BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 23. An international
conference on "The right of return and self-determination: double
standards and selective approaches" will be held in Washington, at
the Capitol Hill, organized by the Baku Initiative Group on June
24, 2026.


This was announced in the report by the Baku Initiative
Group.


According to the report, this will be remembered as the first
such event held in the U.S. Congress on the ethnic cleansing of
Azerbaijanis by Armenia.


The conference will be attended by experts specializing in the
protection of the rights of refugees and national minorities, human
rights defenders, specialists in international law, representatives
of diaspora organizations that have been subjected to violence,
discrimination, and persecution based on their ethnicity,
representatives of civil society institutions, and representatives
of affected communities.


The conference participants will discuss the issue of
maintaining the recognition of fundamental rights - the right to
safe, voluntary, and dignified return to their historical lands -
in the focus of attention of international organizations, following
the example of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis who were
forcibly expelled from their historical lands in Armenia as a
result of the policy of ethnic cleansing.


The participants will exchange views on the possibility of
providing a legal assessment of the facts of the systematic
destruction, insult and appropriation of the cultural, religious
and historical heritage of the Azerbaijani people remaining in
Armenia, including toponyms, mosques, cemeteries, shrines and other
monuments, in the international legal framework, bringing the
mentioned violations to international accountability and monitoring
mechanisms within the framework of the UN and its relevant
structures, investigating and documenting them on site, involving
fact-finding missions for this purpose, as well as developing
investigation and accountability mechanisms at the level of special
rapporteurs and other international mandate holders.


The event will also discuss the implementation of the right to
self-determination of peoples suffering from colonialism, in
particular, the inclusion of colonies on the UN list of
Non-Self-Governing Territories to be Decolonized on the UN
agenda.


Background


Throughout the 20th century, Western Azerbaijanis were
systematically forcibly removed from their historical lands located
in present-day Armenia in several stages — in 1905–1906, 1918–1920,
1948–1953, and 1987–1991 — and subjected to ethnic cleansing. As a
result of this process, hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis were
displaced from their homelands, numerous people were killed,
subjected to torture and inhuman treatment, and the socio-moral and
economic foundations of families were destroyed.


The policy of ethnic cleansing was not limited to the physical
removal of the Azerbaijani population from their historical lands,
but was also aimed at erasing their cultural, religious, and
historical heritage, which had been formed over centuries. Mosques,
cemeteries, shrines, and other examples of material and cultural
heritage belonging to the Azerbaijani people remaining in Armenia
have been destroyed, insulted, or appropriated, more than 2,000
toponyms of Azerbaijani origin have been changed and Armenianized,
thereby implementing a systematic policy aimed at falsifying
historical memory and the ethno-cultural identity of the
region.


The 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees confirms
the right of return as one of the important requirements of
international law, the restoration of the rights of persons
displaced as a result of ethnic cleansing. In this regard, ensuring
the safe, voluntary, and dignified return of Western Azerbaijanis
forcibly expelled from the territory of present-day Armenia to
their historical homeland, the restoration of their rights to
housing, land, property, cultural and religious heritage should be
assessed in the context of Armenia's international legal
responsibility.


Conference venue and time: Washington, U.S. Congress, Kennedy
Caucus Hall, Russell Senate Office Building, June 24, at 09:00.