The Boston Globe: The international community must use COP29 to hold Azerbaijan accountable for its war crimes committed against the Armenian people
For a president who entered the White House claiming that climate change and human rights would be at the crux of his foreign policy, Joe Biden has fallen short on that promise, The Boston Globe writes.
Nowhere has that been more evident than in his policies toward the petrostate of Azerbaijan, a country that despite its dreadful human rights and environmental records is scheduled to host the next United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP29, beginning Nov. 11.
As noted, Azerbaijan has deftly used geopolitics and its natural resources to essentially grab a seat at the world’s table while using the pretext of historical revisionism to greenwash its global image, particularly in the wake of its mistreatment of ethnic Armenians. It was under the false pretense of environmentalism that Azerbaijan implemented in December 2022 an illegal road blockade of the Berdzor (Lachin) corridor, the only road linking more than 120,000 Armenians in Artsakh to the outside world, that led to the ethnic cleansing of its Indigenous people, making it the largest displacement of Armenians since the Armenian Genocide of 1915.
“The international community must use COP29 to hold Azerbaijan accountable for its war crimes committed against the Armenian people as well as its recent crackdown on government critics and activists. But based on President Biden’s recent letter to President Ilham Aliyev, in which he said that he looked “forward to advancing our shared climate goals at COP29 in Baku in November and stand ready to support Azerbaijan in making the event a success,” it appears that Biden is putting politics ahead of human rights and the environment.
Armenian Americans know all too well that side of Biden. Throughout his administration, he has turned a blind eye to Azerbaijan’s malfeasance and violent behavior as a geopolitical trade-off for its oil and proximity to Iran,” reads the article. In 2021 and each year thereafter, he waived Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act that bans military assistance to Azerbaijan despite Baku launching an illegal war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020.
A war in which Azerbaijan used chemical weapons, including white phosphorus munitions, to burn down forests causing irreparable damage to the environment and where Azerbaijani troops wantonly executed captured Armenian soldiers, a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. And the White House continues to remain silent on Armenian political prisoners being held illegally by Azerbaijan, including Armenian humanitarian Ruben Vardanyan and other former leaders of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Despite the overwhelming evidence, Biden has failed to hold Azerbaijan accountable or implement any punitive measures, including sanctions. “His silence and complicity in Azerbaijan’s crimes sends the wrong and conflicting message to autocrats around the world,” reads the article.
