On March 18, 2022, an event dedicated to the 30th anniversary of Azerbaijan's membership in the UN took place in the city of Shushi occupied by Azerbaijan. This was reported by the state CBC TV Azerbaijan.

The representative office of Baku issued a postage stamp on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the productive cooperation between Azerbaijan and the United Nations, with the participation of officials from almost all specialized agencies of the United Nations.

According to the video, the participants of the "Azerbaijan - UN. 30 years of Partnership" conference also raised the UN flag in Shushi, the cultural capital of Azerbaijan. The Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan noted that in the framework of the expanding cooperation with the UN in the liberated territories, serious economic and environmental activities should be launched, the completion of which is scheduled for 2050.

Our response

Holding the conference "Azerbaijan – the UN. 30 years of cooperation» in Shushi is a gross violation of the world values, justice, human rights, tolerance and solidarity, enshrined in the UN Constitution. And in this case, when the UN is the organization that proclaims and guarantees the protection of these values, and its partner is Azerbaijan - the state that violates the rights of the universal significance adopted by the UN – human rights, and particularly the cultural rights of Armenians of Artsakh to inherit culture, to participate in cultural life and to transmit the heritage to the future generations.

The UN flag is raised in the city, which is being the Armenian historical and cultural center, was declared the cultural capital of the Turkic world and included in the list of UNESCO as a creative and cultural city of Azerbaijan. The United Nations co-operates with the state, which was condemned by the International Court of Justice at The Hague for violating the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965) on December 7, 2021, and Azerbaijan was urged to refrain from destroying Armenian cultural and religious heritage.

And all this happens after the second institution in the world in terms of legitimate democracy - the European Parliament, representing the opinion of about 490 million people, adopted a resolution on the destruction of Armenian cultural property in the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and classified the policy of Azerbaijan as a programme state policy, due to which the Armenian cultural values both in Nakhichevan and in Nagorno-Karabakh are being ruthlessly destroyed.

During and after the 44-day Artsakh War, Shushi was subjected to cultural genocide. There are many examples: the shelling of the Ghazanchetzotz church, then the distortion of its real image (“Orthodoxization”) (Illegal reconstruction of Surb Ghazanchetsots Church in Shushi – Monument Watch), the destruction of the Church of Surb Hovhannes Mkrtich (Kanach Zham) (Azerbaijanis destroyed the dome and bell tower of the Kanach Zham church – Monument Watch), the appropriation of its museums and exhibits after the occupation of Shushi (Destruction of the State Geological Museum of Shushi – Monument Watch), the destruction of the “Park of Sculptures” in Shushi (Destruction of the “Park of Sculptures” of the State Museum of Fine Arts in Shushi – Monument Watch), the destruction of Shushi historical cemetery, and monument dedicated to the victims of the Genocide (Destruction of the Memorial Devoted to the Genocide victims in Shushi – Monument Watch), etc.

The Azerbaijani policy, which is aimed at distorting the cultural image of the city of Shushi, is in fact approved by the UN, whose mission is to prevent the cultural genocide. Meanwhile, the presence of various UN agencies at event held in Shushi together with the Government of Azerbaijan shows that this international organization does not prevent the cultural genocide, but stands by its perpetrators.