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The Member of the RA NA Delegation Hripsime Grigoryan gave a speech in the OSCE PA Autumn Meeting. In her speech she particularly said:

“Thank you, Ms. Charalambides.

Dear Colleagues,

The reality we face nowadays is not only complicated, it is scary. Each of our countries has numerous challenges to fight.

The ongoing war in Ukraine has resulted in the crisis of European security leaving us with little room to keep focus on other conflicts. However, this approach has proven itself wrong, as crises have the tendency not just to escalate but also to spread. Two years ago the lack of decisive and adequate reaction to the 44-day war launched by Azerbaijan against Nagorno-Karabakh created another precedent of “solving issues” with the use of force and making the world bear its consequences. If one authoritarian state can unleash aggression, commit war crimes and stay unpunished, why would not any other authoritarian country think they can also try and “succeed.”

But today instead of getting back to the mirror accusations of colleagues from Azerbaijan, which is their usual strategy, I want to talk about our response – what we need to do.

Unlike many actors of the international community and heads of states, who conveyed a strong message to Azerbaijan that aggression cannot be tolerated, shamefully our Parliamentary Assembly has failed to address targeted and specified statements regarding the situation.

Our response to aggression needs to be very concrete: democracies should support democracies. Failure of supporting a democracy attacked by an authoritarian country is a direct harm and a huge damage to democracy, leaving it alone against the dangerous idea of that democracies cannot protect themselves and security is better ensured by non-democratic means, buy a “strong hand”. The consequences of this risk realized should not be underestimated not only in regards to Armenia or the Caucasus region, but the larger region of the OSCE.

On a more practical note, the OSCE had deployed a needs assessment mission to Armenia after the attack of Azerbaijan made on September 13-14. We believe that the availability of the OSCE needs assessment mission’s report to all the participating States will be essential in ensuring OSCE’s further engagement in our region and play a key role in preventing new possible aggression and establishing sustainable peace in the South Caucasus.”