Middle East Forum: The United States should increase pressure on Azerbaijan to release Armenian hostages
On March 3, 2025, at the 58th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called for the immediate release of “all those arbitrarily detained in Azerbaijan, including ethnic Armenians.”
Türk preceded the comment by also offering an assurance: “We stand ready to support.” The Middle East Forum says it is a phrase with no context, meaning, or plan.
Amnesty International’s advocacy was also hollow. It expressed support in January 2025 for the Armenian hostages, but forfeited any momentum it might have had if the statement had been released in September 2023, when Azerbaijani forces took Nagorno-Karabakh’s representatives hostage, including Ruben Vardanyan, billionaire, philanthropist, and former state minister. In saying that Azerbaijan’s “denying [Vardanyan] his fair trial rights, they are doing the exact opposite of justice,” the statement is better late than never, but Amnesty has no real power. The International Committee for the Red Cross also has been ineffectual by refusing to demand fulfillment of its mandate to help the hostages held in Azerbaijan’s prisons,” the think tank writes.
As noted, human rights entities like Amnesty International, the Red Cross, and the United Nations Human Rights Council can do better to draw attention to the atrocities committed against the Armenians in immediate, clear, and unequivocal language and advocacy, but they have no real instruments to force Azerbaijan’s hand. The United States, however, does.
The United States has several tools at its disposal to compel Azerbaijani dictator Ilham Aliyev to end his hostage-taking and show trials.
First, the U.S. Export-Import bank (EXIM) has been reviewing since February 2025 a $100 million long-term loan application to fund the sale of Boeing cargo jets to Azerbaijan’s Silk Way Airlines. Approval delays are due to concern about facilitating an illegal flow of arms into Azerbaijan, threatening Armenia’s security and sovereignty.
As noted, the U.S. Department of State should not send a new ambassador to Baku until the Aliyev regime is willing to engage seriously. The article says U.S. government foreign assistance to Azerbaijan has declined since 2023. But, while the Aliyev government hopes Trump will normalize relations and restore funding, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s record as senator suggests he will not sympathize with Azerbaijan’s position absent serious reforms in Baku.
Rubio previously expressed willingness to sanction human rights abusers, including Azerbaijan.
