit showed that Armenia bears full international responsibility for its initial and continuing aggression against Azerbaijan, military occupation of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized lands and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of the Azerbaijani citizens from the occupied territories.

Armenia occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions, after laying territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor that caused a brutal war in the early 1990s. Long-standing efforts by US, Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.

The UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions on Armenia's withdrawal from Azerbaijani territory, but they have not been enforced to this day.