2023 In March and May, Azerbaijan sent two notes to the central office of the International Committee of the Red Cross, demanding that the ICRC Stepanakert office be subordinated to the structure’s representation in Baku, but “did not receive a mutual understanding”. Azerbaijani media write about it. Accordingly, Geneva replied to Baku that the Nagorno-Karabakh problem has not been finally settled, the ICRC is trying to contribute not only to the relief of human needs, but also to the establishment of peace and stability within its powers and capabilities.
“There is no question of Karabakh anymore, it has been finally resolved. What does the ICRC Khankendi (Stepanakert) office do?” asks the anonymous author of the editorial article of APA agency in Baku. the fate of four thousand missing Azerbaijanis”. It is known that the needs of about a dozen ethnic Armenians remaining in Stepanakert are taken care of exclusively by the ICRC.
After the terrorist war of September 19, ICRC employees went around the settlements of Artsakh, found several lonely, old and disabled people, ensured their contact with their relatives, and then organized evacuation. ICRC employees also found the bodies of killed or dead persons and properly transported them to Stepanakert. Apparently, the presence of several employees in the ICRC Stepanakert office somewhat constrains the representatives of the Azerbaijani occupation regime.
“The time has come to finally close the ICRC Stepanakert office” – the official Baku media concludes with this generalization and believes that the Azerbaijan Red Crescent Society “can fully provide for humanitarian needs”. We can only assume who we are talking about. Baku aims to provide food and basic necessities to a dozen Armenians through the Red Crescent.
The problem is not purely humanitarian. The presence of the ICRC office in Stepanakert is an international representation. The Stepanakert-Geneva communication has great informational importance. It is not known how many employees there are in the ICRC Stepanakert office today, what is their area of activity, what problems do they solve, what are their relations with the occupation-military regime in Baku?
But if the official press considers them an “unwanted eye”, as follows from the aforementioned publication, it should be assumed that the presence of the ICRC in some way limits Azerbaijani vandalism. Baku has set the task of getting rid of “foreign presence”. The author of the publication considers the activities of the ICRC Stepanakert office to be “an encroachment on the sovereignty of Azerbaijan”.
It is not difficult to conclude what kind of communication Baku is currently in with Geneva. Will the International Committee of the Red Cross be able to resist Baku’s pressures, will it show desire and will? Is the ICRC Yerevan representative office related to Stepanakert? How does the political elite of Artsakh perceive the problem? Irrespective of the attitude towards the dozen people who remained in Stepanakert, those people are Armenians, willingly or unwillingly they found themselves in an openly hostile environment. Baku, it seems, has a problem to achieve their deportation as well.