Unhealed wound of Azerbaijan

The Armenian aggression and occupation left not only the problem of mines, but also the problem of missing persons. 

The problem of missing persons is one of the most severe consequences of armed conflicts. It really is. Years pass, and some people continue to wait for a loved one to return. There is no hope; decades have passed, yet people are still waiting for their family and loved ones, and this pain, born of uncertainty, does not go away.Despite the end of the conflict, determining the fate of those who went missing remains one of the most important issues for the Republic of Azerbaijan, President Ilham Aliyev stated in an address to the participants of the IV International Conference within the framework of the Baku Dialogue on Missing Persons, on the topic “Strengthening trust and developing effective mechanisms to address the issue of missing persons.”

It should be noted that the Baku Dialogue was established as a platform where countries and international organizations can pool their efforts, exchange experience, and cooperate. The platform alone cannot bring the missing back; its task is to focus public attention on the problem, ensure the functioning of international law in this area, and support countries’ efforts to search for their missing citizens.

A responsible state like Azerbaijan cannot ignore the issue of missing persons. Many problems related to the Armenian aggression of the early 1990s have been resolved or are being resolved. Peace and stability have come to the region, but the country's leadership does not consider it possible to put aside the topic of missing persons and forget. Baku continues its efforts to clarify the fate of the missing citizens. And the problem is much more complicated than even the Armenian mines that litter the Azerbaijani land. Azerbaijan has the means and capabilities to identify and combat terrorism. And how do you find out what happened to a person if there are no ends left, how do you find out where four thousand people have been captured and held hostage if the former enemy does not want to share information?

As the President of Azerbaijan noted, the establishment of lasting peace along with political agreements requires building trust and eliminating the humanitarian consequences of the conflict.

In Armenia, they also like to talk about building trust, but they do nothing to earn it. It is worth recalling that three quarters of the maps of minefields handed over by the Armenian side to Azerbaijan turned out to be unreliable. Perhaps it was done deliberately. Perhaps the Armenian occupation gangs really did not make such maps, but simply filled the land with mines in order to cause as much damage as possible and shed as much blood as possible.

It is also possible that government agencies, law enforcement agencies, and those responsible for resolving the remaining problems in Armenia today have no idea about the whereabouts of the missing Azerbaijanis. But people are not mines, and everyone's fate surely has witnesses. During the First Karabakh War, prisoners and hostages were not only killed and buried in mass graves. Most were forcibly taken to Armenia and were held in slavery by separatists, or they perished in concentration camps established in the occupied territories. There must be records and people who remember all of this — both participants and involuntary witnesses of the crimes.

It should be recalled that in June, at the international conference “Modern Approaches and Strengthening Cooperation in Addressing the Issue of Missing Persons,” which was held in Baku, it was announced that a special system for anonymous reporting of missing persons would be created. This system will allow citizens of Azerbaijan and Armenia to share the information they have without fear of consequences. The system is being developed as part of cooperation with the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP).This is a very good initiative. Let’s hope it will help get the problem moving forward. True, we must expect that many of those who kept Azerbaijani prisoners in slavery and killed them in captivity will continue to conceal information out of ethnic and religious hatred, even if disclosing it will not pose any threat to them.

As for the Azerbaijani side, the Azerbaijanis did not take Armenians into slavery, did not take children as hostages, and did not build concentration camps for the occupiers. Therefore, an equal exchange of information is impossible here.

It was only after the Second Karabakh War that the fate of some of those who went missing began to become clear. During demining, reconstruction work, road construction, and ground?level work, mass graves are occasionally discovered.

To date, 32 mass graves have been found in the territories liberated from occupation, President Ilham Aliyev noted in his address.

"The examination of the remains shows that the murdered Azerbaijanis were subjected to torture. Concealing prisoners and hostages from international organizations, murder involving torture, and concealing traces of crimes are gross violations of international law. These acts must be given a legal assessment,” the head of state stated, adding that not a single one of our missing citizens has been forgotten, and determining their fates is always at the center of the state’s attention.

The State Commission for Prisoners of War, Hostages, and Missing Citizens has registered 4,010 people who went missing as a result of Armenia’s military aggression. Of these, 4,004 people went missing during the First Karabakh War, and six people went missing during the 44?day Patriotic War of 2020. Among the missing are 3,228 military personnel and 782 civilians. Among the latter are 71 children, 288 women, and 319 elderly people.

As of October 1, 2026, remains believed to belong to 913 missing persons have been discovered and recovered, and in 32 mass graves found in territories liberated from occupation, remains believed to belong to 253 persons have been exhumed.

This is the grim statistics.

The Azerbaijani side has no information about the location of mass graves. But even those that are discovered help to clarify the fate of some of the missing. Work to locate burial sites, exhume remains, and identify bodies continues..

However, the problem of information remains. There is virtually none. In most cases, burial sites are discovered by chance. Only in one case did an Armenian — a participant in the massacre, who was arrested and convicted after a border post was established on the Lachin road — point to mass graves of victims of the Khojaly genocide near the walls of the Askeran fortress.

Addressing the conference participants, President Ilham Aliyev called on the UN and other relevant international organizations, within the scope of their mandates, to be more active in the search for missing persons, the exchange of information, the development of forensic capabilities, and the strengthening of support for families.

In December 2025, Azerbaijan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Tofiq Musayev, sent a letter to the UN Secretary General with a presentation of the declaration adopted at an international conference in Baku. The declaration expressed serious concern about the increasing number of missing persons as a result of armed conflicts, and stressed the importance of States respecting international humanitarian law and human rights. The letter and the attached declaration were distributed as official documents of the UN General Assembly on the following topics: "Prevention of armed conflict," "Promotion and protection of human rights," "Ending racism and discrimination," and "The rule of law."

Ensuring the rule of international law is the responsibility of the United Nations, which it has never been able to implement in matters related to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.

Meanwhile, international law governing the issue of missing persons during armed conflicts has been extensively and long-established. These are the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977; the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance of 2006; the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), a specialized intergovernmental organization that assists Governments in the search and identification of persons missing as a result of conflicts and human rights violations. and natural disasters.

According to international law, each party to the conflict is obliged to take all possible measures to search for missing persons as soon as circumstances permit and immediately after the end of active hostilities. Families have the right to know about the fate of their missing relatives, as well as the right to receive information about them. The parties should record information about the dead, ensure a decent burial and search for remains.

All this is true, but it does not apply to the opponent Azerbaijan is facing. To be honest, Baku doesn't really count on the Armenian side's assistance.