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Dear chairman,

Distinguished colleagues,

First of all, I would like to thank my colleagues for the speeches and mention that it is an honour for me to address this respected audience.

The past year was extremely difficult for all of us. We had to fight a pandemic and we still are joining our best efforts to overcome the challenges that we all have to face up to this day.

Unfortunately, last year Armenia had to fight a two-front war: an invisible one with the virus, and a real one in order to defend Artsakh.

The Azerbaijani aggression was unleashed against Artsakh and its people during the pandemic, with the direct involvement of Turkey and Turkish-backed foreign terrorist fighters, despite the UN Secretary-General’s urgent appeal for a global ceasefire in all corners of the world to focus on the true fight – defeating the COVID-19, which has multiplied the suffering of our people enormously.

In an appeal issued on 27 April 2020, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged warring parties across the world to lay down their weapons in support of the bigger battle against COVID-19: the common enemy that is now threatening all of humankind. Contrary to the appeals of the International Community, Azerbaijan seemingly took opportunity of the situation.

The war obviously had a very negative effect concerning the cases of COVID-19. Statistics show that the war resulted in the rise of active cases up to 400%, which is 5 times greater than it was before the war, with the average of 300 active cases per day increasing it up to 1500 cases per day, in result of the war. From this point of view, it is quite eloquent that Azerbaijan used high precision ballistic missiles on central hospital in Stepanakert, the capital city of Nagorno Karabakh.

Azerbaijan has always maintained a genocidal and fascist ideology and has been famous for its poor human rights record even without the extensive list of its war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law. Up to this day, the Azerbaijani government is refusing to honor the ceasefire agreement signed by the Prime Minister of Armenia, the presidents of Russia and Azerbaijan on 9 November 2020, according to which “The exchange of prisoners of war, hostages and other detainees as well as the remains of the fatalities shall be carried out.”Nevertheless, the Azerbaijani government is refusing to release the Armenian POWs and is cynically denying their existence up to today.

We request your immediate attention in this regard and we encourage the PA to closely follow the instances of hate crime and overwhelming hate speech and intolerance against Armenians, including at the highest political level.

I would like to emphasize that our delegation values multi-faceted cooperation and I do believe that through joint efforts we shall be able to overcome many challenges together.

Once again, I would like to thank the EU and the Euronest PA for your support and effective cooperation and reassure you of the Armenian delegation’s willingness to maintain effective and reliable relations.

Thank you for attention!